Let’s Follow the Real Golden Rule   

Recently one of the vice-presidential candidates claimed that he and the state he represents follows what he referred to as “the golden rule” and recommended that we all ought to live by it. However, he wasn’t thinking of the principle in the Bible we have come to call by that name. It was quite a different idea. I won’t quote it exactly as he put it, since he seems to be yet another politician who likes to use profanity, possibly in order to sound tougher or to relate to certain people. His golden rule was basically this: “mind your own business.” 

It is interesting to see what kind of moral guidelines people come up with when they reject the teachings of scripture. Their ideas pale in comparison to what Jesus taught and what God knows is the best for both individuals and society. If we were all to live by this politician’s golden rule, our world would be far less loving and much more selfish and isolated.

Jesus taught us differently. Think about the parable of the good Samaritan as recorded in Luke 10:25-37. This is the familiar story about a man who was left injured on the side of the road after being attacked by thieves. The bad examples in this account are the two individuals who walked by and decided simply to “mind their own business.” The priest and the Levite refused to get involved and to help the victim of this crime. The hero in the story was a Samaritan who had compassion on the man and refused to mind his own business. He helped the man and saw that his needs were taken care of. Jesus pointed to him as the role model for what it means to be a neighbor, saying that we need to “go and do likewise.”

Elsewhere in the Bible we find the misguided principle of this politician being refuted. Paul plainly declared, “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). We have a responsibility to seek to do what is good for those around us, not just to keep to ourselves or look out for what is best for us. In another scripture, Paul tells us to “bear one another’s burden, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Maybe he was thinking about what Jesus affirmed as being one of the greatest commandments - to love our neighbor as ourselves. Or maybe Paul was pointing back to that actual statement which has traditionally been called the golden rule – “And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise” (Luke 6:31), or the common paraphrase, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

As followers of Christ, love compels us not to simply mind our own business. Love draws us to help those in need. Love drives us to share the good news of salvation with those who are lost. Love moves us to get out of our comfort zones and to reach out to people who are different from us. Love gives us the courage to speak the truth to those who are blind to its reality. It would be a sin for us just to mind our own business while people around us are suffering, while our society is being led into falsehoods, while souls are traveling on the road toward destruction, and while innocent lives are being taken.

God knows what we need and what our world needs today. It isn’t to mind our own business. It is to love as Christ loves and to treat others the way we would want to be treated.