What
exactly is a New Year’s resolution? It’s a “to do” list for the first week of
January.
Study
after study shows that, for the most part, New Year’s resolutions aren’t kept
well. So, instead of a list of possible New Year’s resolutions, I’m going to
offer for your consideration just one rule for living in 2020. This rule is one
line from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this
is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12, NRSV).
This rule is, of course, popularly known as what the Golden
Rule. It’s one of Jesus’ most well-known teachings. In many ways this rule is simple and straightforward. Yet applying it isn't always so simple. I wonder if a few guiding principles may help us to live daily according to this foundational ethical principle. Let
me begin to get into a few such guiding principles with a case study.
Recently
I was on my way home from the office during rush hour and traffic was really
heavy. I was making the left turn from Holly Springs Road onto Sunset Lake Road
and, as usual, of the two turning lanes, I chose the left one because I knew
that the right turning lane ended not far after the turn.
On
this particular day, something happened that has never happened to me before in
almost nine years of regularly making that same turn. Traffic suddenly backed up as I was
turning onto Sunset Lake Road such that I was left blocking the intersection as
the light was changing. So I moved over into the other turning lane so that I
wouldn’t be blocking traffic.
Then
I turned on my left turn signal, needing for someone in the bumper-to-bumper
traffic in other lane to let me in before my lane soon ended. The closest driver
refused to let me in, no doubt thinking that I was one of those aggravating
drivers trying to get a few car lengths ahead in the race to get home.
Fortunately, the driver behind him let me in.
This
brings us to one of the difficulties in applying the Golden Rule. We often
don’t have all relevant information when we find ourselves in a circumstance in
which we have the opportunity to exercise the Golden Rule. The driver that
wouldn’t let me in may have thought he was applying the Golden Rule well. He
likely concluded that I was just trying to break in line and save a few seconds
on the trip home and he may have thought he was doing me a favor by showing me
that bad behavior shouldn’t be rewarded.
The
problem is, in that case, he was wrong about my motivation. I was simply trying
to avoid blocking an intersection. Had he known this, my guess is that he would
have gladly let me in front of him. As it is, he probably went home with the
self-satisfied comfort that he did what he could to teach me a lesson when, in
fact, he was just mean.
But
let’s say I had been one of those drivers trying to save a few seconds on the
way home. Does the driver who wouldn’t let me in have any clue as to why I may
have been in a hurry? What if I was running late for a planned family gathering
and I just trying to be less late? What if I needed a suit at the cleaners for
a meeting the next day and I was trying to get there before they close?
Does
the opportunity to teach a lesson to a potentially rude driver rise above the
risk that I might instead be hindering a driver with a good reason for being in
that other lane? Not in my view. Not letting me in wasn’t going to cost that
driver more than a second or two on his trip home, so he would have been better
off to err on the side of grace. Plus, the driver trying to get out of the lane
that was ending might not have been rude at all. Maybe the route was new to him
and he didn’t know the lane he was in ended after the turn until he made the
turn.
So
I think this is an ancillary rule to the Golden Rule: We rarely have complete information in a situation in which we can
exercise the Golden Rule, so we must err on the side of grace. After all,
God’s grace in Christ is so deep and so wide that Christ died for the ungodly as we read in Romans 5:6. Christ died
for those who, by definition, don’t deserve it. We rarely go wrong in erring on
the side of grace when we follow the One who has shown us the way of amazing
grace.
This
guiding principle that can help us to embrace our sacred purpose of living
according to the Golden Rule is one principle of several that I consider
particularly important in our culture right now. We all know how polarized, how
divisive, how coarse, how corrosive our national discourse has become. So, as
we stand at the threshold of what unfortunately is shaping up to be an ugly
election year, we perhaps need a reminder of the bedrock principle of the
Golden Rule and some of its implications.
In
this vein, we must bear in mind that living
according to the Golden Rule means always showing respect for others. Don’t
you want to be treated with respect? Of course! Do to others as you would have
them do to you—respect them. We’d all like to think this doesn’t need to be
said. But these days some prominent leaders of our nation in politics, business, and even
religion speak publicly as if those with whom they disagree are
worthy of no respect whatsoever.
We’re
not going to agree on everything. It’s just not going to happen. Yet the Golden
rule compels us to respect one another even when we disagree because we must do
to others as we would have them to us.
Hand-in-hand
with this guiding principle is the importance of refraining from using inflammatory language and derogatory names in our
discourse. Do you want incendiary language hurled your way or disparaging
labels hung on you? No. Do to others as you would want for them to do to you.
