Category Archives: Golden Rule

Deep inside anyone whos capable of thinking for themself beats the heart of an anarchist. Robb Johnson, arguably the greatest political songwriter working today, wrote a line that goes Each child born, is born an anarchist. Quite so.

Anarchism is one of the many words thats routinely misused and abused by the mainstream media. If asked what an anarchist is, most people would reflect this misinformation by replying with words suggesting some sort of violent terrorist. This is the image thats been carefully crafted, polished and maintained by the media. Even highly educated people, who really should know better, routinely misuse the word anarchy to mean chaos and disorder. It is, of course, nothing of the kind. Derived from the Greek word anarkhos, meaning without chiefs, anarchism could reasonably be defined as meaning a society without leaders. It does not deny the need for society, it denies the need for leaders.

The hard proof of this can be easily found by anyone who can read. Its there in black and white in the actual words written by real anarchists people like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman and Chomsky. And although he wasnt known as an anarchist, possibly because he was active before the word was in common use, the writing of Tom Paine resonates with anarchist values on almost every page. Some people even claim that Jesus Christ was an anarchist because of his allegedly pacifist teaching, but given that no one really knows what he actually taught, thats impossible to confirm. However, most words written by known anarchists express values that are the diametric opposite of the interpretation routinely used by the media.

No doubt every real anarchist has their own personalised concept of anarchism. Most of my clothing is black or black and red the widely-used colours of anarchism and much of it has a circled A, anarchisms unofficial logo: my work-clothes, I call them. I do this not to show-off that Im an anarchist, but to promote anarchism, to encourage others to wonder what the A means. When they ask me, which sometimes happens, I like to have a quick and easy explanation of anarchism to hand because few people want to know about the writing of Kropotkin, for example, in reply to a casual half-interested question. So I have a quick one-sentence line patiently waiting in the wings: No gods, no masters, live the Golden Rule. Like all slogans, its far from perfect, but I think it captures enough of the important essence of anarchism to be pretty useful.

The no gods component carries enormous significance in those two little words. They burst with confrontational iconoclasm. There have been many times in our history when uttering those words could have been a death sentence. In parts of the world today, they still could be. The notion that we should have a society where all religion has been consigned to the scrapbook of history (along with all the other dead myths and superstitions that once ruled over different people but which are now rightly known to be complete nonsense) is still a powerful, radical concept. Religion is still a dominant force in most parts of the world, and is still used as it always has been as a highly effective controlling mechanism, supplying supposedly divine approval for the criminal actions of secular rulers. Shattering the right of priests to exert this power, as the words no gods do, is an important component of anarchism. It demands liberation from control by any and all religion and dares any priest to prove it wrong if they can.

Religions are most actively practised, and widely believed, in the poorest communities. Theres a good reason for this. The people who are the most oppressed and the most likely to rebel against their oppression need to be convinced that their suffering is part of some divine plan: the more they suffer, the greater their rewards in heaven will be. As the great Joe Hill song goes, Youll get pie in the sky when you die. Often this is the easiest and most comfortable option for oppressed people, permitting them to meekly accept, instead of openly resist. Priests are, of course, the people most responsible for this particularly powerful and effective brainwashing, and with very few exceptions priests have always allowed themselves to be exploited by the super-rich and powerful to continually maintain the lie.

Confronting the lie, as most anarchists do, making people begin to ask important questions about their cherished religious beliefs, is deeply subversive. It makes people realise that the desperate lives theyre living is all there is for them; that those lives are not pre-ordained by some old guy living in the clouds who nobodys ever seen. Theyre pre-ordained by human beings who are no different to them except in their ability to wield awesome power. Confronting the lie sews the essential seeds of rebellion the vital sense of injustice, the powerful motivating force to rise up and make things right. During the Spanish Civil War, priests, allies of Francos fascism, were rightly targeted by anarchists for the essential role they played in keeping the people oppressed. I dont suggest that priests should be murdered as they were in Spain but their ideologies must be continually confronted.

No masters is arguably even more confrontational and challenging. Most societies have always been ruled by masters. Few of these people have been selected by the free choice of those they control. Historically, the masters were often warlords who attained their status through bloodshed and terror, ruthlessly crushing all opposition. The hierarchical structures of lesser masters they established below them, to rule in their name, are reflected today in almost every institution and organisation in most parts of the world hierarchies of junior masters overseen by some supreme master. Suggesting that all these people are unnecessary, should not exist at all as the words no masters clearly does suggest is obviously the same as suggesting that our whole model of society is fundamentally flawed, and the very glue that keeps the model together should be scrapped.

The last part of the slogan, live the Golden Rule, is vital. The first two parts are negative, iconoclastic and destructive, calling for the complete breakdown of everything we recognise as normal society. Live the Golden Rule is positive, constructive, and proposes how a new society should be fashioned. That one sentence is more than sufficient to replace any religion, and also suggests a basis for remodelling the hierarchical structures no one really needs.

The Golden Rule is a simple basic philosophy thats so old it appears in one form or another in almost every ancient civilisation. Repeated in the work of Kropotkin, for example, who wrote: Treat others as you would like them to treat you in similar circumstances, the Golden Rule is arguably the most positive contribution anarchism makes to society. It doesnt promise the perfect society, but its quite easy to see that if everyone lived by the maxim, the world would be an infinitely happier place than it is today. Anarchism rightly confronts and opposes just about every core principle and feature of modern society an obviously destructive position; and with its support for the Golden Rule it proposes a simple solution for replacing our existing cruel and oppressive system.

Many anarchists embrace the Golden Rule so closely that they live vegan lifestyles, in recognition of the fact that animals too should be included in interpreting the rule. Voluntarily bound by the Golden Rule, as most anarchists are, its very clear to see that far from being dangerous terrorists, as the media routinely portray them, real anarchists are peace-loving humanitarians who disdain violence against all living things. They may destroy property, when they think its necessary, but they usually go to great lengths to avoid harming any living creature.

Our societies are not plagued by war, hunger, misery and oppression because we the 99% like to live that way. e have those things because our leaders, the 1%, deliberately choose to inflict them on us. Anarchism rightly identifies two of the biggest problems society has, and which must be overcome a deep existential belief in gods and masters; and it offers the simplest almost perfect solution upon which society could and should remodel itself: the Golden Rule.

John Andrews is a writer and political activist based in England. Check out John's books: Fiction: The Road to Emily Bay; Non Fiction: The School of Kindness; The Peoples Constitution. Read other articles by John.

This article was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2017 at 10:02pm and is filed under Anarchism, Religion.

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No Gods, No Masters: Live the Golden Rule - Dissident Voice

Much has taken place over the last few days in our country. For those following the news we have seen demonstrations, court actions and other activists kind of activities in the light of the executive order signed by the president which affected refugees and other non-citizens, legal and illegal entering and leaving the country.

Some people have applauded the actions of the president. Most according to the polls have disagreed with the president; if not in the substance or purpose of the order, at least in the way it was carried out and the breadth of the order.

People on both sides of the aisle have reacted to the situation, with some being extremely diplomatic to the point where they actually said nothing in their statement. But politicians learn over time, if they dont already know how at first, to use the maximum number of words to say very little and sometimes to say nothing at all.

Two of our representatives joined with others to make joint statements concerning the issue of the executive order which caused such a furor and set the country in some degree of turmoil. One was very clear where he and his colleague stood. The other was so diplomatic he and his colleague said nothing really. But, others have gone to the other extreme too.

We can disagree with someone, even the president, and disagree very strongly without demonizing him. This did not take me by surprise however, because the country had practice and exposure during the last administration when the former president was called all kinds of names and made the butt of all kinds of derogatory jokes based on color and because of ideological differences.

Sometimes the chickens come home to roost. However, I cannot join the chorus that would paint our present president as the devil incarnate or anything close to that. And it has nothing to do with liking him or disliking him.

I believe in principle, not personality. My principle says that although I believe the executive order went too far, or was implemented very poorly, and as a result caused untold hardship on many lives, it is not sufficient justification to dehumanize the president.

We have more effective ways, and lawful ways, which many have pursued to address issues when we disagree with our president or government. Many used that door, and as a result, at the time of writing this article a judge had issued a nation-wide stay on the presidents order.

I trust the people collectively more than I trust the leaders collectively. And I believe the same people who voted for our leaders are the same people who will not hesitate to remove those same leaders if they cross certain boundaries.

I believe in the collective voice of the people. That doesnt mean I believe they are always right. I also believe in the individual and collective actions of the people. I believe we can make a difference even when our leaders are on the wrong track. And that is the direction this column wants to take; that we the people do the right thing, and on an individual basis reach out to others to help bring about unity, reconciliation, peace and goodwill in our communities, churches, workplace and where ever else we engage each other.

I want to appeal to us, the people to do what we know in our hearts is the right thing, and the right way to deal with others.

The golden rule has been a standard that many Christians and non-Christians have used. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, it says. In other words, we treat others the way we would like them to treat us, if we were in their position, and they were in our position.

Let us help to heal some wounds, bandage some hurts, show love where hatred has dominated, caring where there is none and sow peace where there is war and discord. Lets not just talk about love, let's show love.

