The great rules of life, from the Golden Rule of Jesus down to supply and demand in economics, are SIMPLE, but they are NEVER easy.

One of these rules is not that power IMPLIES responsibility, but that power IS responsibility.

That is the big difference between Jesus’ “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and Confucius’s “Do NOT do unto another what you would NOT have him do unto you.” So in the Far East, you have no obligation to help anyone or to save anyone’s life. Your only obligation is NOT to do them harm.

Jesus would have none of that. If you CAN do good, you MUST do good. Confucius’s Golden Rule is both simple AND easy. Jesus’ Golden Rule is simple and backbreakingly difficult.

I am the only person who makes this distinction. Everybody else says that the Golden Rule is the same in the Orient and in the West.

What reminded me of this was the discussion of in vitro fertilization. Pro-lifers wanted to outlaw in vitro because a number of fertilized eggs die in the process.

I have known many unfortunate, heroic women who have tried desperately to have children, though all the experts told them they could not. Again and again, an egg would be fertilized and die within a week. But they kept trying.

No theologian, least of all the pope, would discourage them from continuing to try despite the fact that many, many fertilized eggs, unborn children in their eyes, died in the process.

But when these same women turned to in vitro fertilization, they became sinners.

Why? Because in vitro takes place in a lab. That was not the way fertilized eggs had been sacrificed for the birth of children in Biblical times. The difference is the lab. A woman has the right to try to have children and lose any number of fertilized eggs in her own body. The pope would say she is OBLIGATED to do so.

But she cannot ask help from a lab.

The Amish go further and claim (falsely) that they use no technology that was not present in Biblical times.

If you are a Confucian, this is moral. If you believe in JESUS’S Golden Rule this, IN MY OPINION, is not moral. Once again, if we have the POWER to make barren women fertile, then we have the RESPONSIBILITY to make barren women fertile.

If you haven’t noticed, let me remind you that I keep using the words IN MY OPINION, IMO.

IMO is what I will face the Judgement with. I believe that God will forgive honest mistakes, just as Jesus forgave those who tortured and crucified Him, because

“THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.”

But God would NOT forgive me for going along with something so as not to offend people when IN MY OPINION it is wrong.

IN MY OPINION the Amish and those who fight in vitro are wrong. I MUST fight for in vitro.

But, if I ever do reach the right side of Jesus, I would not be surprised in the slightest to find those who SINCERELY disagreed with me right there beside me.

If I get there I expect to be right there with the uncompromising Calvinists and fanatical Catholics I worked with in politics right there with me.

The first joy I will have in Heaven will be watching the looks on their astonished faces when they see each other.