What Happens to Society when We no Longer Recognize the Need to "Do Unto Others"?

What's going on with people today? I'm Rick Bloodworth. This is the Common Sense Christian Channel. And today I want to look at something that I believe is sadly lacking. in our society and that's just courtesy and decency towards one another. I was talking with a friend the other day. He's got a job where he interacts with an awful lot of people on a daily basis and he was just asking that very question. We've had this conversation before but the the question of what what's going on with people? Why does everybody just seem to be so angry or so quick to anger? Why are people always complaining about things? Just sometimes even the most minor thing will set people off. Well, I suppose there's a lot of different reasons for that. There's certainly stresses in our society that, that happen from time to time. Every era has its own set of unique problems and, and yet there's a lot of things that we have in common with other eras that they have also had to struggle with as well. God knew that we would have struggles on this earth. He knew that this life would be a test. And in fact, he wanted it to be a test, though he didn't want it to be a harsh test, to where we were always at each other's throats. But he permits us to do that if, if we wish to be. And, and that's what I want to talk about today. So I've seen several things recently that have given me some cause for concern. One of them was just somebody complaining online. They, they, they put an anonymous complaint that, that talked about all the different things that didn't satisfy them within their life. That they thought needed to be changed. And boy, within just a few days, there was over a hundred comments on that. People taking different sides about things that suited them and didn't suit them. And, and one of the, the overriding characteristics of these comments was it just seemed that people don't have a filter anymore. Now, while some people certainly did have courtesy and they exercised that cur courtesy, for the most part it was just people. unloading. They were venting towards one another, not really caring who heard, maybe even hoping that, that some people did. There was a time when people seemed to be very concerned about how their actions caused other people to feel. And if their actions hurt somebody, it would, it would hurt them as well. This is part of, of, of having a conscience. And, and one of the reasons it's so important for us to be Christians is because our conscious, consciences need to be trained by Christian principles. Otherwise there really are no fixed standards. I announce ballgames in our small community, have done so for over a quarter of a century now. And one of the things that they always want, like for me to read before a ballgame begins is, is the UIL rules of conduct, for lack of a better description. And it's a good effort. I, I'm not criticizing what they're doing. I don't want you to misunderstand that at all. But, but the UIL or the Texas, I think it's an interscholastic league just had a little reminder for people before football games as far as how they might want to consider conducting themselves. And it's, it's over a page in length and, and it takes a while to read. And as I read it a number of times through the years, it finally dawned on me they could have solved all of those paragraphs and hundreds of words of, of encouragement for people to treat each other well just by saying, do unto others as you'd have them do unto you and love your, love your neighbor as yourself. This was what they were trying to get across, but they were very afraid that they might offend somebody with this religiosity, or whatever it might be considered. And, and so they have this. Well, the beauty of Christian standards is this. When, when you have an unchanging standard, it, it, it takes care of things for you. When Jesus said, do to others as you'd have them do unto you, that's pretty self explanatory, isn't it? You don't need an awful lot of commentary to go with that. People instinctively know what Jesus was talking about, but we have a problem with that today. And again, it seems like if somebody aggravates us, if somebody irritates us, if somebody has a different opinion than us, well, we like to put them in their place. Our courtesy, our kindness seem to be evaporating and with it comes a much harsher and a much meaner world. I've noticed on our newscasts and even on our sports programs, there always seems to be panels of one sort or another. They can't just give the news. They can't just tell the sports and give the scores. They've got to make it entertaining for people. And so, typically What they will do, or at least often what they'll do, is they'll get opposing sides on any issue, and then they'll get people to arguing over their side of the issue. Even in sports, you can't talk about somebody who might have been voted the most valuable player without offending somebody on the other side who thought somebody else might have deserved it. And so instead of praising the person's accomplishments that, that wins the award, we have to attack one another, even for good things. Yes, it was good, but it wasn't as good as this. We, we've lost our courtesy and our kindness to a great degree. And while it may make for great theater and it might help to raise the