Do unto others.....God is Love

As a child and teenager, I was a big fan of The Beatles. Many of their early songs dealt with love as the boy/girl connection: “She Loves You”, “And I Love Her”, “All My Loving” and on and on. Later, they expanded this type of love theme with questions about whether or not the singer or the object of their affection would continue to love: “Will my love grow? I don’t know, I don’t know”, “Will you still need me when I’m 64?” However, about this time they also began to add a more universal element to the theme of love with songs like, “All You Need is Love.”

“All You Need is Love” was written for the first global satellite TV broadcast, shown around the world in the summer of 1967. At first glance it is a rather fluff piece with Paul even throwing in a retro “She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah” on the fade out chorus and John chewing gum throughout the process. As we look closer, however, we can see that this is exactly the message that needed to be sent out at that time. Race riots filled our streets. The Viet Nam War was in full force.Famine gripped third world countries around the world. As technology began to show us just how small our planet is and how interconnected we all are, the only thing that could bring us together and help us solve the massive problems we faced was love. Technology has skyrocketed since then so that we hold an instantaneous connection to the world in the palm of our hands. Sadly, we haven’t done nearly so well at learning that all we need is love.

Love for ourselves, others, and “mankind” is at the core of The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” Implicit in this is first that we love ourselves in spite of our imperfections and brokenness. We must learn to see ourselves as God sees us, creatures made in God’s own image, worthy of love. The next step is to see those around us in that same way. We may not like them or their actions, but we must be able to see that they too have that “God spark” within and we must treat them as we would want to be treated in their place. Charles Schulz showed how hard this is in his comic strip, “Peanuts”, when Lucy says, “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand!” I’ve used that quote hundreds of times when “people” got on my nerves.

Once we begin to “do unto others” with whom we have a personal connection, we can begin to see groups of people, countries, religions, races, even other political parties as worthy of this same consideration. No matter how bad we think they are, there is something God sees as worthy of love. (I must admit I am not there yet and our current political climate doesn’t make it any easier. Sometimes the best I can do is remember the scene from “Fiddler on the Roof” where the village men ask the rabbi if there is a proper blessing for the Czar. He thinks for a moment and replies, “The Lord bless and keep the Czar…far, far away.”)

In Beginners Sunday School Class as a preschooler, I learned my first Bible verse: “God is Love.” (1 John 4:8). Now that I am old enough for Medicare, I realize more each day that I learned the very essence of theology in those simple words so long ago. GOD IS LOVE. To judge if someone is following God’s Will, ask yourself, “Is the person acting out of love?” If so, then there is a good chance they are following God’s Will. If they are acting out of selfish self-interest and greed without regard to the effect their actions have on others, then I would have to seriously question if God is involved at all no matter how much they may profess to be doing God’s Will.It’s not a bad yardstick to go by.

Do unto others….God is Love…All you need is love…Yeah, yeah, yeah.

From my sister, Mary H. Troutman

March 10, 2020