Lets show that we are a welcoming, receptive people and not the kind of people many are making us to be across the world. And lets start in our neck of the woods, next door, and the places where we engage people every day.

Valentine Williams is a pastor and a former adjunct instructor at Trident Technical College. Contact him at valmyval@yahoo.com.

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Let the Golden Rule be our response locally and globally - Berkeley Independent

In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7, Jesus outlines what it takes to experience the Kingdom ofGod.

We all know certain parts of those chapters and I want to concentrate on one verse, chapter7 verse 12, which we know so well as the Golden Rule. Do onto others as you would have them do untoyou. I like to add "if you were in their shoes."

We live in a world that looks for something to divide us or to be angry about. Jesus wanted us to learn to love one another by treating each other with respect and I believe that starts by assuming that others donot want to harm us. It starts with putting ourselves in another place and treating them as we wouldwant to be treated if we were in their shoes.

How would you treat someone in handcuffs if you saw yourself in them? If you were addicted to a drughow would you want others to treat you? When you win or lose a competition, how would you want tobe treated if you were on the other side?

In todays environment of conflict and division there is a longing in our souls to return to the Kingdom ofGod and the peace that comes with it. That can only happen if we dig deep into the Bible and allowourselves to be shaped by what it teaches us. Wouldnt the Golden Rule be a great place to start?

There is only one way for us for us to improve our culture and that is for some of us to break the cycle ofblame and anger and look for ways we can work together to fulfill the Golden Rule. We could be thestart of a change that impacts our community and the world. Will you begin to treat others as you wouldwant to be treated if you were in their place? We can make a difference!

Reflections is a column by religious leaders in the region. The Rev. Jeff Bobin is pastor of Bethany United Methodist Church, 140 Wadsworth Ave., Meadville; Littles Corners United Methodist Church, Routes 98 & 198, Saegertown; and Hamlin Chapel United Methodist Church, 16460 Route 198, Saegertown.

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Rev. Jeff Bobin: The Golden Rule - GoErie.com

Theres a lot of talk these days about building walls.

One of the most powerful politicians on the planet is obsessed with building a wall to keep out undesirables. The promise to do so was popular enough to help get him elected. And now two countries that once prided themselves on friendly relations are divided by the spectre of that great wall.

The wall, the idea of the wall and what the wall represents are deeply problematic. The wall is symbolic of grave differences of opinion between the two countries. The country that wants to build the wall wants to keep residents of the other country out. The theory is that they arent trustworthy, not good enough to mix with the residents of the suddenly isolationist nation. Help us build the wall or well slap tariffs on your exported goods to our country. What a needless, avoidable quandary.

But that is exactly what happens when individualism, misplaced superiority and intentional detachment is allowed to trump solidarity. Its not the way Pope Francis sees the world and its not an acceptable Christian view.

Is there anyone among you who would hand his son a stone when he asked for bread? Jesus asks in Matthews Gospel. Or would hand him a snake when he asked for a fish? If you, then, evil as you are, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will your Father in Heaven give good things to those who ask Him.

So always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the law and the prophets.

The Golden Rule message delivered by Pope Francis to North Americans and all others is straightforward. If we have sympathy and concern for ourselves, we should exhibit the same for others. If we want opportunities for ourselves, we must strive to do the same for others. When we go out of our way to maintain our own safety, we should go out of our way to keep others safe. Whatever we would do for ourselves, we ought to be comfortable doing for others.

The worries and problems of others have to be our worries and problems. If people are living in abject poverty in our countries, we cannot stand idly by. If civil wars and other conflicts leave people orphaned or in refugee situations, those living in better circumstances are obligated to lend a hand.

Pope Francis points out that it is not good enough to sustain your own family. Its equally important to look after others. It is not appropriate or Christian to build a wall around our own needs, wants and desires while shutting out the needs of others.

Thats a concept that seems to be lost on those now tasked with running the country to our south. They say their country doesnt have room for refugees displaced from war-torn Syria and would rather build a wall around their own interests. They say there are far too many unsavoury characters stealing across the border. A high wall is needed to protect their selfish interests.

They say they contribute an inordinate amount of financial resources to a 28-nation international military alliance and that others better up the ante or face the prospect of losing an influential and powerful member country. The concept of using what you have to help others seems to have been abandoned.

They say that multilateral trade deals that were negotiated to benefit all countries involved are weighted against them. They want to change the playing field, build a wall around their manufactured goods to protect against the free flow of other nations products coming into their market.

Its wrong to say that someone elses problems are theirs alone. Its wrong to say that those less fortunate than us are the authors of their own misfortune. And its wrong to say their misfortune is none of my business. Walls of selfishness do not cut it for Pope Francis and they didnt cut it for Jesus.

The message for individuals and for nations is simple. Treat others as you would have them treat you. No man and no country is an island.

Looking past the barriers that separate us from others will always trump building protective walls around ourselves.

(Campbell is a writer in Halifax, N.S.)

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Opinion: No room for walls in Gospel's Golden Rule - The Catholic Register

Matriarchy is a social system in which females hold primary power, predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property at the specific exclusion of men, at least to a large degree. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to the disciplines of anthropology and feminism differ in some respects.

Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal, but some authors believe exceptions may exist or may have. Matriarchies may also be confused with matrilineal, matrilocal, and matrifocal societies. A few people consider any non-patriarchal system to be matriarchal, thus including genderally equalitarian systems (Peggy Reeves Sanday favors redefining and reintroducing the word matriarchy, especially in reference to contemporary matrilineal societies such as the Minangkabau[1]), but most academics exclude them from matriarchies strictly defined.

In 19th century Western scholarship, the hypothesis of matriarchy representing an early, mainly prehistoric, stage of human development gained popularity. Possibilities of so-called primitive societies were cited and the hypothesis survived into the 20th century, including in the context of second-wave feminism. This hypothesis was criticized by some authors such as Cynthia Eller in The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory and remains as a largely unsolved question to this day. Some older myths describe matriarchies. Several modern feminists have advocated for matriarchy now or in the future and it has appeared in feminist literature. In several theologies, matriarchy has been portrayed as negative.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), matriarchy is a "form of social organization in which the mother or oldest female is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the female line; government or rule by a woman or women."[2] A popular definition, according to James Peoples and Garrick Bailey, is "female dominance".[3] Within the academic discipline of cultural anthropology, according to the OED, matriarchy is a "culture or community in which such a system prevails"[2] or a "family, society, organization, etc., dominated by a woman or women."[2] In general anthropology, according to William A. Haviland, matriarchy is "rule by women".[4] A matriarchy is a society in which females, especially mothers, have the central roles of political leadership, moral authority, and control of property, but does not include a society that occasionally is led by a female for nonmatriarchal reasons or an occupation in which females generally predominate without reference to matriarchy, such as prostitution or women's auxiliaries of organizations run by men.[citation needed] According to Lawrence A. Kuzner in 1997, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown argued in 1924 that the definitions of matriarchy and patriarchy had "logical and empirical failings.... [and] were too vague to be scientifically useful".[5]

Most academics exclude egalitarian nonpatriarchal systems from matriarchies more strictly defined. According to Heide Gttner-Abendroth, a reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies might be based on a specific culturally biased notion of how to define matriarchy: because in a patriarchy men rule over women, a matriarchy has frequently been conceptualized as women ruling over men,[6] while she believed that matriarchies are egalitarian.[6][7]

The word matriarchy, for a society politically led by females, especially mothers, who also control property, is often interpreted to mean the genderal opposite of patriarchy, but it is not an opposite (linguistically, it is not a parallel term).[8][9][10] According to Peoples and Bailey, the view of anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday is that matriarchies are not a mirror form of patriarchies but rather that a matriarchy "emphasizes maternal meanings where 'maternal symbols are linked to social practices influencing the lives of both sexes and where women play a central role in these practices'".[11] Journalist Margot Adler wrote, "literally,... ["matriarchy"] means government by mothers, or more broadly, government and power in the hands of women."[12]Barbara Love and Elizabeth Shanklin wrote, "by 'matriarchy,' we mean a non-alienated society: a society in which women, those who produce the next generation, define motherhood, determine the conditions of motherhood, and determine the environment in which the next generation is reared."[13] According to Cynthia Eller, "'matriarchy' can be thought of... as a shorthand description for any society in which women's power is equal or superior to men's and in which the culture centers around values and life events described as 'feminine.'"[14] Eller wrote that the idea of matriarchy mainly rests on two pillars, romanticism and modern social criticism.[15] The notion of matriarchy was meant to describe something like a utopia placed in the past in order to legitimate contemporary social criticism.[citation needed] With respect to a prehistoric matriarchal Golden Age, according to Barbara Epstein, "matriarchy... means a social system organized around matriliny and goddess worship in which women have positions of power."[16] According to Adler, in the Marxist tradition, it usually refers to a pre-class society "where women and men share equally in production and power."[17]

According to Adler, "a number of feminists note that few definitions of the word [matriarchy], despite its literal meaning, include any concept of power, and they suggest that centuries of oppression have made it impossible for women to conceive of themselves with such power."[17]

