Everyday Implications Of The Golden Rule

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you:
do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."
(Matthew 7:12)

Child With A Dove

(1901)

Pablo Picasso

(1881-1973)

Spanish painter

 Some small boys went into my neighbor's yard this spring and with
sling-shots killed the wild birds that were nesting there. Only the other day
I read in my daily paper of several murders committed by a nineteen year old boy.

At once there was formed a connection in my mind between the two crimes,
for both were crimes of the same kind, though perhaps in differing degree-
the breaking of laws and the taking of life cruelly.

For the cruel child to become a hard-hearted boy and then a brutal man
is only stepping along the road on which he has started. A child allowed to
disobey without punishment is not likely to have much respect for the law
as he grows older.  Not that every child who kills birds becomes a murderer
nor that everyone who is not taught to obey goes to prison.

The Bible says, if we "train up a child in the way he should go: and when
he is old, he will not depart from it." The opposite is also true, and if a child
is started in the way he should not go, he will go at least some way along that
road as he grows older. It will always be more difficult for him to travel
the right way even though he finds it.

The first laws with which children come in contact are the commands 
of their parents.  Few fathers and mothers are wise in giving these, for
we are all so busy and thoughtless.  But I am sure we will all agree that
these laws of ours should be as wise and as few as possible, and once
given, children should be made to obey or be shown that to disobey
brings punishment.  Thus they will learn the lesson every good citizen
and every good man and woman learns sooner or later-
that breaking a law brings suffering.

If we break a law of nature, we are punished physically; when we
disobey God's law we suffer spiritually, mentally, and usually in our
bodies also.  Man's laws, founded on the Ten Commandments, are
really mankind's poor attempt at interpreting the laws of God, and
for disobeying them there is a penalty.

The commands we give our children should be our translation of
these laws of God and man, founded on justice, and the law of love,
which is the Golden Rule. And these things enter into small deeds.

Even insisted that children pick up and put away their playthings
is teaching them order; the law of the universe and helpfulness,
 the expression of love. The responsibility for starting children
in the right way is the parents'-it cannot be delegated to the schools
or the state, for the little feet start on life's journey from the home.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

(circa 1916)

Photograph courtesy/American Masters/PBS

"Everyday Implications Of The Golden Rule"
(May 1922)
Laura Ingalls Wilder
(1867-1957)
American writer
Taken from the book:
"Little House In The Ozarks
A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler
The Rediscovered Writings"
Edited by Stephen W. Hines
Guideposts Edition
(1991)

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