Do a Good Turn Daily

As I've been thinking about what we should do daily to overcome the adversary and as my World Religions class has been studying Jesus Christ, who "went about doing good," I was reminded of the Scout Slogan: "Do a Good Turn Daily," and I wonder if I ever fail to do that. Doing a good deed every day is almost as inevitable as occasionally committing sin, and for similar reasons. There are so many different ways to do good, we can easily do a good deed just by going about our day. And furthermore, just as the adversary tempts us to do evil, the Holy Ghost prompts us to do good. A person would have to go far out of their way to avoid doing at least one good act per day.

Of course, that's certainly not what the slogan means. The goal to "Do a Good Turn Daily" implies acting intentionally. We are supposed to do good daily, not just as a casual habit or a matter of circumstance, but as a deliberate choice. The goal isn't just to do at least one good deed each day, but to do at least one good deed each day, above and beyond what you would normally do, specifically for the sake of completing the goal. The idea is to not just rely on your habitual goodness, but to continually push it forward by being a little "extra good" every day until being "extra good" becomes the new normal and then striving to be "extra extra good," and so on. We really should be doing as many good turns each day as possible, so the goal is always "however many you normally do, plus one."

The purpose of life isn't just to become good and then stay at least that good forever. The purpose is to become perfect. We're supposed to be improving, little by little, day by day. It can start by doing one (extra) good turn daily, but it certainly shouldn't stop there.