Does your child choose to play the cop or the robber? A Sith Lord or a Jedi Knight?

Why choose to play the villain at all when you could choose to play a hero?

Parents might think the answer is simple. Villains may have cooler costumes and passionate personalities in need of redemption.

Often a villain’s nuanced backstory and misplaced belief that ends justify means give him greater motivation to act. Humans, in our sin nature, resonate deeply with those kinds of motives.

And what’s wrong with that? Nothing actually. Well-rounded characters, whether on the side of good or evil, are always necessary. The problem is not with making villains interesting—it’s with making good guys boring.

Heroes may not usually have such strong and relatable reasons to be good. Thanks to moral relativism, storytellers may struggle to answer questions like, “Why be moral?” As a result, heroes may choose to be good guys, not because they’ve been redeemed, but because they feel it’s the right path. That’s just plain boring.

For example, among superheroes, Captain America is rather vanilla. (All lovers of Cap, please lower your weapons.) He follows the rules and usually shows a stoic personality. His chosen ethical system often resembles deontology, or “the duty ethic” which makes morality all about dispassionately following rules instead of passionately imitating the heart and characteristics of Christ. We may admire Cap’s commitment, but we also enjoy a more tortured “bad boy” hero like Iron Man who fights his inner self in order to save lives.

As parents, do we fight a losing battle to make goodness look cool when it’s not? Will evil always appear more attractive? Of course not. But if we see “following the rules” as our highest good, we will weaken our children’s passion for righteousness. We will also restrain our children’s ability to discern stories in which good heroes sometimes need to break rules.

For instance, Cap shatters his stoic stereotype in the film Captain America: Civil War. He breaks the rules in order to accomplish what he knows is moral.

We also see similar rule-breaking in Scripture. David eats the holy bread reserved for priests (1 Samuel 21) and sacrifices his “broken spirit” instead of a burnt offering (Psalm 51:16–17). Rahab lies to protect the Israelite spies (Joshua 2). Jesus’s disciples pick grain on the Sabbath (Matthew 12). In fact, the Pharisees didn’t understand the virtues, or fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) behind the laws, so Jesus often corrects them.

Virtue is the fulfillment of the law (Matthew 5:17, Galatians 5:23, 1 Corinthians 6:12). Christ does not call us to obey the rules like Pharisees; he calls us to be passionate about virtue. Christ was so devoted to goodness that he flipped tables and drove sinners out of the temple. By his example, stoicism has no place in Christianity.

Will such a standard fail to make goodness more attractive? A villain without moral constraint seems more free, creative, and therefore more enticing to young minds. Yet there is a reason “self-control” (or temperance) is a fruit of the Spirit and a cardinal virtue. When we are no longer slaves to our sin nature, we are free to live the way God intended: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Structures, including moral and creative structures, actually enhance creativity and freedom.

Dr. Seuss is a wonderful example of how structure and limitation helped him produce some of the best children’s books ever written. Author James Clear writes, “[Random House founder Bennett] Cerf proposed the bet and challenged that Dr. Seuss would not be able to write an entertaining children’s book using only 50 different words. . . . The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham. Since publication, Green Eggs and Ham has sold more than 200 million copies, making it the most popular of Seuss’s works and one of the best-selling children’s books in history.”

The purpose of rules is to provide structure that teaches responsible freedom.

Games of cops and robbers, then, can reveal that your child’s heart is drawn to evil instead of goodness. But more likely, your children are simply processing the world around them. Parents who forbid this kind of play may find this rule backfiring.

Instead, model a passionate and active love of goodness for your children. Analyze the imaginative game’s purpose, and guide your child in wisdom and virtue when needed. And be sure to show them heroes that burn with desire for the good of others—heroes that embody the kind of fervor Christ had when he laid down his life for those who didn’t deserve it.