The Rules We Live By

“Therefore all that you wish men to do to you, even so do you also to them...”

The traditional title for this saying of our Lord Jesus found in Mt.7:12 and Lk.6:31 is “The Golden Rule”. In the Old Testament and in nearly every other major culture was the rule: do not do to others what you do not want done to you. This older rule is what most of us try to or imagine we live by.

In actual day to day life most of the time we fall even lower than this rule of avoiding evil in our standard of treating others. We employ the law of talion – the retaliation of an eye for an eye.

And there is a more insidious rule we use. It is a clawing and rending wolf in sheep's clothing. It is a version of the law of talion pretending to be a helpful version of the Golden Rule - “I will treat others the way I have been treated”.

Once, when I went to the playground as a young parent, I noticed another father with a very young son. As the boy was riding his little bike he fell off and started crying. His father immediately started laughing loudly. As a father I intuited right away that the man was not simply being senselessly cruel. He was trying to train his son that life is sometimes cruel and there is no one to feel sorry for you. “Life has made me tough and that's good- I want that for you.”

Nothing in Scripture or the Liturgy can be taken out of the context of the Church's Faith and still be effective. The words of consecration have no effect outside the intention to offer the Holy Sacrifice with the intention of the Body of Christ. So too with the Golden Rule in the Bible. It is clear from the rest of Scripture, especially in St. Luke, that our Lord wants us to do positive good to others not just to avoid evil. And he wants us to do it even for, and especially for, those who cannot repay us or who have done evil to us. Our charity does not depend on time – not how they treated you in the past, how they treat you now or how they could treat you in the future.

Still more necessary context is the rest of the above quote of Mt.7:12 ...for this is the law and the prophets”. When Jesus again speaks about our neighbor in Mt.22:34-40, He tells us the two greatest commandments. “And on these two depend the whole law and the prophets.”

And Mt.7:13 tells us what happens to us when we fail to try to follow the Golden Rule.