Saturday, March 28, 2026; morning: I was perusing the guide on my TV monitor and landed on a program about the tradition of Palm Sunday. As I watched it, I thought about how the three Abrahamic faiths — Judaism, Christianity and Islam, had seasons for atonement with many similarities. Yom Kippur, Lent, and Ramadan, respectively, all have guidelines for their adherents, during these periods of penitence, regarding food abstinence and dietary restrictions, personal reflection and repentance, charity and personal sacrifice, spiritual growth, forgoing indulgences, and the breaking bad habits, things done to become more aligned with the divine.
The context of my viewing that program had a broader scope of evaluation. Prior to watching it, I was thinking about the times throughout history that these three faiths have been in a convergence of conflict. That thought was triggered because I was contemplating the religious overlay of the current conflict in Iran. With Israel, the United States and Iran being the principles at war, the Abrahamic faiths are once again converged in battle.
However, before I went down the rabbit hole of religious juxtapositions, I awakened that morning to a news alert about a United Nations resolution, proposed by Ghana, that had been adopted. The significance of this resolution is that the majority of member nations voted to deem the transatlantic slave trade “the gravest crime against humanity” — in history. The resolution further called for reparations to address the consequences of the slave trade, from its inception to our present reality. How did the three nations representing this Abrahamic triumvirate vote? Israel and the United States opposed the resolution. Iran approved it.
My thought stream continued on. By midday, I had arrived at another point of convergence regarding these faiths, one evidenced in virtually every faith practiced on the planet. Nearly all cultures and religions have within their creeds and principles some version of The Golden Rule, as a guide for moral conduct. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a tenet that is universally translated and promoted. Adjunct to its instruction is this corollary of consequence: You reap what you sow. Given that our “do unto” can have a malevolent or a benevolent intention, our consequences similarly follow in their outcomes.
It could be reasoned, according to this tenet and its corollary, that the America we live in today exists because of our historical relationship with, and application of, The Golden Rule. As a nation founded by colonial appropriation and genocidal invasion; constructed by the free labor of the transatlantic slave trade; and systemized by the racial and gender caste that has made White male rule the dictate of the land, we can’t be surprised by the racial divisiveness that has become our disposition; the endemic cruelty that eviscerates our compassion; the larcenous villainy that robs our virtues; and the jingoistic antipathy that scores our anthem. Moreover, as we examine our current instigation of and participation in many global conflicts, through the lens of our past conduct, we can also access how golden we have been and are behaving from our reapings — past, present and yet to come.
Back to the seasons of atonement. It remains one of the most frustrating, enraging, confounding, and problematic dilemmas of human existence that people all across the United States and all over the world have imbedded in their personal, professional, social, political, cultural, and religious codes The Golden Rule — and how so few amongst us actually live it as the guiding principle for all of our interactions. There is a profound mystery this dilemma that has been as elusive to resolve as it has been condemning to human endeavors. That a solution hasn’t been universally realized, let alone nationally rectified, explains why there has never been an era in human history when this golden virtue has been the prevailing conduct of all people.
While we profess to understand the moral simplicity and clarity of The Golden Rule, we are severely obtuse regarding its application and actualization. I had this clearly explained to me when I was fifteen, by my mother’s first cousin, Jimmy Rivers, a man whom I regard the father of my thinking. When I was that age, he explained to me why most people don’t live by The Golden Rule. I hope that by sharing this, the solution will be understood, cooperative, and shared.
Rivers first explained to me that The Golden Rule exists with a specific duality. First, there is a biblical Golden rule, which I have previously stated. Second, there is the social Golden Rule: whoever has the gold, makes the rules. What is more prevalent in the conduct and communities of most people is the second meaning, not the first.
From this distinction Rivers stated to me that the biblical understanding of this rule gives us a “deed” focus. The “do” aspect of it relates to conduct. That is to say that if we do good deeds, we will reap good treatment in reciprocal behavior. Similarly, if we do bad deeds, we will reap bad treatment in reciprocal behavior. Simple, logical, straightforward. Our concept of reaping, an agriculture term, leads us to the analogy that what we cultivate from our behavior will be directly recognizable, as a yield sown by our deeds. When we plant seeds for corn, apples, potatoes, and cotton, we expect to yield the identifiable fruits, vegetables and plants from those seeds. Likewise, if we sow the seeds of feeding the hungry, sheltering the unhoused, and caring for the sick, we expect that we will be fed, sheltered and cared for when we are hungry, in need of shelter, and sick. This reciprocation of behavior, deeds done and deeds received, is where we error in our reasoning, as was explained to me by Rivers.
He said that The Golden Rule is not deed-focused tenet. Instead, it is an “impact” focused principle. That is to say that the outcome, scope, and magnitude of what we do is what we reap, not the deed. Let me explain. Let’s say that I follow a man, attack him, and rob him of the $500 in his wallet. If that malevolent deed isn’t visited upon me by fate in the future (a theft or robbery of similar value), I can easily believe that I have gotten away with the crime. If so, I might be inclined to commit the crime again. But what if the $500 I robbed that man of was the money he was taking to his landlord as rent due, to keep his family in their apartment. Now without it, the man and is family are evicted and made homeless. The ensuing hardship leads to the displacement, separation, and dissolution of his family as his wife leaves him, his daughter becomes the predator prize for a sexually exploitive and abusive pimp, and his son finds family with a street gang. The $500 stolen from the man could be made up from another week of work. However, the impact of the robbery — the eviction, the family separation, the divorce, the victimization of his daughter, and the corruption of his son constitute the “unto”, which will one day come due to me. Moreover, for how long those consequences unfold will be the duration that I suffer them. Impact, not deed.
Understanding this, we can begin to understand why hypocrisy more than virtue governs our interactions and our nations. Because the United States has never suffered a nuclear attack doesn’t mean that the impact of that attack hasn’t been and continues to be realized has as our ongoing reaping. This likewise applies to the nations involved in the transatlantic slave trade, and more specifically to the United States and its history of White American domination, slavery, Jim Crow apartheid and systemic racism. Because White Americans have not suffered exactly in kind what has been perpetrated by their conduct, they don’t believe the crops of their conduct have been reaped. One needs only to look around, honestly and comprehensively, at the nation now and the nation since its inception, to realize how we have collectively failed to understand the impact of The Golden Rule has many times been proven. Consequently, we remain tarnished.
Until reparations become a reality, to redress the malevolent conduct throughout global history, and more specifically, the history of the United States, we will collective watch out societies rust to ruin. The impact we need to foster comes from the understanding the “reparations” means “repair the nation” — domestically and globally.