Sometimes in the teachings of Jesus what appears to be very simple when we first think about it turns out to be immensely complex and challenging once we consider it more carefully. This is nowhere more true than in Christ's teaching of what is often called "the Golden Rule" (because it is considered the highest and most important of ethical rules - the rule of rules if you like).
We find Christ's teaching on this in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:12 (CEV): "Treat others as you want them to treat you. This is what the Law and the Prophets are all about."
The same teaching is repeated in Luke 6:31 (CEV): "Treat others just as you want to be treated."
This seems so straightforward does it not? We might think (and I have sometimes heard this said) that the problem is not with understanding Christ's command here, but with finding the moral strength and courage to obey it. There is much truth in this. For fallen human beings, doing the right thing is more often than not something we find more difficult than doing the wrong thing. Certainly that is true in my case at least.
Yet I want to come at the Golden Rule from a slightly different angle and suggest that although the words are admirably simple and clear, it is a bit more difficult to understand what the Golden Rule actually requires of us than we might think.
The easier part of the equation is that how we treat others is to be the same as we want them to treat us. There is not much that is hard to understand about that.
However, the difficulty comes when we try to decide whether we apply a subjective or an objective test to determine what we would want if we put ourselves in the other person's shoes. Does it refer to what we would actually want if we were that other person (subjective test) or does it refer to what we think that other person should or ought to want in the situation (objective test)?
The difference between these two ways of looking at what we would want someone to do for us can give entirely different answers to what we should do in order to follow the Golden Rule.
Let's look at a very realistic everyday example. Suppose we come across someone begging in the street who asks us for money. Does the Golden Rule suggest we should give them some cash or not?
The answer that many Christians would give to this situation is that we should not give them money but rather offer to help them in some other way, such as buy them something to eat or a hot cup of tea or coffee. The reasoning for this is along the lines that many beggars are addicted to drugs or alcohol and giving them money might only give them the means to feed their addiction rather than do them any good.
This answer is clearly deciding the issue on an objective basis. We are deciding that if we were that person asking for money what we would want is what we should want in our judgment (nourishment for our bodies) rather than what we very well would really want (subjectively) if we were that person (money to buy a beer we have decided).
Yet, I don't think the issue is as straightforward as this, and I'm not sure Christ intended us to interpret the Golden Rule this way.
For one thing, applying an objective test forces us try to look behind the person's desires (or what our desires would be if we were that person) to a moral standard that may or may not be accurately applied to the situation. But we can never really do that accurately. Who are we to decide that the person asking for money is going to use it to buy drink or drugs?
What if we really were that beggar, and we needed the money to put dinner on our children's table that night or buy a bus ticket so we could visit our sick mother in hospital? Would we want someone to disbelieve us and buy us a cup of tea instead? Would we want someone to disbelieve us and mistrust our motives? I cannot think so. We would want someone to believe us, so we should believe other people, it seems to me.
I believe that Christ would have us take people at their word when they ask for help, unless they are very obviously lying. If they are deceiving us then that is not on our conscience but on theirs and we can leave it to God to deal with that.
In other words, I am (tentatively) suggesting that we should be looking at a subjective test for what we would want in the other person's shoes, because in reality, without perfect knowledge which only God has, a truly objective test is impossible anyway.
Yet this creates its own problems. If someone says they are not interested in hearing the gospel message, should we respect their wishes and leave them alone because that is how we would want to be treated if someone tried to convert us to another religion and we told them we weren't interested? Or should we persevere with them even though they don't seem interested, because we consider that if only they knew that the gospel really was true then they would want us to persevere in trying to get the message across? The first approach applies a subjective test, the second approach is an objective one. I think different Christians would probably take different approaches here, though I'm not sure both are valid applications of the Golden Rule.
Finally, consider politics for a moment (as most of us in the UK are doing right now in the middle of a general election campaign). Should Christians try to create a society where everyone has to accept Christian morality on issues like euthanasia or traditional marriage even though many citizens take a different view of these issues than most Christians do, and even though any harm anyone does by taking a different view is only to themselves (before God as we see it)? Should we seek to make certain things unlawful and punishable because we view them as great sins in the nation? Should we seek to treat people who do things we do not approve of as criminals if we can get a majority to get it through Parliament?
Does the Golden Rule offer any guidance? If we were the minority, would we want others to maybe criminalise what we consider to be right and good? If not, should we not do the same to others when we are the majority? This would be the subjective application of the Golden Rule. Or should we conclude that if a form of behaviour is sinful, we should want people to use the criminal law to try to dissuade us from that action? This would be an objective application of the Golden Rule.
The problem is that people cannot agree on what is the objective truth. For a Christian, banning other religions might be considered an objective good (and it has been done often enough in the history of Christian nations). But for a Muslim, banning Christianity might be considered an objective good (and is essentially what has happened in a number of Islamic countries).
Two sides each applying the Golden Rule in what they consider to be an objective way is a recipe only for conflict and strife between people. I find it hard to accept that the Prince of Peace would want this.
The only way the Golden Rule can lead to peaceful co-existence between people who disagree with each other is to apply it subjectively. Doing so would mean that we would not seek to ban another religion because we would not want our religion banned if we were in the minority facing a majority intent on outlawing our faith.
If this approach is correct, then rather than seeking to use politics to force people who are not Christians to live as if they were, the Golden Rule might suggest we take a more libertarian approach rather than an authoritarian one, allowing people to make up their own minds about a number of moral hot topics rather than have a view they disagree with forced on them by us, because we would never want non-Christian views forced on us if someone were to have the power to do so.
This would still leave us free to try to persuade others that the Christian way is the best way to live in the hope that opponents will one day be allies and that more and more people will live within the parameters of Christian ethics because they want to and never just because the law says they will be punished if they don't. The freedom to persuade others that Christianity is right comes at a price however. The price is a free society where others are also free to persuade that Christianity is wrong. Since we are convinced that Christianity is true, surely it is a small price to pay for such great opportunities for the gospel? We might even argue that a free society is the most important instance of the Golden Rule being put into practice in the history of humanity.
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