As If Teddy Was Watching

So I'm watching this movie called "Resurrecting the Champ", and if you plan on watching it, I might spoil a certain twist in it for you. Anyway, if you don't or you don't think its a big deal (its a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the twist can be expected anyway), then read ahead.

So the main character is a reporter who's having trouble at the paper, they don't think his work is good enough, and he's separated from his wife and has a 6 yo son who he visits on weekends. The reporter catches a lucky break and writes a super good article and starts getting nation-wide attention for it, only to realize later that what he wrote about is a lie and that he didn't check his sources thoroughly enough.

So he and his wife (who works in the same paper) are arguing what to do. He's asking "who'd know if I just stayed quiet?", and his wife is insisting that he should print a retraction of his article, and admit that he was wrong. That would ofcourse mean the end of him and a major embarrassment.

So in the end she tells him:
"Let me put it more clearly to you: You need to act as if Teddy was watching." (Teddy is his son)

And hearing that, I immediately hit pause and started writing this post.

So to this man, if he could visualize in his head that his 6 yo son was present, he'd be too ashamed and embarrassed to do something dishonorable. He would be afraid that his son will either learn to be dishonest, or even that his son will not be proud of him as he grows up. So the movie expected from us the viewers to all relate to this feeling and understand it. That if we could only try to be respectful of our children's feelings, it would make us become better people and do the right thing.

Ofcourse our kids are extremely important. More specifically, their future is the most important thing we care about. So in order to protect them from future disappointment in their own parents, which might destroy their sense of self-worth, we stop ourselves from doing the wrong thing.

But we muslims have an even larger reason to behave don't we? If we replaced Teddy with God, it would be: Act as if God is watching. And God IS watching, all the time, all day, minute in, minute out. We learn something like that when we're young. No more than 4-5 years old and you've already heard that Allah foog, o Allah yshoofna shinsawe.

And our kids will grow old one day, and they'll get over any complexes we might have inflicted on them and they'll die, leaving kids of their own. So the impact of potential damage is limited to his/her lifetime. But if we do something bad infront of God, isn't He more deserving of our embarrassment and shame?

And the consequence of our shameful behavior does not affect your kid in the future. It affects your OWN life for eternity in the afterlife. So any smart person would instantly realize that the latter situation is of compoundedly more gravity to you.

Niste7e min yahel wala niste7e min Allah?