ratings of different programs, It doesn't end well. When I was growing up, I was raised by a mother and father who insisted on manners. Thank you and please were just something that you were expected to do. Many of the kids I grew up with and many of the ones I see today, when they answered an adult, it had to be with a yes sir or no sir. We like our kids to look adults in the eyes, not in some kind of a haughty way or challenging way, but to let them know I'm listening to you and I'm respecting you. And maybe that's a big part of the problem with our lack of courtesy today is we just don't respect one another anymore. We live in a society that seems to be perpetually offended or at least seems to be looking for offense in everything. I remember a number of years ago hearing a man talk about a situation where he had held the door open for a woman and, and the woman looked at him and said, I hope you're not holding that door for me because you think I'm a lady. And he said, No, ma'am. He said, I'm holding the door open for you. because I'm a gentleman. You see, you, you don't have to have somebody else act in a certain way for you to be decent. It helps, doesn't it? It's a lot more pleasant to be decent towards somebody who's been decent to you or to be courteous towards somebody who's courteous to you. But, but the way we treat people shouldn't be predicated on the way they treat us. It should be absolutely based upon Jesus's command to do to others as you'd have them do to you. We seem to live in a very unforgiving world. You make one little mistake and people just want to pounce. They want to go for the jugular, don't they? In Matthew 6 and verse 14, after talking about how we needed to be praying, and one of the things that we need to pray Jesus said was, was that we ask God to forgive us as we forgive others. And in verse 14 of Matthew 6, he says this, For if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. Think about that for a moment. We seem to have somehow come to the point in religion where the only things that count in the Bible are the things that we concur with or that we agree with. And, and so if, if the Bible says to, to, to love one another and we feel like loving one another that day, we'll do it. But if there are some that don't seem particularly loving, then we won't do it, but we still expect God to forgive us, don't we? We still expect heaven, even if we're not doing what we're supposed to, even though the Bible is very clear. While the invitation of God's grace is open to everyone, there are terms that are associated with it. This is offensive to some people, the idea that they might have something to do in order to accept the terms of grace, but there it is. We just read it. If you do not forgive others, your Heavenly Father will not forgive you. This is immutable. It's unchangeable. Like everything else within scripture, it's a standard that, that will be that which judges us that does not change. So we don't have to worry if it's going to be the same today as tomorrow. That's the problem with human standards. The UIL things that we read at the beginning of football games today won't be acceptable tomorrow because they're going to offend somebody and they're going to have to tweak and adjust it. But doing into others as you'd have them do unto you never has to be tweaked or just a desert. Another one of the things that I've noticed in recent years is how difficult it is for people to hold differing opinions without getting into a big argument. Even when a speaker is invited to speak on a college campus, the, the places where, where used to you could go and exchange ideas freely. And people could consider the different merits of the different sides and then they could make up their mind as to what, what was right and wrong or what had strength and what had weakness. But now, you invite a speaker onto campus and immediately half the students and, and part of the faculty will start Googling the name of the person to find out if they agree with the current college manifesto of accepted ideas and opinions. And if they don't, well, heaven help them, because they're going to be shouted down if they're even allowed to come to the campus in the first place. These places that used to be a bastion, of, of ideas and of, of being able to, to have open and honest debates to where you could present different sides and then people could decide which side was correct because of that. It's not that way anymore. You very rarely will find a major university or college that permits a free exchange of ideas anymore. It's not politically correct, is it? And another thing that's very disturbing right now is how ill manners are accepted. It seems to be popular to be able to disrespect somebody, doesn't it? As a matter of fact, there are even contests where people spend their time disrespecting and insulting people. A lot of the modern day rap is just that, where they, they insult each other back and forth in, in some kind of a contest, some twisted contest to see who can, who can embarrass or humiliate the other person the most. This is not helpful. It's not Christian. It's not courteous. We need to stop disrespecting each other. Even when we disagree with the other side, we can at least have a discussion to where hopefully we can win them over to our side. And if we find out that we're wrong, hopefully they can