I have spent a great deal of time lately thinking about how humans should behave, and about how most human beings, I want to believe, strive to do good or at the very least, do no harm. We acknowledge that we are flawed. After all, perfection would be boring! Throughout history good souls have tried to lay down moral principles by which the rest of us should live. Our own country at its founding endeavored to codify, that is, human rights with a clear understanding that as We The People progressed, we would make the necessary modifications to expand those rights.
Yet it all can be boiled down to this: the Golden Rule distills what human beings ought to be, ought to strive for, in 11 words. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It seems brilliantly simple and probably naive. Georgia Senator and Baptist minister Raphael Warnock says there are versions of this rule in every faith, and that it is key to the small c christian moral code. It means, help others as you would want them to help you in similar circumstances. Do not enslave unless you want to be enslaved. Do not kill unless you want to be killed. Do not impoverish unless you want to be poor. Be kind. It should be self evident. But if it were, we wouldn’t need reminding.
And yet, I know atheists with a better moral code than Mike Johnson and other so-called christians.
Decades ago, Science Fiction writer Damon Knight wrote a novella called The Rule Golden. In it, if you kicked someone, you felt the pain. If you shot someone you died. I don’t know how to remind christians of their own moral code, but reading this book might be a good start, if you can find a copy.