Matriarchy has often been presented as negative, in contrast to patriarchy as natural and inevitable for society, thus that matriarchy is hopeless. Love and Shanklin wrote:

When we hear the word "matriarchy", we are conditioned to a number of responses: that matriarchy refers to the past and that matriarchies have never existed; that matriarchy is a hopeless fantasy of female domination, of mothers dominating children, of women being cruel to men. Conditioning us negatively to matriarchy is, of course, in the interests of patriarchs. We are made to feel that patriarchy is natural; we are less likely to question it, and less likely to direct our energies to ending it.[18]

The Matriarchal Studies school led by Gttner-Abendroth calls for an even more inclusive redefinition of the term: Gttner-Abendroth defines Modern Matriarchal Studies as the "investigation and presentation of non-patriarchal societies", effectively defining matriarchy as non-patriarchy.[19] She has also defined matriarchy as characterized by the sharing of power equally between the two genders.[20] According to Diane LeBow, "matriarchal societies are often described as... egalitarian...",[21] although anthropologist Ruby Rohrlich has written of "the centrality of women in an egalitarian society."[22][a]

Matriarchy is also the public formation in which the woman occupies the ruling position in a family.[2] For this usage, some scholars now prefer the term matrifocal to matriarchal.[citation needed] Some, including Daniel Moynihan, claimed that there is a matriarchy among Black families in the United States,[23][b] because a quarter of them were headed by single women;[24] thus, families composing a substantial minority of a substantial minority could be enough for the latter to constitute a matriarchy within a larger non-matriarchal society.

Etymologically, it is from Latin mter (genitive mtris), "mother" and Greek arkhein, "to rule".[25] The notion of matriarchy was defined by Joseph-Franois Lafitau (16811746), who first named it gincocratie.[26] According to the OED, the earliest known attestation of the word matriarchy is in 1885.[2] By contrast, gyncocracy, meaning 'rule of women', has been in use since the 17th century, building on the Greek word found in Aristotle and Plutarch.[27][28]

Terms with similar etymology are also used in various social sciences and humanities to describe matriarchal or matriological aspects of social, cultural and political processes. Adjective matriological is derived from the noun matriology that comes from Latin word mter (mother) and Greek word (logos, teaching about). The term matriology was used in theology and history of religion as a designation for the study of particular motherly aspects of various female deities. The term was subsequently borrowed by other social sciences and humanities and its meaning was widened in order to describe and define particular female-dominated and female-centered aspects of cultural and social life. The male alternative for matriology is patriology.[citation needed]

In their works, Johann Jakob Bachofen and Lewis Morgan used such terms and expressions as mother-right, female rule, gyneocracy, and female authority. All these terms meant the same: the rule by females (mother or wife).[citation needed] Although Bachofen and Lewis Morgan confined the "mother right" inside households, it was the basis of female influence upon the whole society.[citation needed] The authors of the classics did not think that gyneocracy meant 'female government' in politics.[citation needed] They were aware of the fact that the sexual structure of government had no relation to domestic rule and to roles of both sexes.[citation needed]

A matriarchy is also sometimes called a gynarchy, a gynocracy, a gynecocracy, or a gynocentric society, although these terms do not definitionally emphasize motherhood. Cultural anthropologist Jules de Leeuwe argued that some societies were "mainly gynecocratic"[29] (others being "mainly androcratic").[29][c]

Gynecocracy, gynaecocracy, gynocracy, gyneocracy, and gynarchy generally mean 'government by women over women and men'.[30][31][32][33] All of these words are synonyms in their most important definitions. While these words all share that principal meaning, they differ a little in their additional meanings, so that gynecocracy also means 'women's social supremacy',[34]gynaecocracy also means 'government by one woman', 'female dominance', and, derogatorily, 'petticoat government',[35] and gynocracy also means 'women as the ruling class'.[36]Gyneocracy is rarely used in modern times.[37] None of these definitions are limited to mothers.

Some question whether a queen ruling without a king is sufficient to constitute female government, given the amount of participation of other men in most such governments. One view is that it is sufficient. "By the end of [Queen] Elizabeth's reign, gynecocracy was a fait accompli", according to historian Paula Louise Scalingi.[38][d] Gynecocracy is defined by Scalingi as "government by women",[39] similar to dictionary definitions[31][32][33] (one dictionary adding 'women's social supremacy' to the governing role).[34] Scalingi reported arguments for and against the validity of gynocracy[40] and said, "the humanists treated the question of female rule as part of the larger controversy over sexual equality."[41] Possibly, queenship, because of the power wielded by men in leadership and assisting a queen, leads to queen bee syndrome, contributing to the difficulty of other women in becoming heads of the government.[citation needed]

Some matriarchies have been described by historian Helen Diner as "a strong gynocracy"[42] and "women monopolizing government"[43] and she described matriarchal Amazons as "an extreme, feminist wing"[44][e] of humanity and that North African women "ruled the country politically,"[42] and, according to Adler, Diner "envision[ed] a dominance matriarchy".[45]

Gynocentrism is the 'dominant or exclusive focus on women', is opposed to androcentrism, and "invert[s]... the privilege of the... [male/female] binary...[,] [some feminists] arguing for 'the superiority of values embodied in traditionally female experience'".[46]

Some people who sought evidence for the existence of a matriarchy often mixed matriarchy with anthropological terms and concepts describing specific arrangements in the field of family relationships and the organization of family life, such as matrilineality and matrilocality. These terms refer to intergenerational relationships (as matriarchy may), but do not distinguish between males and females insofar as they apply to specific arrangements for sons as well as daughters from the perspective of their relatives on their mother's side. Accordingly, these concepts do not represent matriarchy as 'power of women over men'.[47]

Anthropologists have begun to use the term matrifocality.[citation needed] There is some debate concerning the terminological delineation between matrifocality and matriarchy.[citation needed] Matrifocal societies are those in which women, especially mothers, occupy a central position.[citation needed] Anthropologist R. T. Smith refers to matrifocality as the kinship structure of a social system whereby the mothers assume structural prominence.[48] The term does not necessarily imply domination by women or mothers.[48] In addition, some authors depart from the premise of a mother-child dyad as the core of a human group where the grandmother was the central ancestor with her children and grandchildren clustered around her in an extended family.[49]

The term matricentric means 'having a mother as head of the family or household'.[citation needed]

Matristic: Feminist scholars and archeologists such as Marija Gimbutas, Gerda Lerner, and Riane Eisler[50] label their notion of a "woman-centered" society surrounding Mother Goddess worship during prehistory (in Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe) and in ancient civilizations by using the term matristic rather than matriarchal.[citation needed]

Matrilineality, in which descent is traced through the female line, is sometimes conflated with historical matriarchy.[51] Sanday favors redefining and reintroducing the word matriarchy, especially in reference to contemporary matrilineal societies such as the Minangkabau.[52] The 19th-century belief that matriarchal societies existed was due to the transmission of "economic and social power... through kinship lines"[53] so that "in a matrilineal society all power would be channeled through women. Women may not have retained all power and authority in such societies..., but they would have been in a position to control and dispense power."[53]

A matrilocal society is one in which a couple resides close to the bride's family rather than the bridegroom's family; the term is by anthropologists.[citation needed]

Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal.[54][55][56] According to J. M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, no true matriarchy is known actually to have existed.[51] Anthropologist Joan Bamberger argued that the historical record contains no primary sources on any society in which women dominated.[57] Anthropologist Donald Brown's list of human cultural universals (viz., features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs,[58] which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology.[citation needed] There are some disagreements and possible exceptions. A belief that women's rule preceded men's rule was, according to Haviland, "held by many nineteenth-century intellectuals".[4] The hypothesis survived into the 20th century and was notably advanced in the context of feminism and especially second-wave feminism, but the hypothesis is mostly discredited today, most experts saying that it was never true.[59]

Matriarchs, according to Peoples and Bailey, do exist; there are "individual matriarchs of families and kin groups."[3]

The royal lineage of Ethiopia, including for the Kandake, was passed through the woman only.[citation needed]

The Cambridge Ancient History (1975)[60] stated that "the predominance of a supreme goddess is probably a reflection from the practice of matriarchy which at all times characterized Elamite civilization to a greater or lesser degree".[f]

Tacitus noted in his Germania that in "the nations of the Sitones a woman is the ruling sex."[61][g]

Legends of Amazon women originated not from South America, but rather Scythia (present day Russia.) Historians note that the Sarmatians (present day Ukraine) are also descendants of the Amazonian women tribe.

Possible matriarchies in Burma are, according to Jorgen Bisch, the Padaungs[62] and, according to Andrew Marshall, the Kayaw.[63]

The Mosuo culture, which is in China near Tibet, is frequently described as matriarchal.[64] The Mosuo themselves often use this description and they believe it increases interest in their culture and thus attracts tourism. The term matrilineal is sometimes used, and, while more accurate, still doesn't reflect the full complexity of their social organization. In fact, it is not easy to categorize Mosuo culture within traditional Western definitions. They have aspects of a matriarchal culture: Women are often the head of the house, inheritance is through the female line, and women make business decisions. However, unlike in a true matriarchy, political power tends to be in the hands of males.[65]

In India, of communities recognized in the national Constitution as Scheduled Tribes, "some... [are] matriarchal and matrilineal"[66] "and thus have been known to be more egalitarian".[67] According to interviewer Anuj Kumar, Manipur, India, "has a matriarchal society",[68] but this may not be a scholarly assessment.

