The Golden Rule
One of the corner-stone teachings in Christianity is the Golden Rule which is, in the words of our Lord Jesus: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”, found in Matthew 7:12.
Beyond doubt, it is innate in the nature of everyone to love one’s self and wish to have only the best. No one wants ill things and misfortunes to happen to them. We want others to love us, bless us, treat us kindly, speak to us nicely, help us in our time of need, offer a helping hand in our chores and work, pray for us, and many more. If we then do to others what we want them to do to us then surely love will propagate. Following the golden rule removes hate and evil and will make love abound.
For example, if we find a wallet, what do we do? We simply ask our self: “If that were our wallet, what would we want the finder to do? The answer of course is we want the wallet to be returned to us. This is then the proper action: return the wallet to the owner! If we find a beggar a street, cold and hungry, without proper clothes nor sleepers what would we do. We then put ourselves in their position and ask: If I were the beggar, what would we want others to do to us? We of course want others to have pity on us and bless us with food, clothing, sleepers, and money and maybe help us to find work. Again, this would already tell us the proper action to the beggar.
The golden rule applies to everything, even on the negative. For example, someone has done something terrible to us and we feel like we would want to take revenge and probably cause harm to happen on the offender. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ tells us, if we were the offender, what would we want the offended party to do to us. The answer of course is to show us mercy and forgiveness. This is then want we need to do, to forgive others than we may be forgiven, to show mercy that mercy may be shown to us. We leave vengeance to our Lord Jesus, who has infinite wisdom to resolve all things.
There is a rule in other religions that seem to be the same: ”Don’t do unto others what you don’t want them to do to you.” On the surface they seem to be telling the same thing. On closer analysis however, this rule prevents you from producing bad fruit, the golden rule however guides you to produce good fruit. The bible encourages us to bear good fruit. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. If we, the branches, indeed belong to the vine, we must bear good fruit. Bearing good fruit reveals our identity. If we bear grapes, then we belong to the grape vine.
Sources:
http://www.quotesofdaily.com/golden-rule-bible-quote/golden-rule-bible-quote-golden-rule-chronology/
