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In Our View: Let’s Live by Golden Rule

Treating others how we wish to be treated enduring message of Christmas

By The Columbian
Published: December 25, 2016, 6:03am

It seems, at times, to be a futile quest. “Peace on Earth,” we exhort throughout the Christmas season. Frequently. Through songs and greeting cards and personal salutations. And yet it all too often seems that peace is an unattainable, ethereal concept in the modern world.

There are terrorist attacks and cruelty. There are wars and violence. There are countless examples of man’s inhumanity to man, the kind of inhumanity that spotlights the failings and the frailty of the human condition and our precarious existence on this earth. Why, this year, even a presidential election exposed many of our worst traits, from both the candidates and their supporters.

And, yet, there is hope. That is the message of the season. That is the nature of Christmas as the annual celebration that takes place today reminds us of humanity’s more beautiful traits and our belief in a brighter day.

For many, this is founded upon a faith, an unshakable belief, in a higher power that sent Jesus to the world in order to save humanity from itself. But whether or not one is celebrating the birth of Christ today, there is hope to be found in the spirit of the season and in a shared sense of community and hope. As Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan write in “The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach Us About Jesus’ Birth,” Jesus often preached parables that “invited his bearers into a different way of seeing how things are and how we might live.”

That desire to live a better life can and should be universal, transcending religious beliefs and religious barriers. It can and should provide a foundation for embracing the golden rule that dictates we treat others how we wish to be treated, and a foundation for not limiting such a philosophy to one season of the year. As Ebenezer Scrooge proclaims following his epiphany in “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

It seems, these days, as difficult as ever to embrace those lessons we have been taught. The ongoing massacre in Aleppo, Syria, serves as a daily reminder that millions of people around the world have no hope of peace this Christmas, and the fact that Aleppo sits in a mostly Muslim country should not allow the Western world to divert its attention from the atrocities. Nor should we divert our attention from other atrocities throughout the world or religious persecution wherever it exists. As Jesus said, according to John 13:34: “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so also you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”

The power of that message has endured for more than two millennia, providing the true miracle of the Christmas season. It is a miracle that must be embraced as humanity continues to strive for peace in a world often beset by hatred and enmity. The notion of loving one another can act as a warm blanket when the coldness of despair and violence seems impermeable, and it can cross the limits of time and our own shortcomings.

Such is the message of today, one that is extended to the religious and the secular. Merry Christmas to all.

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