The Golden Rule.

Matthew 7.12, Luke 6.31.

The briefest form I’ve found of the “Golden Rule,” as it’s called, is probably C.S. Lewis’s “Do as you’d be done by.”

I grew up hearing it as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And this actually doesn’t come from the King James Version. The KJV has, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” Lk 6.31 KJV I tried tracking down the other wording, and the earliest I’ve found it is 1790.

Here’s my translation of the two different ways Jesus taught it.

Matthew 7.12 KWL

“So, everything you² want people doing for you²,

you² do this for them.

That’s the Law and the Prophets in sum.”

Luke 6.31 KWL

“Same as you² want

that people might do for you²,

do likewise for them.”

It’s “the Law and the Prophets,” as Jesus put it—meaning the bible of his day, the Old Testament. (Yes the OT consists of Law, Prophets, and Writings; but Israelis understood “Prophets” meant all the ancient stuff written by legitimate prophets, which’d include the Writings. And since Sadducees and Samaritans insisted the bible only consists of the Law, it’s a reminder that’s not so.) The entire moral teaching of the scriptures can be distilled into this one concept: Do as you’d be done by.

As seen in other religions.

The Golden Rule is a simple idea, one found in pretty much every religion. But the way Jesus puts it is a little different than how other religions have it. In Christianity it’s an active command: Do as you’d be done by. Other religions make it passive: Do not do as you’d not be done by. Or as Kong Qiu (Latin “Confucius”) put it in the 500s BC, “Never impose on others what you wouldn’t choose for yourself.” Analects 15.24

The Pharisees of Jesus’s day had also figured this out. Christians nowadays assume Pharisees were nothing more than hypocrites who spent all their time looking for ways to look like they were following Law instead of actually obeying it. And y’know, they certainly did do that. As do Christians nowadays. But the founders of the Pharisaic tradition actually did strive to follow God. Some of ’em wanted to make God’s commands easier to follow, not by using every loophole they could invent, but by summarizing the commands into something easy to memorize, and do.

This was the mindset of Hillel the Elder, as we see in his story in the Talmud. Goes like yea.

On another occasion, a certain pagan came to Shammai and told him, “Make me a convert, but on one condition: Teach me the entire Law while I stand on one foot.” Shammai smacked him away with the measuring stick in his hand.

Next he went to Hillel, who told him, “What’s hateful to you, don’t do to your neighbor. That’s the whole Law. The rest is commentary. Go learn it.” Gemara on Shabbat 2.5

I don’t know whether Jesus knew Hillel’s story at all, or whether the Hillel story was actually plagiarized from Jesus. (Hillel and Jesus’s lifespans actually overlap, and Jesus may very well have met him in temple when he was a kid.) But it doesn’t matter. Hillel’s version is likewise a passive form of the Golden Rule. Jesus’s is active.

And Jesus actually isn’t the only guy to teach an active-form Golden Rule. There are others! They’re rare though.

• The Chinese philosopher Mozi (ca. 470–391BC) put it, “One would do for others as one would do for oneself.”
• Muhammad ibn Abdullah, (570–632) prophet and founder of Islam, according to Shiite tradition, put it, “As you would have people do to you, do to them.”

Everybody else seems to have simply found it easier to forbid evil, than encourage good.

Active good, not passive.

So, same as Jesus taught, we gotta have other people in mind when we act. Think about their wishes. Think about what’s good for them. Think about them.

Stop thinking of other people as obstacles, roadblocks to move aside, or pawns to manipulate when they get in our way. They’re not that. They’re God’s children. They’re people with hopes, dreams, desires… some good, some bad, some we consider silly. But again: It’s not what we want. It’s about them.

“Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you,” George Bernard Shaw cynically wrote in his 1903 play Man and Superman. “Their tastes may not be the same.” Shaw wasn’t entirely kidding: We have a bad habit of projecting our motives, wants, and attitudes upon others. “I like this,” we figure, “therefore she has to like this.” She doesn’t have to, and might not; and really, that’s not truly thinking about them. That’s projected selfishness. Let’s not commit that. Let’s find out what they really want before we do for them.

“Do as you’d be done by” forces us to emerge from our self-centered universe and think about others for once. And since the starting-point of sin is the exact opposite—looking out for number one, regardless of all others, including God—the suppression of our self-interest in favor of someone else’s point of view is indeed the starting-point of rightness.

It likewise reflects God’s behavior. He does stuff for us—and y’might notice all the stuff he does, he’d kinda like us to do back to him. (And, for that matter, do for everyone else.) He loves us. He’s infinitely forgiving. He’s patient, kind, puts up with all things, believes and hopes and endures all things, demonstrates joy, peace, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He wants our best. We should want his best.

When we spend some time meditating on just exactly what the end-result would be of really following Jesus’s Golden Rule, we’re gonna find ourselves coming to conclusion after conclusion which mirror what we find throughout God’s commands: His profound concern for others, his order to the universe, his ideal way of life. We’re gonna see God’s love, and we’re gonna grow in our love for God. ’Cause it’s all there, hiding in plain sight. So think on it.