This desire to not offend is the Left’s understanding of the Biblical Golden Rule. The Golden Rule works well for those that know how to use it. Unfortunately, atheists, agnostics, and unbelievers do not know how to use it. The Golden Rule comes from the Scriptures and basically states, “Treat others the way you want to be treated by others1.” The Golden Rule is a good philosophy to live by for all people: believers, unbelievers, atheists, agnostics, all creeds, etc. However, we are only concerned with two specific groups.
Let us define our terms. Believers, in this essay, are those that believe in the God of the Bible that also believe in Jesus Christ as Savior. While there are believers of other supposed deities, we will not include them in our group of believers group in this essay. Unbelievers are those people who do not believe in any deity, including the God of the Bible and His Son, Jesus Christ. This includes non-believers, supposed free-thinkers, humanists, atheists, agnostics, and all anti-Christian groups. This group does not include those previously mentioned believers in other supposed deities.
There are three groups we are discussing. One consists of believers in the God of the Bible; Two is made up of unbelievers in any deity; Three comprises believers in any other god but the God of the Bible. We will exclude group Three from further discussion. That leaves us with groups One and Two to consider.
A problem occurs when we try to perform Golden Rule types of actions in our own wills and outside the will of God. Having stated that, I just offended much of the population. Non-believers of all categories will, of course, take offense at what they believe to be a “bigoted, narrow-minded” statement. However, there are some unbelievers that will not be offended at such a statement. They are the unbelievers in our midst that accept believers as part of our society and take no offense at our belief; these folks are not in view in this essay.
The problem especially occurs where there are diametrically opposed systems. There are two basic systems in play in the West today. They are politically known as the Left, and the Right. Generally, the Right is more conservative and libertarian and the Left is more socialist and libertine. There are some moderates on both sides. The majority of believers in the God of the Bible and His Son Jesus Christ are on the right. Nevertheless, there are of some on the left who believe in the God of the Bible and His Son, but we will not consider them in the remainder of our discussion.
From information readily available from multiple sources, we understand that the vast majority of those on the Left in the West are non-believers who reject believers as abnormal, unintelligent, deceived, uneducated, jingoists, or just plain stupid. A huge proportion of those on the Right are either believers, or unbelievers who accept believers as normal.
Warning!! If you are on the Left in the West, you will be offended by the remainder of this treatise. If you wish to continue and are offended, GET OVER IT!
The Left consists of those that are misguided in their approach to life because they reject God and His standards. I am here to tell you that there is a God and He is real, and He created the universe and everything in it, and He is involved in our lives daily, and He wants us to live by His standards, and the He wishes for all people everywhere to believe in Him, but He will not push anyone into believing in Him nor will He push anyone into living by His standards.
He gives us the freedom to choose or reject Him and His standards. There is a consequence for rejecting Him and His standards and that is spending Eternity, after your death, eternally separated from Him. There is a benefit from accepting Him and His standards by believing in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, as your Savior. That is spending Eternity with Him after your death, eternally in a very pleasant place we know as Heaven. (The redundancy in this paragraph is purposely included).
Now back to the Golden Rule. It can be factually stated that all normal human beings are born with an innate sense of God in our psyche. Abnormal humans are those with some sort of disorder, whether mental, physical, or psychological, that causes them to exhibit aberrant behavior. The remainder of us, by that standard, are normal and that means we are born with that innate sense of God.
For the atheist, this can be explained by the overwhelmingly vast proliferation of religions in the world throughout history. Even the smallest and most remote tribes we have discovered lately all have some sort of religion. Even in communist/socialist countries that officially outlaw any religion there are people with religion. That makes it difficult to deny that we humans have a yearning for a deity or deities in our lives.
Christians do not deny the innate sense of God in our beings, thus we are motivated by our beliefs to do the good works that God wishes us to do. Christians do not do good works in order to attain heaven, for Christians have already attained Heaven by virtue of their belief in their Savior, Jesus Christ. We do good works to please our God and to receive rewards for our good works, and not to be saved.
Religions, other than Christians, do good works in order to attain heaven. For example, in Islam the only way to attain heaven is to do works that please their god, Allah. Many religious factions in the world have a set of dos and don’ts that determine whether they attain Heaven, or Nirvana, or Valhalla, etc. Christians understand that ‘Religion’ is a set of works that must be accomplished in this life to enter heaven, and the good works people do must outweigh the bad works. That is why Christians do not consider themselves a part of a religion. Christians depend on the work that Jesus Christ did when He died for our sins to get to heaven rather than the works we do here in this life.
To fill that innate desire to worship God in our psyche, the Left have resorted to a system called Political Correctness. In that system, the greatest faux pas, or sin, is to offend anyone in a politically correct group. Unfortunately Christians, for example, are not a politically correct group, so it is OK, and even desirable to offend Christians. There are other politically incorrect groups as well; groups that Leftists can freely offend, conservatives being one of those.
In their system of political correctness, where the greatest sin is to offend someone in a PC group, the Left have come up with ways to do the good works their innate sense of deity in their souls requires them to do. Of course they will deny any such innate sense of God; they may not even recognize it; but deny it or not, it is still there. These works taken on by the Left, works that those on the Left consider good works, are usually pie-in-the-sky feel-good works with little substance.
A good example of such a pie-in-the-sky good work is the forests and fires in the state of California. It felt good for the Left to outlaw logging in the forests in their state. After all, according to the Left, logging hurts the environment and destroys the habitat of the forest creatures. So without the correct management of forests, which includes thinning forests by logging, and occasional controlled burning of the undergrowth, their forests have become too dense. Mother Nature (whom the Left supposedly loves) clears out this dense undergrowth with occasional forest fires. Since natural thinning with logging and clearing has been stopped by law, the forest fires in California are fierce. Other states allow logging and perform periodic thinning which prevents huge fires. California, on the other hand does not, therefore their fires are devastating and occur often.
The works of the Left often have unintended consequences because their ideas are based on emotion instead of substance. Another problem is that the Left are intolerant of any ideas outside of those on the Left. For example, many on the right promote gun ownership as a means of self-protection and preventing crime. Leftists are usually adamantly opposed to such things and they wish to ban all citizens from owning guns.
Thus, in several states and cities the Left have been successful in implementing stringent gun control laws. In those areas of rigorous gun control it has been statistically proven that the crime rate increases. In states that allow gun ownership, crime is lower than in areas with strict gun control. Consider Chicago as an example. Gun ownership there is severely restricted, yet their murder rate from gunshot wounds is very high compared to areas with higher legal gun ownership.
Admittedly some of the works the Left prefer are good works that those on the right agree with. Some of them are good Christian works (but don’t tell a Leftist about them). However the more outrageous ones outnumber the reasonable ones.
I have provided a list of many of these activities the Left embraces. I have broken the list down into two parts, the first are some of the Left’s replacements for God. The second is a listing to things the Left considers to be good works that satisfy their innate yearning for deity and that they deem to be inoffensive (although many of them offend those of us on the Right). Some of the items on this list are good works all of us should be happy to do or to support. Most of them are feel good works that lack substance; those are the items folks on the Left esteem. The list is not in a particular order; it is just in the order in which I brainstormed it.