win us over. But how can we do that? If we're always insulting each other, if we're always mad at each other, if we're always speaking towards each other, like, like we genuinely hate them. Again, we need a return to a standard. Love your neighbor as yourself is a really good standard. Love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength is the most important of the standards that we have. But it seems like in our modern day society, the love of God has grown cold, hasn't it? And, and we see the consequences all throughout society. It's hard to turn on the television or walk out your door without seeing some sort of terrible conflict or some sort of twisted or perverse scene that, that you would have, you would have not seen publicly before. People are doing in broad daylight things that they used to sneak around in the dark doing because they were embarrassed for their behavior. Seems like no one's embarrassed for their behavior anymore. And so what do we have? We have a social media where people get on and insult each other, either anonymously or with their name. We, we get together now in person and people speak to each other as if they hate each other sometimes, as if the other person doesn't have any feelings. And if they do, we could care less about their feelings. We really have lost a love for one another. We've lost courtesy. We've lost the ability to say please and thank you. We've lost the ability to respectfully listen to the other side's opinion before we make up our mind. And then hopefully they will have the same courtesy extended towards us to where they'll listen to us. It doesn't mean we're going to agree on everything. And it doesn't mean that those agreements sometimes cannot be sharp because they will be. Recently in the news we, we, we see the proposal both by the House of Representatives and the Senate, not the entire House or the entire Senate. These things have not been voted upon yet, certainly, but the suggestion that we start including women within the draft, I, this is something I'll never accept. You're not going to draft my daughters or my granddaughters without having some sort of difficulty from me. But until we get to that point, we can discuss the different sides of it. We can, we can discuss the different merits of it. If somebody else's daughter wants to go and take part in combat, that's fine. I believe they're to be respected and honored for their decision. But the idea that we would allow our daughters, our granddaughters to be forcefully removed from their homes. so that they could be placed in combat or even in a support situation where they're supporting something that, that they shouldn't have to. I, I don't know what's happened to us, but we can disagree on this. We can, we can speak with respect and courtesy to one another. That doesn't mean we're going to change each other's mind. And it does not mean that we're not at some point going to come into a conflict that could be pretty serious, but by using respect and courtesy, by praying for one another, we're going to be a lot less likely to ever come to the point where we do have conflict. We're going to be a whole lot more likely to be able to have a reasonable resolution to our disagreements. And so, on, on whatever it is, on whatever topic you may be discussing, courtesy and respect and love for one another is going to go a long way. And, and it may not resolve a hundred percent of the conflicts and disagreements, but, but it's going to resolve a lot of them. But until that point, this world is just getting meaner and meaner. People are getting bolder and bolder. Some people are, are getting to the point where they just snap and they start shooting at people. We've got to come to our senses. We've got to return to God and we've got to return to our standards. We, we need a decency towards one another, a sweetness towards one another, a love towards one another. And I'm convinced we need to start being more courteous to one another. If we'll do that, if we'll truly be forgiving to others, that doesn't mean that we have to go along with their evil, but it does mean that we forgive them for the things they've done against us. Doesn't mean that we don't have to seek justice from time to time. Justice and forgiveness are two different things, aren't they? But when we seek justice, we're not seeking revenge because we hate them and haven't forgiven them. We can be courteous to one another, and we can be loving towards one another, and we can do unto others as we'd have them do unto us. And if we'll do these things, if we'll have this return to kindness and goodness and decency and courtesy and love, we're going to see a different world, aren't we? But if we don't, what kind of a world are we going to end up with? I think this is something to consider, don't you? Well, I appreciate your tuning in today. It's been a while since I've posted a video. I've had some computer issues, but hopefully I'll start having regular videos again. And I appreciate your listening today. And I hope that you'll come back and listen in the future as we talk about things. topics that hopefully will be of interest to you. But until next time, I pray God will richly bless you as you seek to serve Him to the very best of your ability and as you begin to love your neighbor as yourself and treat them with respect and dignity and courtesy. God bless.