Manipur, in north-east India, is not at all a matriarchy. Though mothers there are in forefront of most of the social activism, the society has always been a patriarchal. Their women power is visible because of historical reason. Manipur was ruled by strong dynasties. The need for expansions of borders, crushing any outsider threats etc. engaged the men. And so women had to take charge of home-front.[citation needed]

In the Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka, many societies are matrilineal.[citation needed]

In Kerala, the Nair communities are matrilineal. Descent and relationship are determined through the female line.[citation needed]

Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday said the Minangkabau society may be a matriarchy.[69]

According to William S. Turley, "the role of women in traditional Vietnamese culture was determined [partly] by... indigenous customs bearing traces of matriarchy",[70] affecting "different social classes"[70] to "varying degrees".[70] According to Peter C. Phan, that "the first three persons leading insurrections against China were women... suggest[s]... that ancient Vietnam was a matriarchal society"[71] and "the ancient Vietnamese family system was most likely matriarchal, with women ruling over the clan or tribe"[72] until the Vietnamese "adopt[ed]... the patriarchal system introduced by the Chinese",[72] although "this patriarchal system... was not able to dislodge the Vietnamese women from their relatively high position in the family and society, especially among the peasants and the lower classes",[72] with modern "culture and legal codes... [promoting more] rights and privileges" for women than in Chinese culture.[73] According to Chiricosta, the legend of u C is said to be evidence of "the presence of an original 'matriarchy' in North Vietnam and [it] led to the double kinship system, which developed there.... [and which] combined matrilineal and patrilineal patterns of family structure and assigned equal importance to both lines."[74][h][i] Chiricosta said that other scholars relied on "this 'matriarchal' aspect of the myth to differentiate Vietnamese society from the pervasive spread of Chinese Confucian patriarchy"[75][j] and that "resistance to China's colonization of Vietnam... [combined with] the view that Vietnam was originally a matriarchy... [led to viewing] women's struggles for liberation from (Chinese) patriarchy as a metaphor for the entire nation's struggle for Vietnamese independence."[76] According to Keith Weller Taylor, "the matriarchal flavor of the time is... attested by the fact that Trung Trac's mother's tomb and spirit temple have survived, although nothing remains of her father",[77] and the "society of the Trung sisters" was "strongly matrilineal".[78] According to Donald M. Seekins, an indication of "the strength of matriarchal values"[79] was that a woman, Trng Trc, with her younger sister Trng Nh, raised an army of "over 80,000 soldiers.... [in which] many of her officers were women",[79] with which they defeated the Chinese.[79] According to Seekins, "in [the year] 40, Trung Trac was proclaimed queen, and a capital was built for her"[79] and modern Vietnam considers the Trung sisters to be heroines.[79] According to Karen G. Turner, in the 3rd century A.D., Lady Triu "seem[ed]... to personify the matriarchal culture that mitigated Confucianized patriarchal norms.... [although] she is also painted as something of a freak... with her... savage, violent streak."[80]

The Hopi (in what is now the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona), according to Alice Schlegel, had as its "gender ideology... one of female superiority, and it operated within a social actuality of sexual equality."[81] According to LeBow (based on Schlegel's work), in the Hopi, "gender roles... are egalitarian.... [and] [n]either sex is inferior."[82][k] LeBow concluded that Hopi women "participate fully in... political decision-making."[83][l] According to Schlegel, "the Hopi no longer live as they are described here"[84] and "the attitude of female superiority is fading".[84] Schlegel said the Hopi "were and still are matrilinial"[85] and "the household... was matrilocal".[85] Schlegel explains why there was female superiority as that the Hopi believed in "life as the highest good... [with] the female principle... activated in women and in Mother Earth... as its source"[86] and that the Hopi "were not in a state of continual war with equally matched neighbors"[87] and "had no standing army"[87] so that "the Hopi lacked the spur to masculine superiority"[87] and, within that, as that women were central to institutions of clan and household and predominated "within the economic and social systems (in contrast to male predominance within the political and ceremonial systems)",[87] the Clan Mother, for example, being empowered to overturn land distribution by men if she felt it was unfair,[86] since there was no "countervailing... strongly centralized, male-centered political structure".[86]

The Iroquois Confederacy or League, combining 56 Native American Haudenosaunee nations or tribes before the U.S. became a nation, operated by The Great Binding Law of Peace, a constitution by which women participated in the League's political decision-making, including deciding whether to proceed to war,[88] through what may have been a matriarchy[89] or gyneocracy.[90] According to Doug George-Kanentiio, in this society, mothers exercise central moral and political roles. The dates of this constitution's operation are unknown; the League was formed in approximately 10001450, but the constitution was oral until written in about 1880.[92] The League still exists.

George-Kanentiio explains:

In our society, women are the center of all things. Nature, we believe, has given women the ability to create; therefore it is only natural that women be in positions of power to protect this function....We traced our clans through women; a child born into the world assumed the clan membership of its mother. Our young women were expected to be physically strong....The young women received formal instruction in traditional planting....Since the Iroquois were absolutely dependent upon the crops they grew, whoever controlled this vital activity wielded great power within our communities. It was our belief that since women were the givers of life they naturally regulated the feeding of our people....In all countries, real wealth stems from the control of land and its resources. Our Iroquois philosophers knew this as well as we knew natural law. To us it made sense for women to control the land since they were far more sensitive to the rhythms of the Mother Earth. We did not own the land but were custodians of it. Our women decided any and all issues involving territory, including where a community was to be built and how land was to be used....In our political system, we mandated full equality. Our leaders were selected by a caucus of women before the appointments were subject to popular review....Our traditional governments are composed of an equal number of men and women. The men are chiefs and the women clan-mothers....As leaders, the women closely monitor the actions of the men and retain the right to veto any law they deem inappropriate....Our women not only hold the reigns of political and economic power, they also have the right to determine all issues involving the taking of human life. Declarations of war had to be approved by the women, while treaties of peace were subject to their deliberations.

The controversy surrounding prehistoric or "primal" matriarchy began in reaction to the book by Bachofen, Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World, in 1861. Several generations of ethnologists were inspired by his pseudo-evolutionary theory of archaic matriarchy. Following him and Jane Ellen Harrison, several generations of scholars, usually arguing from known myths or oral traditions and examination of Neolithic female cult-figures, suggested that many ancient societies might have been matriarchal, or even that there existed a wide-ranging matriarchal society prior to the ancient cultures of which we are aware. According to Uwe Wesel, Bachofen's myth interpretations have proved to be untenable.[93] The concept was further investigated by Lewis Morgan.[94] Many researchers studied the phenomenon of matriarchy afterward, but the basis was laid by the classics of sociology. The notion of a "woman-centered" society was developed by Bachofen, whose three-volume Myth, Religion, and Mother Right (1861) impacted the way classicists such as Harrison, Arthur Evans, Walter Burkert, and James Mellaart[95] looked at the evidence of matriarchal religion in pre-Hellenic societies.[96] According to historian Susan Mann, as of 2000, "few scholars these days find... [a "notion of a stage of primal matriarchy"] persuasive."[97]

The following excerpts from Lewis Morgan's Ancient Society will explain the use of the terms: "In a work of vast research, Bachofen has collected and discussed the evidence of female authority, mother-right, and of female rule, gynecocracy."[pageneeded] "Common lands and joint tillage would lead to joint-tenant houses and communism in living; so that gyneocracy seems to require for its creation, descent in the female line. Women thus entrenched in large households, supplied from common stores, in which their own gens so largely predominated in numbers, would produce the phenomena of mother right and gyneocracy, which Bachofen has detected and traced with the aid of fragments of history and of tradition."[pageneeded]

Kurt Derungs is a non-academic author advocating an "anthropology of landscape" based on allegedly matriarchal traces in toponymy and folklore.[citation needed]

Friedrich Engels, in 1884, claimed that, in the earliest stages of human social development, there was group marriage and that therefore paternity was disputable, whereas maternity was not, so that a family could be traced only through the female line, and claimed that this was connected with the dominance of women over men or a Mutterrecht, which notion Engels took from Bachofen, who claimed, based on his interpretations of myths, that myths reflected a memory of a time when women dominated over men.[98][99] Engels speculated that the domestication of animals increased wealth claimed by men.[citation needed] Engels said that men wanted control over women for use as laborers and because they wanted to pass on their wealth to their children, requiring monogamy.[citation needed] Engels did not explain how this could happen in a matriarchal society, but said that women's status declined until they became mere objects in the exchange trade between men and patriarchy was established,[citation needed] causing the global defeat of the female sex[100] and the rise of individualism,[101] competition, and dedication to achievement.[citation needed] According to Eller, Engels may have been influenced with respect to women's status by August Bebel,[102] according to whom this matriarchy resulted in communism while patriarchy did not.[103]

