Welcome to Golden Rule Central! With an eye on the world, this blog is about self-betterment. It will focus on progressive Christians, but I hope that non-Christians who value kindness will read, benefit from and participate too!
Why would a focus on serving others carry with it a need for self-improvement? Because the better we get, the better we can live by life’s most important principle. And each of us can then become powerful agents of change.
“We’re on a journey not to save the world, but to save ourselves. In doing that, we save the world. The influence of a vital person — vitalizes!” —Joseph Campbell
It starts between our ears. The single most important ingredient is attitude. Attitude happens in the brain, and the wonderful news is that we have control over it. It’s really very simple, though not always easy. Our thought patterns, both positive and negative, are primarily established in childhood. From it we carry some negative baggage, and like a lead suitcase, it does nothing but weigh us down.
Here, the wonderful news comes from the science of neurology. The brain has a quality called “neuroplasticity.” Those thought patterns can be reprogrammed. This is what brings such power to the booming industry of “self-help/self-improvement.”
“Thought conditioning can make the mind alert and powerful enough to change the thinking that comes up from the subconscious mind; a creative kind of thinking that leads to success and happiness.” —Norman Vincent Peale
(Rev. Peale’s book, “The Power of Positive Thinking” was first published by Prentice-Hall in 1952 and is an industry classic.)
The key is repetition. It takes deliberate, daily effort. We’re all busy, or at least we all like to think that we’re busy, so daily effort sounds daunting. Fear not; there’s good news here too. Reprogramming our brains only takes a few minutes each day. How to best use those few minutes will be the focus of some future posts.
What is a Progressive Christian?
Well, there’s nothing hard and set. One denomination may tend to be more progressive than another, but there can be considerable differences within denominations, as well as individuals who worship together in the same buildings. So “tendencies” is about as precise as we can get.
The word “progressive” is used in contrast to what are often called traditional Christians. Maybe the clearest way to see the difference is to look at the age-old debate as to whether the Bible was, as agnostic Carl Sagan rather derisively put it, “dictated by God to unerring stenographers”, or inspired by God and written by people.
Progressives come into the latter category, whereas traditionals tend to go with the former. More important are the differences in focus and subsequent actions that arise from these differing viewpoints.
Partly because nothing is set in stone in differentiating progressives from traditionalists, there are places where even those who self-designate as progressive might disagree with me. Some might even say that a more accurate term for me might be “radically progressive”, which you’ll see some of in this post.
The core principles of what we call the Golden Rule can be found in all of the world’s major religions (as well as the nonreligious school of thought known as secular humanism). It’s at the center of what Christ taught us, or tried to teach us. We’ve been getting a lot of it wrong.
If the Universe issued a report card, my guess is that humanity would get a C-. We’re still here, so that alone earns a passing grade, but we’ve screwed up an awful lot. Sometimes Christian love has shown through, sometimes not: from the Crusades to Manifest Destiny of the American West, right down to the modern religious focus on judgment, which has created many judgmental people.
The Golden Rule has historically taken a backseat to tribalism. Tribalism is exclusive by definition; you’re either part of the tribe or you’re not. It is not inherently harmful; celebrating our diversity can be a great thing, but we need to move away from the “us-versus-them” mentality that it has all too often come with tribalism. We have truly become a global village, and we need to think that way; there is no “them.” There’s just us.
The us-versus-them mentality has worked, more or less, until now. Humans have long waged war. While millions have died at the hands of Christian and other religious warriors in the past, we’ve never faced the threat that we do today. Thanks to technology, a war between two small countries now has the potential to wipe us out. And wartime technology is just one of the reasons the universe is screaming its imperative at us to adapt or perish. It’s time for us to grow up, at least a little bit more.
A bigger threat may come from our treatment of the planet. Between climate change and pollution from plastics, humanity is at a crossroads, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Technology has rendered our world much smaller and more vulnerable. In the past we could wage war without endangering our entire species, and we used to be able to pollute with impunity. While we may have limped along before, current circumstances are serving us an ultimatum: Change course or end up back in the Stone Age. Maybe worse.
Some might call me an alarmist. I’ll defer to Paul Ehrlich, author of the controversial 1968 book, “The Population Bomb.” Today he’s in his nineties and still sharp as a tack. In a 2023 interview on 60 Minutes, he answered the accusation by saying that yes, he is alarmed, adding that “all of my colleagues are alarmed too.”
Ehrlich was a professor at Stanford and remains a professor emeritus. When it comes to the health of the planet, he and his colleagues are some of the smartest folks around. He claims that at any time within the next fifty years, the lifestyles we’ve enjoyed in developed countries will come to an abrupt end.
We need to be aware of what’s going on around us, but sometimes it can be depressing as hell. We must not be ostriches with our heads in the sand. It’s best, though, once we have educated ourselves, to focus on the positive; the good news is that we can change course! And we, as progressive Christians, can have a profound impact.
This blog is meant to be a dialogue. For that to work, we’ll need involvement from readers. There’s always the comment section, as well as becoming a member by getting on our email list. We don’t want to be contentious in tone, though differences are most welcome. It’s my hope that spirited, friendly discussions will be the fuel that propels our GRC train forward!
