It is about putting yourself first, and if you put yourself first, you cannot easily give way before others, cannot put others first, cannot exercise good manners toward others. By putting yourself first, you may be, in fact, indulging in a form of self-​worship, a worship of Me. How does the Bible describe someone who does that? As a “greedy person​—which means being an idolater,” as showing “covetousness, which is idolatry.” (Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:5) Whom do such people really serve? “Their god is their belly.” (Philippians 3:19) The sordid alternative life-​styles that many people have chosen as morally right for them and the calamitous, death-​dealing consequences of those life-​styles only prove the truthfulness of Jeremiah 10:23: “I well know, O Jehovah, that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.”

The Bible foresaw all of this and predicted it as a warning feature of “the last days,” as recorded at 2 Timothy 3:1-5, New English Bible: “You must face the fact: the final age of this world is to be a time of troubles. Men will love nothing but money and self; they will be arrogant, boastful, and abusive; with no respect for parents, no gratitude, no piety, no natural affection; they will be implacable in their hatreds, scandal-​mongers, intemperate and fierce, strangers to all goodness, traitors, adventurers, swollen with self-​importance. They will be men who put pleasure in the place of God, men who preserve the outward form of religion, but are a standing denial of its reality. Keep clear of men like these.”

We have drifted far from what we were created to be​—in the image and likeness of God. The potential attributes of love, wisdom, justice, and power are still within us but have become unbalanced and distorted. The first step on the way of return is revealed in the last sentence of the Bible text quoted above: “Keep clear of men like these.” Seek out a new environment, one that will change even your internal feelings.

However, it is the Bible that excels in giving the inspired formula for changing the inner person of the heart.

First, Ephesians 4:22-24: “You should put away the old personality which conforms to your former course of conduct and which is being corrupted according to his deceptive desires . . . You should be made new in the force actuating your mind, and should put on the new personality which was created according to God’s will in true righteousness and loyalty.”

Second, Colossians 3:9, 10, 12-14: “Strip off the old personality with its practices, and clothe yourselves with the new personality, which through accurate knowledge is being made new according to the image of the One who created it. Accordingly, as God’s chosen ones, holy and loved, clothe yourselves with the tender affections of compassion, kindness, lowliness of mind, mildness, and long-​suffering. Continue putting up with one another and forgiving one another freely if anyone has a cause for complaint against another. Even as Jehovah freely forgave you, so do you also. But, besides all these things, clothe yourselves with love, for it is a perfect bond of union.”

Historian Will Durant said: “The greatest question of our time is not communism versus individualism, not Europe versus America, not even the East versus the West; it is whether men can live without God.”

To live a successful life, we must heed his counsel. “My son, my law do not forget, and my commandments may your heart observe, because length of days and years of life and peace will be added to you. May loving-​kindness and trueness themselves not leave you. Tie them about your throat. Write them upon the tablet of your heart, and so find favor and good insight in the eyes of God and of earthling man. Trust in Jehovah with all your heart and do not lean upon your own understanding. In all your ways take notice of him, and he himself will make your paths straight.”​—Proverbs 3:1-6.

The kind and considerate good manners learned by centuries of living are not excess baggage after all, and the Bible’s guidelines for living are not outmoded at all but will prove to be for mankind’s eternal salvation. Without Jehovah, they cannot continue to live, for ‘with Jehovah is the source of life.’​—Psalm 36:9.