Austrian writer Bertha Diener, also known as Helen Diner, wrote Mothers and Amazons (1930), which was the first work to focus on women's cultural history. Hers is regarded as a classic of feminist matriarchal study.[104] Her view is that in the past all human societies were matriarchal; then, at some point, most shifted to patriarchal and degenerated. The controversy was reinforced further by the publication of The White Goddess by Robert Graves (1948) and his later analysis of classical Greek mythology and the vestiges of earlier myths that had been rewritten after a profound change in the religion of Greek civilization that occurred within its very early historical times. From the 1950s, Marija Gimbutas developed a theory of an Old European culture in Neolithic Europe which had matriarchal traits, replaced by the patriarchal system of the Proto-Indo-Europeans with the spread of Indo-European languages beginning in the Bronze Age. According to Epstein, anthropologists in the 20th century said that "the goddess worship or matrilocality that evidently existed in many paleolithic societies was not necessarily associated with matriarchy in the sense of women's power over men. Many societies can be found that exhibit those qualities along with female subordination."[105] From the 1970s, these ideas were taken up by popular writers of second-wave feminism and expanded with the speculations of Margaret Murray on witchcraft, by the Goddess movement, and in feminist Wicca, as well as in works by Eisler, Elizabeth Gould Davis, and Merlin Stone.

"A Golden Age of matriarchy" was, according to Epstein, prominently presented by Charlene Spretnak and "encouraged" by Stone and Eisler,[106] but, at least for the Neolithic Age, has been denounced as feminist wishful thinking in The Inevitability of Patriarchy, Why Men Rule, Goddess Unmasked,[107] and The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory and is not emphasized in third-wave feminism. According to Eller, Gimbutas had a large part in constructing a myth of historical matriarchy by examining Eastern European cultures that she asserts, by and large, never really bore any resemblance in character to the alleged universal matriarchy suggested by Gimbutas and Graves. She asserts that in "actually documented primitive societies" of recent (historical) times, paternity is never ignored and that the sacred status of goddesses does not automatically increase female social status, and believes that this affirms that utopian matriarchy is simply an inversion of antifeminism.[citation needed]

The original evidence recognized by Gimbutas, however, of Neolithic societies being more egalitarian than the Bronze Age Indo-European and Semitic patriarchies remains valid.[citation needed] Gimbutas herself has not described these societies as matriarchal, preferring the term woman-centered or matristic.[citation needed] J.F. del Giorgio insists on a matrifocal, matrilocal, matrilineal Paleolithic society.[108]

According to Rohrlich, "many scholars are convinced that Crete was a matriarchy, ruled by a queen-priestess"[109] and the "Cretan civilization" was "matriarchal" before "1500 B.C.," when it was overrun and colonized.[110]

Also according to Rohrlich, "in the early Sumerian city-states 'matriarchy seems to have left something more than a trace.'"[111]

One common misconception among historians of the Bronze Age such as Stone and Eisler is the notion that the Semites were matriarchal while the Indo-Europeans practiced a patriarchal system. An example of this view is found in Stone's When God Was a Woman,[pageneeded] wherein she attempts to make out a case that the worship of Yahweh was an Indo-European invention superimposed on an ancient matriarchal Semitic nation. Evidence from the Amorites and pre-Islamic Arabs, however, indicates that the primitive Semitic family was in fact patriarchal and patrilineal. Meanwhile, the Indo-Europeans were known to have practiced multiple succession systems, and there is much better evidence of matrilineal customs among the Indo-European Celts and Germans than among any ancient Semitic peoples.

Women were running Sparta while the men were often away fighting. Gorgo, Queen of Sparta, responded to a question from a woman in Attica along the lines of, "why Spartan women were the only women in the world who could rule men?" Gorgo replied, "because we are the only women who are mothers of men".

Arising in the period ranging from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages, several early northwestern European mythologies from the Irish (e.g., Macha and Scthach), the Brittonic (e.g., Rhiannon), and the Germanic (e.g., Grendel's mother and Nerthus) contain ambiguous episodes of primal female power which have been interpreted as folk evidence of a real potential for matriarchal attitudes in pre-Christian European Iron Age societies. Often transcribed from a retrospective, patriarchal, Romanised, and Catholic perspective, they hint at an earlier, culturally disturbing, era when female power could have predominated. The first-centuryattested historic British figure of Boudicca indicates that Brittonnic society permitted explicit female autocracy or a form of gender equality in a form which contrasted strongly with the patriarchal structure of Mediterranean civilisation.[citation needed]

In 1995, in Kenya, according to Emily Wax, Umoja, a village only for women from one tribe with about 36 residents, was established under a matriarch.[112] Men of the same tribe established a village nearby from which to observe the women's village,[112] the men's leader objecting to the matriarch's questioning the culture[113] and men suing to close the women's village.[113] The village was still operational in 2005 when Wax reported on it.[112]

Spokespersons for various indigenous peoples at the United Nations and elsewhere have highlighted the central role of women in their societies, referring to them as matriarchies, or as matriarchal in character.[114][115]

A legendary matriarchy related by several writers was Amazon society. According to Phyllis Chesler, "in Amazon societies, women were... mothers and their society's only political and religious leaders",[116] as well as the only warriors and hunters;[117] "queens were elected"[118] and apparently "any woman could aspire to and achieve full human expression."[119]Herodotus reported that the Sarmatians were descendants of Amazons and Scythians, and that their females observed their ancient maternal customs, "frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men".[citation needed] Moreover, said Herodotus, "no girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle".[citation needed] Amazons came to play a role in Roman historiography. Julius Caesar spoke of the conquest of large parts of Asia by Semiramis and the Amazons.[citation needed] Although Strabo was sceptical about their historicity, the Amazons were taken as historical throughout late Antiquity.[120] Several Church Fathers spoke of the Amazons as a real people.[citation needed] Medieval authors continued a tradition of locating the Amazons in the North, Adam of Bremen placing them at the Baltic Sea and Paulus Diaconus in the heart of Germania.[121]

Robert Graves suggested that a myth displaced earlier myths that had to change when a major cultural change brought patriarchy to replace a matriarchy.[citation needed] According to this myth, in Greek mythology, Zeus is said to have swallowed his pregnant lover, the titan goddess Metis, who was carrying their daughter, Athena. The mother and child created havoc inside Zeus. Either Hermes or Hephaestus split Zeus's head, allowing Athena, in full battle armor, to burst forth from his forehead. Athena was thus described as being "born" from Zeus. The outcome pleased Zeus as it didn't fulfill the prophecy of Themis which (according to Aeschylus) predicted that Zeus will one day bear a son that would overthrow him.[citation needed]

According to Adler, "there is plenty of evidence of ancient societies where women held greater power than in many societies today. For example, Jean Markale's studies of Celtic societies show that the power of women was reflected not only in myth and legend but in legal codes pertaining to marriage, divorce, property ownership, and the right to rule."[122]

Bamberger (1974) examines several matriarchal myths from South American cultures and concludes that portraying the women from this matriarchal period as evil often serves to restrain contemporary women.[clarification needed][citation needed]

While matriarchy has mostly fallen out of use for the anthropological description of existing societies, it remains current as a concept in feminism.[123][124]

In first-wave feminist discourse, either Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Margaret Fuller (it is unclear who was first) introduced the concept of matriarchy[125] and the discourse was joined in by Matilda Joslyn Gage.[126]Victoria Woodhull, in 1871, called for men to open the U.S. government to women or a new constitution and government would be formed in a year;[127] and, on a basis of equality, she ran to be elected President in 1872.[128][129]Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in 1911 and 1914,[130] argued for "a woman-centered, or better mother-centered, world"[131] and described "'government by women'".[132] She argued that a government led by either sex must be assisted by the other,[133] both genders being "useful... and should in our governments be alike used",[134] because men and women have different qualities.[135]

Cultural feminism includes "matriarchal worship", according to Prof. James Penner.[136]

In feminist literature, matriarchy and patriarchy are not conceived as simple mirrors of each other.[137] While matriarchy sometimes means "the political rule of women",[138] that meaning is often rejected, on the ground that matriarchy is not a mirroring of patriarchy.[139] Patriarchy is held to be about power over others while matriarchy is held to be about power from within,[137]Starhawk having written on that distinction[137][140] and Adler having argued that matriarchal power is not possessive and not controlling, but is harmonious with nature.[m]

For radical feminists, the importance of matriarchy is that "veneration for the female principle... somewhat lightens an oppressive system."[142]

Feminist utopias are a form of advocacy. According to Tineke Willemsen, "a feminist utopia would... be the description of a place where at least women would like to live."[143] Willemsen continues, among "type[s] of feminist utopias[,]... [one] stem[s] from feminists who emphasize the differences between women and men. They tend to formulate their ideal world in terms of a society where women's positions are better than men's. There are various forms of matriarchy, or even a utopia that resembles the Greek myth of the Amazons.... [V]ery few modern utopias have been developed in which women are absolute autocrats."[144]