I
feel a little silly saying this—it seems like such an obvious application of
the Golden Rule. But, unfortunately, hardly a day goes by that there isn’t some
headline of a leader of our society using an insulting name against another
leader which only deepens divisions and pushes us further away from real
solutions to serious problems. Demonization
seems to be a glorified pursuit these days.
Golden
Rule people just don’t live that way. In this same discourse Jesus commanded us
to love our enemies. Demonizing our enemies is incompatible with loving them.
Another
related guiding principle is that we
must not make broad generalizations about individuals or groups. I’ve got
an old van that’s ugly. It’s 20 years old and the paint is faded and peeling.
It’s missing a hubcap and the engine makes a loud, weird noise. But it’s handy
for hauling pine straw and garbage and that’s the sort of thing for which I
typically use it. However, my main car got rear-ended recently and I had to
drive that old van for a week while my car was being repaired. I was
embarrassed to be seen in that ugly rattletrap so much. Why? Because I figured
other drivers were drawing conclusions about me that didn’t fit me.
I
know, that’s vain on my part. I’m sorry. But it shows that I’m not comfortable
when I even think others may be making broad generalizations about me. So I
shouldn’t be making broad generalizations about others because I don’t like it
when I even suspect that’s being done to me.
But
a lot of the broad generalizations made widely in our culture are much more
destructive than the ones that may have been made about me when I was driving
that ugly van every day for a week. Many broad generalizations lead us to
withhold compassion from people in desperate need of it. Many broad generalizations
lead us to put up barriers where we should be building bridges. Many broad
generalizations breed increasing discontent where we should be nurturing greater
peace through deeper understanding.
Living by the Golden
Rule means listening patiently especially when there’s disagreement. Do you like it if
your point of view is dismissed out of hand? Do you like it if someone doesn’t
really listen to your thinking? No. Do to others as you want for them to do to
you. Listen patiently even when you have profound disagreement with someone
because that’s what you like for others to do for you.
As
obvious as this is, we have a serious patient listening deficiency in
our culture right now. There’s an echo chamber filled with ratings-driven, click-dependent
pundits more concerned with hearing cheers from those who agree than hearing
the thoughts of those who disagree. Those pundits on radio, TV, and the
Internet are, through their example, adversely influencing interactions all
over the place. Real listening in which we seek points of mutual agreement or
at least mutual interest is cast aside in favor scoring points in a debate. As
the Apostle Paul said in the so-called love chapter of 1 Corinthians, we all
see through a glass darkly. None of us has a corner on the truth and we must
humbly relate to others accordingly, affording them the respect of our
attentive listening.
Living according to
the Golden Rule means defending those who are victims of Golden Rule abuse. Golden Rule people
must stand up for the Golden Rule. When we see the Golden Rule violated, we
have a duty to speak the truth in love—to say, “No, that’s not right; that’s
not the way Jesus taught us to treat others.” This we must do whether the
Golden Rule is violated by Republicans, Democrats, or Independents; by
conservatives, moderates, or liberals; by Tar Heels, Blue Devils, or the
Wolfpack.
William
Barclay called the Golden Rule the Everest of ethics.[i] Based on Jesus’
statement of the rule in Matthew, that’s not a bad label. In this instance, Jesus said that the Golden Rule “is the law and
the prophets” (Matt. 7:12, NRSV). In other words, this rule sums up what God
has taught us about the way we’re to treat others. He also added the phrase
“In everything …” In every realm of our
living—in politics, business, school, family, church, etc.—we must do to others
as we would have others do to us.
Jesus’
formulation of the Golden Rule in Matthew tells us something important about
Jesus. He effectively said this rule sums up what God teaches us about how
we’re to relate to others. It’s bold for a carpenter out of Nazareth to speak
as though God had given him insight into what the main thing is. It’s bold for
him to say he knows the heart of God’s will for humankind. If we believe Jesus
had the right to speak with such boldness about the will of God for us then we
have a duty to make the Golden Rule part of core of our very being.
We
live in a terribly fractured society. The fissures are deep and appear to be
widening rapidly. Yet we read in Colossians 1:20 that God, in Christ, intends
to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in
heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. We are called by Christ
to be part of that reconciliation process--to be ministers of reconciliation as we read in 2 Corinthians 5. Living according to the Golden Rule
with all of its implications is key to that process.
As
basic as this rule is, as widely as it’s claimed to be treasured, it seems to
me that it’s routinely disregarded in our culture these days. I’ve entitled
this post “The Rule for Living in 2020”. But, of course, the Golden Rule is
the rule that must govern our interactions with others every day in every year.
Yet in our divided culture, on the eve of a potentially rancorous election
year, it seems to me that the Everest of ethics needs special attention. May we
embrace our sacred purpose of living by the Golden Rule, because our community,
our world, desperately needs to see us doing so.
