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 Editorials | Opinions | January 2007 
Do Unto Others
 Sam Osborne - PVNN
| | Do Unto Others by Norman Rockwell |
We’ve got disagreements, lots and lots of disagreements: war, wages, immigration, stem cells, abortion, or what have you... These disagreements, mainly on how we wish to be treated and how we would treat others, reflect a difference of opinion as to the nature of man qua man. By what we do, and would have others do, we vote for what we are.
As a child in home, neighborhood, school and church, I was taught that we humans are inclined to be good. And as I would treat others I could expect others to do the same. I was to accept that I was not perfect, but neither was anyone else; we were all sinners that needed to walk as best we could within our own shoes, and reach out and try to help any stumbling others do the same.
That seemed to work well wherever I did roam, and in other places where I heard that it was not working so well, one could find the exceptions that proved the rule. We tended to look for those exceptions within the frailty of our own humanity.
This America - that I have loved, served and benefited from so greatly - has been the place well described by that poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty — the one that suggests that all mankind yearns to breathe free. Along with a lot of other people of my generation, I assumed that our nation’s greatness came from how we would treat others. And since we were brave enough to treat others as we would like to be treated, they would do the same.
When I read or am tempted to unleash a hate-filled comment, I wonder if my thoughts about my land have simply been delusions, or have they been reflections of the faith that the Founding Fathers had and which grew and grew because of what free people will tend to do. And are the exceptions to people’s tendencies to do good to be found only with those that live beyond the borders of our land?
Was Washington foolish at Yorktown when he let a defeated Cornwallis and his troops just freely sail away, or should he have put them to the sword? He could have followed the first shot of liberty heard round the world with another blast that let all of the planet’s lessers know that we were the master race of all mankind and destined by might of arms to remain ever so. It might have made George W. Bush’s task much easier, or maybe the place from which we ruled would have long ago ceased to be.
Of course this idea that the sinful children of God can thrive by doing unto others as they would have done unto themselves can at times seem so foolish, but I have though that it is what has truly made this land of ours the home of the brave and land of the free. In the past there have been empires just as mighty and maybe even more so, but their power and certitude never made them as good and as sweet as has this loving land of ours been for me and mine.
To me it is still worth the old college try to love our enemies by doing unto them as we would have done unto us. And what would we rather lose our lives - or our souls? Is this not what Sacred Honor is all about? |
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