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Golden rule Jesus says, Do to others as you would have them do to you. Hillel the Elder, the greatest Jewish sage of the Second Temple period, says, Don't do to your neighbor what is hateful to you. Which wise man is right? I think Jesus is right. We each need positive good will in order to cope with other people. A policy of avoiding harm isn't enough. Evolution equipped the human mind with a tendency to exaggerate others' offenses against us and to downplay our offenses against others. Without a positive motive to do good to others, we won't overcome our natural tendency to take more and share less. The golden rule also contributes to the subjectivism of postmodern morality. The rule implies that one can let one's own good intentions determine what is right rather than referring to an absolute, unchanging law. The golden rule works by asking questions rather than by answering them. Law is designed to answer questions, such as "What is required of me as a member of the community?" The golden rule instead asks, "What could you contribute as a member of the community?" It works by activating the moral imagination. The laws of Jesus' time are now outdated, such as those that established slavery, prohibited lending money at interest, or made women subject to men. But Jesus’ golden rule is timeless. Jesus’ golden rule also beats Hillel’s because Hillel’s rule only applies to one’s “neighbor,” a fellow Jew. Jesus liberalized the understanding of who counts as one’s neighbor, especially with the parable of the prodigal son. He took a sentiment intended to apply to the in-group (fellow Jews) and applied it to out-groups (Samaritans, sinners, etc.). The Jesus Seminar rated the golden rule "gray" rating, which means they don't see it as particularly likely that Jesus actually said it, or at least originated it. Many of the fellows treat the golden rule as essentially the same as the negative version that preceeded Jesus and therefore conclude that early Christians simply attributed it to Jesus. I don't agree that it's essentially the same and am more inclined to think that Jesus really came up with it.
Iron rule of everyday reciprocity If the golden rule of reciprocity is “treat others the way you want to be treated,” the common-sense rule of reciprocity is “treat others according to how they treat you.” The general state of social affairs is that enemies hate each other and friends love each other. One returns love with love and violence with violence. This is where we get clannishness in all its forms: nepotism, racism, vendettas, etc. Jesus’ impossible instruction is that we are to reject the everyday rule of reciprocity and exchange it for a new one, one that flies in the face of everything our DNA and our cultures have learned about how to behave. To denote its common nature, let’s call this default rule of reciprocity the iron rule. It’s iron in the sense that it’s ironclad, a solid rule that’s hard to break. It is also with iron that men traditionally enforce this exchange: swords, guns, and nuclear missiles. While iron is the metal of Mars and war, it also represent the bonds that hold us together, the bands of iron that hold mother to child, kin to kin, and lover to lover. Secular society in the west can be seen as an elaborate attempt to accommodate the iron rule. The long-term project of western civilization has been, in part, to get people to work together efficiently without relying on any spontaneous love or virtue. The free market economic system, for example, gets people to work hard at producing the goods and offering the services that their neighbors want, all without asking people to give a rat’s ass about their neighbors as human beings. Traditional cultures base economics on obligations, duties, and privileges by class and rank. Individuals could be more virtuous or less virtuous in upholding their duties. But in modern culture, individuals are more or less successful at their careers rather than more or less virtuous at fulfilling their stations. The various communist movements incorporated concerted attempts to instill virtue into the citizens, particularly a loyalty to the revolution and to its ideals, but these projects failed and the communist countries have had to accommodate free market reforms.
Is the golden rule universal? Would Martians, Vulcans, Wookies, and other intelligent aliens have their own Jesuses and their own golden rules? Or does the golden rule represent something particular to our species or to our cultural history? My guess is that Jesus’ golden rule is universal. It doesn’t relate to any sort of biological reality, such as rules about marriage, sex, or parenting. Rules that refer even implicitly to the body are necessarily provincial rather than cosmopolitan. The human body is a very particular construction that evolved on a particular planet under particular conditions. An alien species might have a very different evolutionary history, resulting in very different instincts for marriage, sex, and parenting. For example, our rules for the age of consent generally place it lower for women than for men, as is natural considering that females reach adulthood at an earlier age than males. These rules would be reversed for an alien species whose males matured first. Rules connected to biology are likely to be particular, not universal. But the economy in any species is going to follow the law of supply and demand. Likewise, some of those aliens would likely hail the golden rule as a winning concept. The difference, of course, is that an economy follows the law of supply and demand whether the people know it or not, but the golden rule only works when the human heart puts it into practice.
See also Equality: Jesus' teaching that we are to "do unto others" contributes to the equality enjoyed by Christian and post-Christian nations. Relativism: The golden rule works even two thousand years after Jesus because it’s relative.
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contents table of contents you're already looking at it introduction for the inquisitive reader biographical overview who he was and wasn't
afterlife not Jesus' concern animal sacrifice bloodless religion apocalypse did Jesus preach hellfire? baptism sin wash for Jesus and others beatitudes Jesus' words and others' words beloved disciple witness for the un-gospel bible scripture old and new bishop the unjesus body focus on the physical Buddha Jesus' close kin charity key Christian virtue and legacy of Jesus The Da Vinci Code secret (and false) messages divorce women's status dreams convenient literary device Elijah Jewish prophet with his own second coming equality ancient source of modern egalitarianism exorcist Jesus and demons failure reinterpreting Jesus as a failure faith from trust to blind belief father Jesus on titles of honor Francis of Assisi the most Christlike Christian Gandhi the 20th century's most Christly holy man Galilee Jesus' inauspicious homeland gentiles Jesus' inadvertent audience god how Jesus became god golden rule key to Jesus' success gospels competing accounts heaven from sky to spiritual home hell revenge fantasy humanism Jesus' legacy inerrant Christian treatment of scripture Thomas Jefferson ethics of Jesus Jewish guilt Christian libel John's gospel the un-gospel John the baptist, see John the washer John the washer Jesus' apocalyptic mentor Judaism libeled religion of Jesus kingdom of god what Jesus promised Lao Tzu poet of the cosmic way logos jesus as the word of god C. S. Lewis famous, flawed trilemma little drummer boy Luke beats Matthew logos Jesus as the divine word LORD Yahweh transitioning to the one god of all Luke's gospel the all-around best gospel Mark's gospel the gospel that lost its point Mary of Magdala women, visions, and sex massacre of the innocents bloodshed starts early Matthew's gospel best gospel for church reading Mormon, see Joseph Smith Moses Jewish lawgiver Muhammad a prophet who got it right mystery Orpheus and transubstantiation oppression origin of Jesus' compassion The Passion of the Christ Luke as buzzkill Paul revealer of the revealer private and public public Jesus and secret Christ relativism the secret power of the golden rule sacrifice Jesus' death and Christian sacrament Albert Schweitzer Jesus as a failure sheol dark pit of death show Jesus' deeds as put-ons slavery abolished by Jesus' efforts Joseph Smith flesh-and-blood Jesus Socrates secular Jesus son of god on close terms with the man upstairs soul, see body synoptics three gospels that agree temple center of Jewish religion trinity unifying and divisive doctrinre vision, see dreams Yahweh, see LORD Zoroaster Persian dualistic holy man
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