A minority of feminists, generally radical,[123][124] have argued that women should govern societies of women and men. In all of these advocacies, the governing women are not limited to mothers:

Some such advocacies are informed by work on past matriarchy:

Some fiction caricatured the current gender hierarchy by describing a matriarchal alternative without advocating for it. According to Karin Schnpflug, "Gerd Brantenberg's Egalia's Daughters is a caricature of powered gender relations which have been completely reversed, with the female sex on the top and the male sex a degraded, oppressed group";[193] "gender inequality is expressed through power inversion"[194] and "all gender roles are reversed and women rule over a class of intimidated, effeminate men".[195] "Egalia is not a typical example of gender inequality in the sense that a vision of a desirable matriarchy is created; Egalia is more a caricature of male hegemony by twisting gender hierarchy but not really offering a 'better world.'"[195][196]

On egalitarian matriarchy,[197]Heide Gttner-Abendroth's International Academy for Modern Matriarchal Studies and Matriarchal Spirituality (HAGIA) organized conferences in Luxembourg in 2003[198] and Texas in 2005,[199][200] with papers published.[201] Gttner-Abendroth argued that "matriarchies are all egalitarian at least in terms of genderthey have no gender hierarchy.... [, that, f]or many matriarchal societies, the social order is completely egalitarian at both local and regional levels",[202] that, "for our own path toward new egalitarian societies, we can gain... insight from... ["tested"] matriarchal patterns",[203] and that "matriarchies are not abstract utopias, constructed according to philosophical concepts that could never be implemented."[204]

According to Eller, "a deep distrust of men's ability to adhere to"[205] future matriarchal requirements may invoke a need "to retain at least some degree of female hegemony to insure against a return to patriarchal control",[205] "feminists... [having] the understanding that female dominance is better for societyand better for menthan the present world order",[206] as is equalitarianism. On the other hand, Eller continued, if men can be trusted to accept equality, probably most feminists seeking future matriarchy would accept an equalitarian model.[206]

"Demographic[ally]",[207] "feminist matriarchalists run the gamut"[207] but primarily are "in white, well-educated, middle-class circles";[207] many of the adherents are "religiously inclined"[207] while others are "quite secular".[207]

Biology as a ground for holding either males or females superior over the other has been criticized as invalid, such as by Andrea Dworkin[208] and by Robin Morgan.[209] A claim that women have unique characteristics that prevent women's assimilation with men has been apparently rejected by Ti-Grace Atkinson.[210] On the other hand, not all advocates based their arguments on biology or essentialism.

A criticism by Mansfield of choosing who governs according to gender or sex is that the best qualified people should be chosen, regardless of gender or sex.[211] On the other hand, Mansfield considered merit insufficient for office, because a legal right granted by a sovereign (e.g., a king), was more important than merit.[212]

Diversity within a proposed community can, according to Becki L. Ross, make it especially challenging to complete forming the community.[213] However, some advocacy includes diversity, in the views of Dworkin[145] and Farley.[214]

Prof. Christine Stansell, a feminist, wrote that, for feminists to achieve state power, women must democratically cooperate with men. "Women must take their place with a new generation of brothers in a struggle for the world's fortunes. Herland, whether of virtuous matrons or daring sisters, is not an option.... [T]he well-being and liberty of women cannot be separated from democracy's survival."[215] (Herland was feminist utopian fiction by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1911, featuring a community entirely of women except for three men who seek it out,[216] strong women in a matriarchal utopia[217] expected to last for generations,[218] although Charlotte Perkins Gilman was herself a feminist advocate of society being gender-integrated and of women's freedom.)[219]

Other criticisms of superiority are that it is reverse sexism or discriminatory against men, it is opposed by most people including most feminists, women do not want such a position,[r] governing takes women away from family responsibilities, women are too likely to be unable to serve politically because of menstruation and pregnancy,[225] public affairs are too sordid for women[226] and would cost women their respect[227] and femininity (apparently including fertility),[228] superiority is not traditional,[229][s] women lack the political capacity and authority men have,[t] it is impractical because of a shortage of women with the ability to govern at that level of difficulty[227] as well as the desire and ability to wage war,[u][v][w] women are less aggressive, or less often so, than are men[236] and politics is aggressive,[237] women legislating would not serve men's interests[227][238][239] or would serve only petty interests,[227] it is contradicted by current science on genderal differences,[240] it is unnatural,[241][242][x][244] and, in the views of a playwright and a novelist, "women cannot govern on their own."[245] On the other hand, another view is that "women have 'empire' over men"[246] because of nature and "men... are actually obeying" women.[246]

Pursuing a future matriarchy would tend to risk sacrificing feminists' position in present social arrangements, and many feminists are not willing to take that chance, according to Eller.[205] "Political feminists tend to regard discussions of what utopia would look like as a good way of setting themselves up for disappointment", according to Eller,[247] and argue that immediate political issues must get the highest priority.[247]

"Matriarchists", as typified by comic character Wonder Woman were criticized by Kathie Sarachild, Carol Hanisch, and some others.[248]

Some theologies and theocracies limit or forbid women from being in civil government or public leadership or forbid them from voting,[249] effectively criticizing and forbidding matriarchy. Within none of the following religions is the respective view necessarily universally held:

Feminist thealogy, according to Eller, conceptualized humanity as beginning with "female-ruled or equalitarian societies",[302] until displaced by patriarchies,[303] and that in the millennial future "'gynocentric,' life-loving values"[303] will return to prominence.[303] This, according to Eller, produces "a virtually infinite number of years of female equality or superiority coming both at the beginning and end of historical time."[304]

Among criticisms is that a future matriarchy, according to Eller, as a reflection of spirituality, is conceived as ahistorical,[206] and thus may be unrealistic, unreachable, or even meaningless as a goal to secular feminists.

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Matriarchy - Wikipedia

According to the Bible, the golden calf ( ggel hazhv) was an icon (a cult image) made by the Israelites during Moses' absence, when he went up to Mount Sinai. In Hebrew, the incident is known as haggel ( ) or "The Sin of the Calf". It is first mentioned in Exodus 32:4.

Bull worship was common in many cultures. In Egypt, whence according to the Exodus narrative the Hebrews had recently come, the Apis Bull was a comparable object of worship, which some believe the Hebrews were reviving in the wilderness;[1] alternatively, some believe the God of Israel was associated with or pictured as a calf/bull deity through the process of religious assimilation and syncretism. Among the Egyptians' and Hebrews' neighbors in the ancient Near East and in the Aegean, the Aurochs, the wild bull, was widely worshipped, often as the Lunar Bull and as the creature of El.

When Moses went up into Biblical Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:12-18), he left the Israelites for forty days and forty nights. The Israelites feared that he would not return and demanded that Aaron make them "gods" to go before them (Exodus 32:1). Aaron gathered up the Israelites' golden earrings and ornaments, constructed a "molten calf" and they declared: "These [be] thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." (Exodus 32:4)

Aaron built an altar before the calf and proclaimed the next day to be a feast to the LORD. So they rose up early the next day and "offered burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play." (Exodus 32:6) God told Moses what the Israelites were up to back in camp, that they had turned aside quickly out of the way which God commanded them and he was going to destroy them and start a new people from Moses. Moses besought and pleaded that they should be spared (Exodus 32:11-14), and God "repented of the evil which He said He would do unto His people."

Moses went down from the mountain, but upon seeing the calf, he became angry and threw down the two Tablets of Stone, breaking them. Moses burnt the golden calf in a fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on water, and forced the Israelites to drink it. When Moses asked him, Aaron admitted collecting the gold, and throwing it into the fire, and said it came out as a calf (Exodus 32:21-24).

The bible records that the tribe of Levi did not worship the golden calf. When Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said: 'Whosoever is on the LORD's side, let him come unto me.' And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them: 'Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Put ye every man his sword upon his thigh, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.' And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. (Exodus 32:26-28)

The golden calf is mentioned in Nehemiah 9:1621.

"But they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and they did not obey your commands. They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them, even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, 'This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt,' or when they committed awful blasphemies. "Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen."

The language suggests that there are some inconsistencies in the other accounts of the Israelites and their use of the calf. As the version in Exodus and 1 Kings are written by Deuteronomistic historians based in the southern kingdom of Judah, there is a proclivity to expose the Israelites as unfaithful. The inconsistency is primarily located in Exodus 32.4 where "gods" is plural despite the construction of a single calf. When Ezra retells the story, he uses the single, capitalized God.[2]

Conversely, a more biblically conservative view offers a tenable explanation accounting for the discrepancy between "gods" in Exodus 32 and "God" in Nehemiah 9:18. In both instances, the Hebrew 'elohim' is used. Since ancient Hebrew failed to distinguish 'elohim' God (known as the majestic plural) from 'elohim' gods, Biblical translations are either determined by a) context or b) the local verb(s). In the original account in Exodus 32, the local verb is in the 3rd person plural. In Nehemiah 9, the verb connected to 'elohim' is singular. For the JEDP (i.e. Deuteronomistic) theorist, this inconsistency is confirmatory since the theory maintains a roughly equivalent date for the composition of Exodus and Nehemiah. More conservative scholarship would argue that these two texts were composed about 1000 years apart: Exodus (by Moses) circa 1500 BCE, and Nehemiah circa 500 BCE. The biblically conservative framework would therefore account for the verbal inconsistency from Exodus to Nehemiah as a philological evolution over the approximate millennium separating the two books.

