What if there was one single rule that could avoid all conflicts between neighbors? A rule once applied would make your neighborhood, community, or workplace a better place all around. A rule that would:

• Create harmony between people.
• Spread kindness and compassion.
• Terminate racism.
• Eliminate all crimes.
• Eliminate abuse and injustice.
• Reduce the need of government and keep government very small.
• Eliminate vengeance and retaliation.
• Eliminate a lot of hurting in our neighborhoods, communities and the world.

Well there is, and it has been in existence for about two thousand years! The rule is: “Just as you want people to treat you, treat them in the same way.”  It is commonly known as the Golden Rule.

What does it mean? Treat your neighbor the way you would like them to treat you. Say “hello neighbor“; pick up your dog’s poop from your neighbor’s lawn; keep the noise level down when your neighbor is home; don’t dump trash on your neighbor’s property; connect with neighbors and share resources; don’t speed down the street where children are playing; care for a neighbor when she’s sick; return the stuff you borrowed from neighbors and the list goes on. When you treat your neighbor the way you’d like to be treated, they will treat you the same. And if they don’t treat you the same, still treat them the way you’d like to be treated. They may change and do as you do just because they might think you like them and start liking you back.  So to have good neighbors, you first have to be a good neighbor, persistently.

Simple enough it seems, yet why is it so difficult to put to practice? Generations have past since first taught, neighborhoods continue to decline, fraud continues to increase, war between nations is on the rise, relationally we are getting poorer each day, laws are needed to keep us in check, professions like lawyer and mediators are striving, prisons are overflowing and on and on.