Golden Rule Central will also be on other platforms with slightly different approaches. The one thing that they’ll all have in common is the central importance of the Golden Rule. Links to GRC’s other web presences are on the homepage. I hope you’ll check them out!
What is the Golden Rule?
…Everyone knows that. It’s “treat others the way you want to be treated”, right? Yes. But there’s much more to it. And it’s a value that is not unique to Christianity.
In early sources, the Golden Rule may or may not be taken to mean that the actions of doing unto others need to be done out of love. The Hindu Vedas state it in the negative: Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to yourself.
In the Old Testament book of Proverbs, being kind to one’s enemies is seen more as an act of shaming:
“If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head” (Proverbs 25: 21-22a)
Jesus goes beyond this, making it clear that there are actually two parts to the Golden Rule: the deed and the love behind it. When saying what the law and the prophets hang on, Jesus uses the action taken and the love behind it interchangeably in separate stories. This is significant!
At the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks of the deed:
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Mtt 7:12)
But a person can do good things for their neighbor and then go home hating their guts. Having the act come from the heart by lovingone’s neighbor prevents this:
And the Second is Like it
In a meeting that’s recounted later in Matthew, Jesus was being grilled, and the atmosphere was tense. Jesus saw that the Pharisees were trying to lay a trap for him. In Matthew 22, part of Jesus’ response to a question was, “Why are you trying to trap me?”
When they ask, “What is the greatest commandment of all?” we are given insight into what our focus should be:
“Thou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.“ (Matthew 22:37)
What’s most remarkable is what he says next; when a person is being grilled in an antagonistic way, they generally don’t offer a lot of additional information. That Jesus chose this opportunity to impart this lesson speaks to its importance:
“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:39-40)
That this was no friendly picnic with the Pharisees is made all the more clear by the next passages, where Jesus makes seven statements that start with, “Woe to you.” The first of these shows how Jesus wants people to be inclusive when putting their faith into practice: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.” (Matthew 23:13)
Jesus says “the law and the prophets hang on these” to show their importance, but also because laws are meant to serve people and not the other way around, as so many of Jesus’ contemporaries, as well as ours, would have it. Jesus relies on the authority of the Torah but gives it new emphasis. When Leviticus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, it’s said among other commandments and not given the special significance Christ assigns to it. It is through his teachings that we learn the central importance of this commandment. The Golden Rule is the foundation for all of Jesus’ teachings. It is true Christianity’s paradigm.
(Luke’s later account of the Sermon on the Mount, while missing some of the details found in Matthew, tells it more in the context of loving, even one’s enemies.)
While the Vedas speak of the action in the negative, the love behind it is also made clear. The greeting, “namaste”, comes from the Vedas. It spread throughout much of Asia and can carry different connotations depending on when, where and in what context it is spoken. One of the often-implied meanings is that the concurrent clasping of hands and bow symbolizes that “the divinity in me recognizes the divinity in you.” This acknowledgment conveys the same message as Jesus’ admonition to love our neighbors. The added gestures enhance its beauty.
The values behind the Golden Rule predate even the Vedas. Evidence can be seen in every known culture throughout recorded history (Another subject for future discussions.).
When we peel all of the dogmas away from the array of Christian denominations, we find the Golden Rule at their cores. But that’s the problem; sometimes we have to do a lot of dogma-peeling to find it! It should be front and center. The human brain can only focus on one thing at a time. That’s why focusing rightly is so important. Jesus himself said that everything hangs on the Golden Rule. How much clearer can his words be? To be truly in accord with his teaching we can conclude that the Golden Rule is the only valid Christian dogma. All others are distractions at best. At worst they lead to practices and behaviors that harm.
When we start with the understanding that the Golden Rule is the only valid Christian dogma, everything else falls into place as it should. When we fail to do this, we inevitably stray.
Christianity’s only valid dogma is the Golden Rule.
…OK, there is one more thing that might be considered valid dogma. It is the proclamation of being followers of Jesus. All kinds of groups, religious and secular, need to identify the things that bring them together. So when counting valid Christian dogmas, proclaiming ourselves as Christians might also be thought of as one. But here’s the rub: It’s harmful when it’s exclusive (tribalistic). What’s central is the Golden Rule. Accepting non-Christians who are guided by kindness is paramount. Doing otherwise is itself a transgression.
So you might say there are two valid Christian dogmas, but the second isn’t very dogmatic. In effect, it would be,
“We see Jesus as our teacher, yet we accept as equals those who value the Golden Rule and don’t call themselves Christian.”
Regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof, people need to put the principles of the Golden Rule at the forefront of their lives and values, because…
The very survival of our species may well depend on it.
It’s a pretty radical claim. What do you think of it?
So I’ve made two radical claims to kick things off:
- The Golden Rule is the only valid Christian dogma.
- Our survival may depend on how well we can bring the Golden Rule into our daily lives, into the world.
Of course, we’ll be talking more about this, but first I’m really hoping to get some feedback! Since this is the first post, the blog has zero followers as this goes up, so feedback might take a little while. In the meantime, we’ll be talking about both the logic and the history that supports these claims. To use the train metaphor, we’ve introduced the engine, now to lay down tracks for it to run on.
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