Make your neighbor be you?

For as long as E has been able to listen we have tried to pound into her the biblical saying "treat your neighbor as yourself". Watching the way she treats her siblings and friends you'd think she has never ONCE listened! She has that "oldest" complex and demands that everything be done her way, every game that is played be her idea, every meal we eat be what she wants.

We are starting our 4th week of school. We LOVE the curriculum we chose this year. We went through a company called Sonlight and they assemble the entire year for you. Everything you need - even supplies. It's great! It cost about the same as a used car would have but, hey, it's worth it if I don't have to do anything but follow a manuel! The company is a Christian company, therefore most of the curriculum they chose to utilize is bibical - yet they still use secular science resources and several secular books. I love this - it means that my child can still hear about God in school - yet not be shocked when she hears something different when she sets her feet in "real" school again.

ALL of this to say that every morning E has to begin school with a Bible reading from the Old Testament and one from the New. This morning her passage from the New happened to be the one in Luke about treating your neighbor as yourself. She was sitting on the couch reading and I looked over and saw a very puzzled look on her face. She looked over at me and said, "I think I might have just learned something from the Bible". I giggled inside and asked her what. She tells me that she read the passage about treating your neighbor as yourself and that after it says that it gives several examples. She promptly adds here that I have never given her an example (What a HORRIBLE parent am I?) and that now she knows she was not understanding me correctly. She thought if you treat someone as yourself - you make them do what yourself would do. Naturally - right?! Make your neighbor be you?! If Brett was playing legos and it was not the way she would play with them then the biblical thing to do would be to stop him and make him play the "right" way. The E way. In her mind she had that adage down!

Not sure if this will change her little world or not. But as she was putting away her books she sighed and said, "Now that I know I can stop trying to make them be me I bet I won't ever get in trouble again."

If only it will work that easily ... and if only I could believe that it was all do to my non-explanation of a saying that has led to her selfish ways ... In reality, I think she is about to learn how hard it is to "treat someone as yourself".