According to 1 Kings 12:2630, after Jeroboam establishes the northern Kingdom of Israel, he contemplates the sacrificial practices of the Israelites.

Jeroboam thought to himself, "The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam." After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin; the people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.

His concern was that the tendency to offer sacrifices in Jerusalem, which is in the southern Kingdom of Judah, would lead to a return to King Rehoboam. He makes two golden calves and places them in Bethel and Dan. He erects the two calves in what he figures (in some interpretations) as substitutes for the cherubim built by King Solomon in Jerusalem.[3]

Richard Elliott Friedman says "at a minimum we can say that the writer of the golden calf account in Exodus seems to have taken the words that were traditionally ascribed to Jeroboam and placed them in the mouths of the people." Friedman believes that the story was turned into a polemic, exaggerating the throne platform decoration into idolatry, by a family of priests sidelined by Jeroboam.[4]

The declarations of Aaron and Jeroboam are almost identical:

After making the golden calf or golden calves both Aaron and Jeroboam celebrate festivals. Aaron builds an altar and Jeroboam ascends an altar (Exod 32:56; 1 Kings 12:3233).[5]

The incident of the worship of the Golden Calf is narrated in the Qur'an and other Islamic literature. The Qur'an narrates that after they refused to enter the promised land, God decreed that as punishment the Israelites would wander for forty years. Moses continued to lead the Israelites to Mount Sinai for Divine guidance. According to Islamic literature, God ordered Moses to fast for thirty days, and upon near completion of the thirty days, Moses ate a scented plant to improve the odour of his mouth. God commanded Moses to fast for ten more days, before receiving the guidance for the Israelites. When Moses completed the fasts, he approached God for guidance. During this time, Moses had instructed the Israelites that Aaron (Harun) was to lead them. The Israelites grew restless, since Moses had not returned to them, and after thirty days, a man the Qur'an names Samiri raised doubts among the Israelites. Samiri claimed that Moses had forsaken the Israelites and ordered his followers among the Israelites to light a fire and bring him all the jewelry and gold ornaments they had.[6] Samiri fashioned the gold into a golden calf along with the dust on which the angel Gabriel had trodden, which he proclaimed to be the God of Moses and the God who had guided them out of Egypt.[7] There is a sharp contrast between the Qur'anic and the biblical accounts the prophet Aaron's actions. The Qur'an mentions that Aaron attempted to guide and warn the people from worshipping the Golden Calf. However, the Israelites refused to stop until Moses had returned.[8] The righteous separated themselves from the pagans. God informed Moses that He had tried the Israelites in his absence and that they had failed by worshipping the Golden Calf.

Returning to the Israelites in great anger, Moses asked Aaron why he had not stopped the Israelites when he had seen them worshipping the Golden Calf. The Qur'an reports that Aaron stated that he did not act due to the fear that Moses would blame him for causing divisions among the Israelites. Moses realized his helplessness in the situation, and both prayed to God for forgiveness. Moses then questioned Samiri for the creation of the Golden Calf; Samiri justified his actions by stating that he had thrown the dust of the ground upon which Gabriel had tread on into the fire because his soul had suggested it to him.[6] Moses informed him that he would be banished and that they would burn the Golden Calf and spread its dust into the sea. Moses ordered seventy delegates to repent to God and pray for forgiveness.[9] The delegates traveled alongside Moses to Mount Sinai, where they witnessed the speech between him and God but refused to believe until they had witnessed God with their sight. As punishment, God struck the delegates with lightning and killed them with a violent earthquake.[10] Moses prayed to God for their forgiveness. God forgave and resurrected them and they continued on their journey.

In the Islamic view, the Calf-worshipers' sin had been shirk (Arabic: ), the sin of idolatry or polytheism. Shirk is the deification or worship of anyone or anything other than the singular God (Allah), or more literally the establishment of "partners" placed beside God, a most serious and unforgivable sin, with the Calf-worshipers' being ultimately forgiven being a mark of special forbearance by Allah.

Despite a seemingly simplistic faade, the golden calf narrative is complex. According to Michael Coogan, it seems that the golden calf was not an idol for another god, and thus a false god.[11] He cites Exodus 32:4-5 as evidence: He [Aaron] took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord." Importantly, there is a single calf in this narrative, though the people refer to it as representative of the "gods." While a reference to singular god does not necessarily imply Yahweh worship, it does not rule out the possibility that it is Yahweh that the people are worshiping, as the reference to a plurality of "gods" would. Additionally, the festival "to the Lord" in verse 5 is sometimes translated as "to Yahweh".[11] It should also be noted that "in the chronology of the narrative of the Ten Commandments" the commandment against the creation of graven images had not yet been given to the people when they pressed upon Aaron to help them make the calf, and that such behavior was not yet explicitly outlawed.[11]

Another understanding of the golden calf narrative is that the calf was meant to be the pedestal of Yahweh. In Near Eastern art, gods were often depicted standing on an animal, rather than seated on a throne.[11] This reading suggests that the golden calf was merely an alternative to the ark of the covenant or the cherubim upon which Yahweh was enthroned.[11]

The reason for this complication may be understood as 1.) a criticism of Aaron, as the founder of one priestly house that rivaled the priestly house of Moses, and/or 2.) as "an attack on the northern kingdom of Israel."[11] The second explanation relies on the "sin of Jeroboam," who was the first king of the northern kingdom, as the cause of the northern kingdoms fall to Assyria in 722 BCE.[11] Jeroboams "sin" was creating two calves of gold, and sending one to Bethel as a worship site in the south of the Kingdom, and the other to Dan as a worship site in the north, so that the people of the northern kingdom would not have to continue to go to Jerusalem to worship (see 1 Kings 12.2630). According to Coogan, this episode is part of the Deuteronomistic history, written in the southern kingdom of Judah, after the fall of the Northern kingdom, which was biased against the northern kingdom.[11] Coogan maintains that Jeroboam was merely presenting an alternative to the cherubim of the Temple in Jerusalem, and that calves did not indicate non-Yahwehistic worship.[11]

The documentary hypothesis can be used to further understand the layers of this narrative: it is plausible that the earliest story of the golden calf was preserved by E (Israel source) and originated in the Northern kingdom. When E and J (Judah source) were combined after the fall of northern kingdom, "the narrative was reworked to portray the northern kingdom in a negative light," and the worship of the calf was depicted as "polytheism, with the suggestion of a sexual orgy" (see Exodus 32.6). When compiling the narratives, P (a later Priest source from Jerusalem) may have minimized Aarons guilt in the matter, but preserved the negativity associated with the calf.[11]

Alternatively it could be said that there is no golden calf story in the J source, and if it is correct that the Jeroboam story was the original as stated by Friedman, then it is unlikely that the Golden Calf events as described in Exodus occurred at all. Friedman states that the smashing of the Ten Commandments by Moses when he beheld the worship of the golden calf, is really an attempt to cast into doubt the validity of Judah's central shrine, the Ark of the Covenant. "The author of E, in fashioning the golden calf story, attacked both the Israelite and Judean religious establishments." [12]

As to the likelihood that these events ever took place, on the one hand there are two versions of the ten commandments story, in E (Exodus 20) and J (Exodus 34), this gives some antiquity and there may be some original events serving as a basis to the stories. The Golden Calf story is only in the E version and a later editor added in an explanation that God made a second pair of tablets to give continuity to the J story.[13] The actual Ten Commandments as given in Exodus 20 were also inserted by the redactor who combined the various sources.[14]

Archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman say that while archaeology has found traces left by small bands of hunter-gatherers in the Sinai, there is no evidence at all for the large body of people described in the Exodus story: "The conclusion that Exodus did not happen at the time and in the manner described in the Bible seems irrefutable... repeated excavations and surveys throughout the entire area have not provided even the slightest evidence."[15]

A metaphoric interpretation emphasizes the "gold" part of "golden calf" to criticize the pursuit of wealth.

This usage can be found in Spanish[16] where Mammon, the Gospel personification of idolatry of wealth, is not so current.

People and things in the Quran

Groups and tribes

Note: The names are sorted alphabetically. Standard form: Islamic name / Bibilical name (title or relationship)

Link:

Golden calf - Wikipedia

This week the United Nations rededicated a large mosaic of Norman Rockwells iconic 1961 illustration, Golden Rule, which hangs in their New York City Headquarters.The workoriginally presented to the UN in 1985 as a gift on behalf of the United States by then First Lady Nancy Reaganwas restored by Williamstown Art Conservation Center, which over the years has repaired numerous objects from Norman Rockwell Museums collection as well (including Rockwells 1953 United Nationsdrawing, which was the artists earliest conceptions for Golden Rule). Here is a little more background on both artworks, currently on view and part of the collection of Norman Rockwell Museum.

