When our kids were little, I started listening to a CD with the greatest hits of the British comic operas of Gilbert & Sullivan. These operas were written in the late 1800’s, and they poke fun at all kinds of people in their songs, including one British High Lord of the Admiralty, who got his post as the head of the Navy as a political appointment, but he had never actually been on a boat in his whole life! So in one of their songs they have him singing this lesson to his hearers: “So land men all, whoever you may be, if YOU want to rise to the top of the tree: stick close to your desks and never go to sea — and you all may be rulers of the Queen’s Navy!” I loved the song, and I guess I hadn’t really realized how much I had been listening to it, when one day our sons Paul & David were fighting about something — I can’t remember just what it was; I think David wouldn’t share some video game with Paul or something — so I asked David: “David, don’t you know the Golden Rule?” And he said: “Yeah, you mean: ‘Stick close to your desk and never go to sea, and you all may be rulers of the Queen’s Navy’?” That was the day I knew I had failed as a parent!
So today we are going to be talking about “The Golden Rule” — NOT the Gilbert & Sullivan “Golden Rule”, but the REAL one, that is found here in Matthew 7:12:
“In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Continue reading →
shawnethomas 