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He sat on a talk show elaborating on his present idea while hawking a new book. He is respected and popular (which in America has become the same thing).
In relating a story about his own life, he explained that at one time he trusted an employee to be involved in his finances because this woman had mouthed many of his convictions and he later found out that she was embezzling money from his coffers. His conclusion from this personal fiasco was that he had “given her the benefit of the doubt”–that she was who she said she was–and in the process, he learned that this was an outdated concept.
His conclusion was slid in so quickly that if you weren’t listening, you might just nod your head in agreement and end up throwing away some better portions of the Golden Rule. After all, that is what our society wants to do.
Nobody really wants to get rid of God. God makes a profit, even if there aren’t any prophets to truly speak His message.
No one wants to get rid of church. After all, we do need a common site to marry and bury.
What we would like to get rid of is the Golden Rule. We would like to join our Jewish and Arab brothers in the consensus that being nice to one another is only plausible when nicety has previously been received. In other words, NOT “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but rather, “do unto others WHAT they have done to you.”
It’s quite the different concept.
You would think that someone would be intelligent enough to notice that this dynamic of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” has historically proven to be ineffective. But I continually hear verbal jabs against loving your fellow-man, while simultaneously there are massive screams for freedom and liberty.
I believe that the black man and woman in our country received the beginnings of liberation because they followed that Golden Rule. I believe if the gay community pursues a vindictive approach, they will fail to retrieve the liberty and justice they so desperately desire.
The Golden Rule works. It just always temporarily looks like it’s going to fail.
It’s similar to watching a football game and seeing a team dominate through three quarters, only to blow their lead in the fourth quarter and lose the game. You see, it doesn’t really make any difference that they won three-quarters of the game and it certainly doesn’t make any difference that revenge, retribution and retaliation appear to win the day initially–only to be stomped to death in the last quarter–by the Golden Rule.
The nations that are still prospering on this planet are the ones who have given place to that precious assertion. The countries which have tried to stomp it out through bigotry, anger and nationalism have been erased from the face of the earth.
It is not outdated to give people the benefit of the doubt.
I will agree there may be wiser ways to do it than turning over your entire bank account to them, but when you’ve been granted a voice of reason and you use that instrument to promote the notion of frustration and fear instead of unity and the repair of human hearts, then you are not only squandering your opportunity to make a difference, you have become part of the problem.
I’m all for technology. You can twitter your life away–I don’t care. But when you come after the Golden Rule, I have to stop you.
- It is not outdated.
- It is not a cliché.
- It is not “hippie.”
- It is not religious.
- And it is not impossible.
It is the only way we can keep from destroying one another before we really find out what benefit we could be.
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