United Nations

Conceived in 1952 and executed in 1953, this drawing was inspired by the United Nations humanitarian mission. Though it was carefully researched and developed, Rockwells idea never made it to canvas. He said he didnt quite know why he grew tired of the pieceperhaps it was too ambitious. At the height of the Cold War and two years into the Korean War, his concept was to picture the United Nations as the worlds hope for the futurehe included sixty-five people representing the worlds nations, waiting for the delegates to straighten out the world, so that they might live in peace and without fear. In the end Rockwell abandoned the illustration, saying that it seemed empty and pretentious, although he would reference it again many years later.

Golden Rule

In the 1960s, the mood of the country was changing, and Norman Rockwells opportunity to be rid of the art intelligentsias claim that he was old-fashioned was on the horizon. His 1961 Golden Rule was a precursor to the type of subject he would soon illustrate. A group of people of different religions, races and ethnicity served as the backdrop for the inscription Do Unto Other as You Would Have Them Do Unto You. Rockwell was a compassionate and liberal man, and this simple phrase reflected his philosophy. Having traveled all his life and been welcomed wherever he went, Rockwell felt like a citizen of the world, and his politics reflected that value system.

Id been reading up on comparative religion. The thing is that all major religions have the Golden Rule in Common. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Not always the same words but the same meaning.Norman Rockwell, The Norman Rockwell Album.

From photographs hed taken on his 1955 round-the-world Pam Am trip, Rockwell referenced native costumes and accessories and how they were worn. He picked up a few costumes and devised some from ordinary objects in his studio, such as using a lampshade as a fez. Many of Rockwells models were local exchange students and visitors. In a 1961 interview, indicating the man wearing a wide brimmed hat in the upper right corner, Rockwell said, Hes part Brazilian, part Hungarian, I think. Then there is Choi, a Korean. Hes a student at Ohio State University. Here is a Japanese student at Bennington College and here is a Jewish student. He was taking summer school courses at the Indian Hill Museum School. Pointing to the rabbi, he continued, Hes the retired postmaster of Stockbridge. He made a pretty good rabbi, in real life, a devout Catholic. I got all my Middle East faces from Abdalla who runs the Elm Street market, just one block from my house. Some of the models used were also from Rockwells earlier illustration,United Nations.

See the originals: Golden Rule and United Nations are currently on view at Norman Rockwell Museum.

View the restoration of RockwellsUnited Nations painting below:

Related Links:

Golden Rule, iconic Norman Rockwell mosaic, rededicated at UN Headquarters, UN News Centre, February 5, 2014

The Golden Rule: Restoring the Norman Rockwell Mosaic at the United Nations, Art Conservator, Summer 2013

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Rockwell's "Golden Rule" - Norman Rockwell Museum - The Home ...

One of the prominent failures of the Bohr model for atomic spectra was that it couldn't predict that one spectral line would be brighter than another. From the quantum theory came an explanation in terms of wavefunctions, and for situations where the transition probability is constant in time, it is usually expressed in a relationship called Fermi's golden rule.

In general conceptual terms, a transition rate depends upon the strength of the coupling between the initial and final state of a system and upon the number of ways the transition can happen (i.e., the density of the final states). In many physical situations the transition probability is of the form

The transition probability l is also called the decay probability and is related to the mean lifetime t of the state by l = 1/t. The general form of Fermi's golden rule can apply to atomic transitions, nuclear decay, scattering ... a large variety of physical transitions.

A transition will proceed more rapidly if the coupling between the initial and final states is stronger. This coupling term is traditionally called the "matrix element" for the transition: this term comes from an alternative formulation of quantum mechanics in terms of matrices rather than the differential equations of the Schrodinger approach. The matrix element can be placed in the form of an integral where the interaction which causes the transition is expressed as a potential V which operates on the initial state wavefunction. The transition probability is proportional to the square of the integral of this interaction over all of the space appropriate to the problem.

This kind of integral approach using the wavefunctions is of the same general form as that used to find the "expectation value" or expected average value of any physical variable in quantum mechanics. But in the case of an expectation value for a property like the system energy, the integral has the wavefunction representing the eigenstate of the system in both places in the integral.

The transition probability is also proportional to the density of final states rf. It is reasonably common for the final state to be composed of several states with the same energy - such states are said to be "degenerate" states. This degeneracy is sometimes expressed as a "statistical weight" which will appear as a factor in the transition probability. In many cases there will be a continuum of final states, so that this density of final states is expressed as a function of energy.

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Transition Probabilities and Fermi's Golden Rule

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Welcome to Golden LivingCenter Golden Rule. We are located in Richmond, IN, which is home to an extraordinary collection of early 19th- to early 20th-century architecture. Our residents enjoy many activities, such as weekly bingo and monthly outings to a variety of locations, such as museums,...

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The Golden Rule can be found in Matthew 7:12. This famous quote by Jesus Christ actually begins in the context of verse 7, which says we can go to God for our needs and receive help from Him: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. The next few verses elaborate on this thought. Just as a caring human father gives good gifts to his children, so, too, God gives good things to those who ask Him (verses 9-11).

Verse 12 then concludes the thought: Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets (emphasis added throughout). The word therefore connects the Golden Rule verse to the preceding assurances that we can ask God for help in our lives and receive it.

Matthew 7:8 assures us that it is Gods desire to help us: For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

The book of James also tells us the source of everything good in our lives: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning (James 1:17).

Do we have a part to play in how God answers our prayers?

There are many passages in the Bible that make a connection between how we live our livesspecifically, how we deal with othersand how God deals with us. Two such verses can be found in the Sermon on the Mount.

Among the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, we find this: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy (Matthew 5:7). We all want to receive mercy when we need it, but we may not always be so eager to extend it to others! God clearly expects us to be merciful if we expect to receive the same from Him.

In the model prayer in Matthew 6, we notice the same principle being applied to forgiveness and forgiving: And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors (Matthew 6:12). Again, a clear connection is madethis time between being forgiving toward others and receiving Gods forgiveness for ourselves.

In the area of judging others, Jesus made it quite clear that we will receive judgment from Him in the same manner we judge others. Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you (Matthew 7:1-2). Jesus Christ Himself is our judge (2 Timothy 4:8), so this passage tells us that when we judge others, we are setting the standard He will use in judging us!

With these examples in mind, lets be reminded again what Jesus said in Matthew 7:7: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. These are wonderful assurances. Verse 8 tells us everyone who asks will receive, all who seek will find, and the door will be opened to those who knock.

However, God always has perfect understanding and flawless judgment to determine what gifts are best for us and when its best for us to receive them.

Earlier, we saw in James 1:17 that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. If a 10-year-old child asked for a powerful motorcycle to drive to school, would a loving parent give it to him? No, in reality it would be harmful to give a motorcycle to a 10-year-old. In a similar way, God may not give us a gift that could be to our detriment, but He would instead give us something helpful.

You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures (James 4:3). The word translated amiss in this passage is from the Greek word kakos, and it carries the connotation of asking improperly, wrongly (Thayers Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament). God will not grant a request that would carry us away from our relationship with Him.

Gods long-term plan for us may not be something we can see, at least in the short term. (Please refer to the article Gods Plan on this website.) Though we can be assured that He has our best interest in mind and greatly desires to give us good gifts, we may not always receive the gift we expectbut the gift God gives will be one that is better for us.

Notice the experience that the apostle Paul encountered when faced with a physical ailment: Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).

Whether or not we apply the Golden Rule in our life will have a direct impact on how God deals with us!Paul chose to move forward, knowing that Gods will for him was still being done.

In other cases, God allows us to wait to receive an answer in order for us to develop patience and character. Probably the most outstanding example of this is Abraham, who waited 25 years to receive his promised son Isaac, who was born when Abraham was 100 years old (Genesis 21:2-5).

The most common phrasing of the Golden Rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the Golden Rule as: A general rule for how to behave that says that you should treat people the way you would like other people to treat you.

The statement made by Jesus in Matthew 7 mirrors the same concept expressed in the Old Testament, in Leviticus 19:18: You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. Gods instruction is the same in both the Old and New Testaments.

Whether or not we apply the Golden Rule in our life will have a direct impact on how God deals with us!

The parallel Gospel account in Luke makes a statement not found in Matthew 7. Notice how God expects us to be acting toward others if we expect to receive blessings and gifts from Him: Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you (Luke 6:37-38).

Once again, the way we treat others sets the standard of how we will be treated by God. And this includes receiving Gods gifts!

Many in our modern society espouse a general philosophy of looking out for the selffirst taking what you want and need, and considering others later. Lets look again at the Golden Rule as stated in Matthew 7:12: Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. The word therefore connects us directly back to the promises about asking, seeking and knocking in verses 7-11.

Which path will you choose to pursue in your life? How do you want to be received by God when you are asking, seeking and knocking? Bear in mind that how you treat others sets the tone for how God will treat you!

Read more about Gods expectations and how He wants us to pray to Him in the following articles:

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The Golden Rule - Life, Hope & Truth