Some letter writers to the Duluth News Tribune have recently been calling for God in our lives to solve many of our problems. Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisitor, believed in God, and he had thousands murdered because they didn’t believe as he did. The Puritans believed in God, and they had dozens murdered because the innocent victims would not admit to being witches. Plantation owners believed in God, and they kept slaves who they would whip for whatever cause.
The problem with a belief in God is that too many “believers” are very selective in what they believe. Too many ignore a central tenet of monotheistic and other religions.
“Do not unto your neighbor what you would not have him do unto you; this is the whole Law; the rest is commentary.” – Hillel, a Jewish teacher in the first century, B.C.E.
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” – Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 7:12
“...and you should forgive and overlook: Do you not like God to forgive you? And Allah is The Merciful Forgiving.” _ Qur’an (Surah 24, “The Light”, v. 22)
"What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others." – Confucius
“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him." – Plato’s Socrates (Crito, 49c)
You can find many more variations and sources of the “Golden Rule” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule.
What these religious and ethical variations call for is for us to be part of communities. These communities are at neighborhood, city, national, and world levels. They are as informal as holding a door for a stranger at a public building or as formal as churches and civic associations.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t act as if we are in some of these communities. We walk out of our houses to our car on the street or in the garage and drive somewhere else without even seeing a neighbor. We don’t bother to shovel our sidewalks because we don’t use them, completely ignoring all the footprints in the snow. As we drive we are focused on thoughts elsewhere, whether in our heads, on our radios, or even on our cell phones. We drive over crosswalks without even looking for pedestrians. We drive through red lights ignoring any traffic or pedestrians waiting at the cross streets. We race through parking garages without headlights and without watching for vehicles backing out.
Our first try at building communities should be to consider doing unto others what we appreciate others doing unto us. Do we want to walk on clear sidewalks? Do we want other drivers to be attentive to vehicles around them? Do we want drivers to be attentive to us as we cross a street? Do we want other drivers to wait for us to back out of a blind spot?
If we start with these small changes, maybe we can look at how we treat others in a larger context. Do we talk about public employees as “they” or do we consider them our neighbors. Did “they” make a patch on our street, or did a city crew make the patch? Did “they” plow our street, or did an overworked city plow driver make our street more drivable?
Remember that the Good Samaritan of the Book of Luke was an “other”. To build communities, we need to be open to including the “other” as our neighbors.
