Turn the golden rule inside out

As a student, we are taught that the main thing one should never do is to copy someone else’s work. The quickest way to get yourself into deep trouble is to steal someone’s way of expressing an idea without giving them credit for it. Copy the encyclopedia article into your term paper and you will find yourself in a heap of trouble. It’s that simple.

It is a little embarrassing to find that Jesus preached a very unoriginal idea and gave no credit for it anywhere. I’m talking about what we now know as The Golden Rule. Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It was such an unoriginal thought Jesus might not have known who to quote. I found a bunch of examples that predated Jesus’ sermon without even trying hard.

The first one Jesus could have copied from was the famous Jewish teacher Hillel. Fifty years before Jesus was born, Hillel said, “Do not do to others what you would not like others to do to you.” Of course, Jesus made it sound more positive, but the idea is the same.

But Hillel was not exactly original, almost 300 years earlier (338 bc), the Greek Isocrates wrote, “Act toward others as you desire them to act toward you.” 

But he might have just been changing a few words around on Aristotle who sat down in 385 bc to pen, “We should conduct ourselves toward others as we would have them act toward us.”

But Aristotle was just building on the fifth century bc writings of Thales who said, “Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.”

It’s not that the idea is a Greek one, Confucious wrote around 500 bc to say that you should, “Do unto another what you would have him do unto you, and do not do unto another what you would not have him do unto you.” Confucious added, “Thou needest this law alone. It is the foundation of all the rest.”

But Confucious wrote that 150 years after Pittacus said, “Do not to your neighbor what you would take ill from him.”

And Confucious was a full 500 years after the Brahman work the Mahabharata which said, “This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain done unto you.”

The Golden Rule, as it came to be called in the 1700s, is found in writings of cultures all around the world through the millennia. What a nice, neat, safe and easy notion. The idea that we should do to others, as we would have them do to us is hard wired into the world we live in. Whether they want to admit it or not, everyone who is connected to reality knows this. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you is the way the world was created to be.

OK, Jesus was not exactly being original. However, Jesus does not just drop the line and then go on. Jesus uses the Golden Rule as part of a bigger point in the sixth chapter of Luke’s Gospel. Jesus builds toward The Golden Rule and then away from that rule to expand the message. The effect is quite different.

Jesus first commands his followers to love, do good, bless, and pray. That sounds easy enough. However, we are to do all these good things for the ones who hate us. Jesus says love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you. By the time he gets around to saying, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” the idea doesn’t sound safe, or easy anymore. Jesus turns The Golden Rule, which is basically self-centered, inside out. I will do to you what I want done to me is a reciprocal deal. It could be seen as an I’ll scratch your back in hopes that you will scratch mine kind of arrangement.

We are to love and do good knowing full well that other people can and probably will disappoint us. The others we are doing unto will be among those who are hating us, cursing us, and abusing us. We are to love and do good because that is the way Children of God act.

Jesus did not just stand up and preach this message. Jesus lived the message. Jesus loved the scribes and Pharisees who spoke out against him. Jesus loved Pilate who sentenced him to death. And Luke tells us that as Jesus was dying on the cross he looked out on those who were killing him and the ones who came out to mock him as he died and prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

That was love to Jesus—self-giving love that did not stop giving even when it became clear that the object of that love would not respond. Jesus treated others as he wanted to be treated well after there was a possible pay-off for him. In dying, Jesus showed how far he was willing to go to show his love for all of us.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is Pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)

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