"If I am not for myself, who is for me..."

Ian and Daniel love to watch "Davie and Goliath," and it all works out pretty well. Some people might be horrified that the Lads are being infused with the sensibilities of the Missouri Synod of the 1960's, but I'm pretty okay with that. They have good values, their theological content is sufficiently simple that nothing they teach conflicts with the doctrine or spirit of Orthodox Christianity, and their little clay people are extremely kind to each other, except when they're part of a larger morality-play dynamic. Through dozens of different cheesy, sentimental, mildly overbearing tales of family life, they actually get across a very good mosaic of the principle of "Love Thy Neighbor."

But Ian sometimes looks for another angle, and he is, in part, a product of the Post-Post-Me Generation. So immediately after watching a Davie and Goliath episode that explicitly and extensively talked about being a good neighbor, he asked me, "Are you a good neighbor, if you're a good neighbor to yourself?"

I explained that the very term "neighbor" implies someone next to you, and you can't be next to yourself, so... No. Being good to yourself doesn't constitue good-neighborliness.

We might have to rent some Mr. Rogers "re-education" material to drive the point home...