The Golden Rule wants us to treat others as we would like them to
treat us.
The much loved and well-known golden rule was given by Jesus. Though not original to him nearly all
Christians are aware of it and adore it as a marvellous moral insight.
Jesus said that we must always treat others as we would like them to treat us and that this fulfils and sums up the Law and the Prophets. Jesus made it a law for us. This was vindictive for law threatens. Law says you deserve to be punished and must be punished if you disobey. If Jesus had made it just good advice, it would have been more helpful. No he had to sour it with religious nastiness.
Jesus is implying that we would like to obey the Law. He knowingly lied for the Hebrews did not cherish the Law and God whined
time and time again that they did not want to keep it. Yet he says here they like the Law. And who could blame the Hebrews for disliking
or even despising it when it commanded murder and mutilation and forbade
freedom of thought? The last thing on
the mind of the Law was Jesus’ golden rule.
In actual fact, the golden rule should be called the bloody rule because
it is dangerous.
Different people like or approve of different things. The absurdity of the Golden Rule is obvious for some people like
to be trampled on. It is too vague.
Some souls like being doormats and others do
not. Jesus was declaring on his divine
authority that everybody was really the same – he was proposing a vicious new
religious doctrine that denies what is in front of you like all the others
do. This was necessary for his rigid
moral system that forbade anything that reeked of sexual desire outside of
marriage, that commanded the treating of people who did wrong and were a bit
stubborn as pariahs, that commanded too generous
forgiving and so on. If you admit that
people are different then you have less room for a fixed morality. For example, breaking confidentiality for a
greater good would be permitted if the victim hardly cares. If it would hurt the person a lot then keep
it would be the greater good.
If Jesus had said, “Always treat others according to the way you believe
others should treat you”, it would have been better. It still wouldn't be perfect because you would
want to be euthanased if you went completely mad.
Jesus was speaking to Jews. They were told to love and adore the Law of God so they were to want to be stoned to death if they sinned in adultery or homosexuality etc. Many hate to admit that Jesus could have implied such a thing by the commandment.
Some Christians argue that Jesus did mean that. But would Jesus have meant to say that you should get others executed for crimes against the Law for you believe that you should be killing by stoning if you commit such crimes? He certainly could have. The thought that he did not when he included a murderous zealot, Simon, among his apostles is inconclusive as evidence against this because Jesus could be a hypocrite. Others point out that he did not call for the legal murder of the Jews whose scheming put him on the cross. But it wasn't really illegal for Jesus did deserve to die according to the Law for blaspheming if he was not the Messiah he claimed to be.
Jesus would have meant the rule to be, like to be treated as the Law
wants you to be and treat others the same.
The rule implies that you have to treat yourself as you would like others
to treat you. It allows you to be wanted
to be treated well. Thus, it wholly
contradicts Jesus’ teaching that we must love God alone. Jesus did not advocate that Christian
interpretation of his rule.
If you are special then you have to get special treatment from others
because they would like you to treat them as special if they were. The crowd was encouraged to think of Jesus as
someone superior to themselves.
Jesus was hinting that he wanted to be their cult-leader.
The Golden Rule is as much of a failure as is love your neighbour as yourself. Love your neighbour as yourself does no good at all. Jesus made it the second greatest commandment. But it is not. The view that certain things are wrong under all circumstances is the ethical theory of absolutism. Absolutism ignores the consequences of doing or not doing something. Consequentalism is the theory that even murder, though bad, is right under certain circumstances and it all depends on the intended results. You can't mix them up. If any harmful actions are right because of the intended consequences then there is no room for saying things like abortion is always morally wrong etc. Catholicism has a lot of absolutism in its theology. Divorce is never right. Contraception is wrong even when it protects from AIDS. Disbelieving in what God has supposedly told the Church is always wrong too.
So Jesus' commandment was useless for it didn't tell us how to love. What is the use of love if you should let people divorce and don't know this and think divorce is always wrong?
Jesus then should have declared either absolutism or consequentalism to be true.
The only reason he gave love your neighbour as yourself such a high status was because God commanded it. So we are to keep the rule because God commanded it. Jesus didn't care if it was right or wrong or dangerous or whatever. Pleasing religion was all that mattered.
We would worry, as would the psychiatric world, if the commandment said, "Love your neighbour more than yourself." But Jesus said that the first greatest commandment was to love and serve God totally and without any reservations. So God comes first. This makes "Love your neighbour as yourself" as bad as "Love your neighbour more than yourself." In principle, they are the same: they both require you to devalue yourself.
Jesus said the Golden Rule was the summary of the law and the prophets. He said that about love your neighbour as yourself as well.
Fundamentalist Christians hope that Darwinism isn't true. Even if Darwinism is not true we still live by its rule, survival of the fittest. Do you like it when somebody works harder for an exam than you? Do you like it when they get higher grades than you? Even if you are happy for them there will be a part of you that wishes that you were the one that came out on top. You just can't keep the Golden Rule.
To treat others as you would like them to treat you is based on the idea
that if you don’t do this they will do bad to
you. It is based on the fear of
retaliation. The ethic will only lead to resentment as all “moralities” based
on fear do (page 36, What Do
Existentialists Believe?).
Some say that the Golden Rule makes sense for if you hate something evil and you embody it you will hate yourself and draw hatred from others on yourself. That is total rubbish as the following example shows. A man can hate his wife cheating on him but have no problem with cheating on her. The Golden Rule fails to ban anything so it is no good. Again the Christians will object that the rule is not about rules but about us whatever we do and whatever mistakes we make retaining a concern for others in our hearts. What it really wants us to do is to force others to do what we like. Concern alone is useless. It is better to do loads of good just because you want to score Brownie points than to do less thanks to concern. So the concern interpretation makes it contradict itself for it pretends to be a moral rule and fails. The same failure exists with love your neighbour as yourself.
Suppose you should treat others as you would like to be treated. Men and women are different. So it follows that the rule will work better between man and man for men know each other better than women can know men. And so with women. It implies the sexes should be segregated.
The Golden Rule as popularly understood is foundationally atheistic. If God is all-good then God should come first just like Jesus commanded when he said we must love God with all our hearts and faculties. Therefore all your actions should be motivated towards God and nobody else. In that light, to refuse to hurt others because you don’t like to be hurt is heretical and sinful. You should do it not because of your likes but because of what God likes. You cannot treat God as you would like to be treated if you were God for you don’t know what that is like and God has no needs but is perfectly happy for being almighty he needs nothing. The Golden Rule becomes vulgar when you think that if you die for other people you should like them to die for you!
To treat others as you would like to be treated presumes that you are a better judge than anybody else about what people should like. Its arrogance and pride and selfishness.
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