FdD Notebook No. 32 – 5/13/26

Bonjour dear readers,

For those who didn't know, we will be spending two months in the United States this summer. The preparations are a bit stressful, but it's always a great joy to see our family and friends again.

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

We’re all familiar with the Golden Rule as formulated by Jesus in Matthew 7:12. This same basic principle is found in several religious and ethical traditions, Buddhism for example, but Jesus’s version is distinctive in being the “positive” version. More often one finds the “negative” version, that is, “Whatever you do not want people to do to you, do not do to them.” The difference can lead to some interesting discussion. Here’s what one Buddhist author has to say:

It so happens, however, that the way the awakened would put it is one of the formulations Western philosophy has rejected: “Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you.” The reason this formulation has been generally overlooked in Western philosophy is because the positive formulation is thought to be more . . . well, positive. While the positive formulation would have us get out there and do something, the negative formulation seems passive. Yet this habitual response overlooks the fact that the positive formulation always presents us with intractable problems, problems that simply don’t occur with the negative formulation at all. […] The positive formulation tells you what you should do. The negative formulation is not prescriptive.

Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple. The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day, p. 99.

According to Steve Hagen, the positive version of the Golden Rule is impractical because it leads to absurd conclusions. Would I like it for my neighbor to give me $100? If so, then I ought to give him $100. Or would I like him to give me $200? $1,000? All his money? Where is the limit? At what point would I have fulfilled the commandment? Since I would always like to receive more, I can never be done giving until I have absolutely nothing left.

The negative formulation, on the other hand, encounters none of these difficulties. This version is satisfied when I simply refrain from doing harm to others. I stay within my own limits, and I maintain the right to continue having my own existence. And if we could also just live by this simple rule, we would all live in harmony, with each one of us respecting those around him.

Does that mean that the negative formulation is in fact the better one? Or should we be concerned that we’ve misunderstood what Jesus was saying?

As a matter of face, when you try to press the apparent logic of the Golden Rule in this way, you completely miss the heart of Jesus’ teaching. The mistake is to treat the Golden Rule as though it were a mechanical law, when in reality it is a principle for life. We Westerners are quite fond of mechanical laws. Our legal codes are built this way, with the expectation that the text of the law will be applied mechanically like a mathematical formula. This is not bad in itself. Sometimes the intent of a law gets lost in the strict interpretation of its text, but on the whole society benefits when the application of the law tends toward objectivity, where the text matters more than the opinions of judges.

Biblical laws and commandments, however, do not function in this way. The logic that governs biblical commandments is that the commandment establishes a principle that (1) is not limited to the precise application stated in the text of the law, and (2) is bounded by the other principles established by the body of laws as a whole. Thus the Mosaic law does not propose a precise rule for every possible situation; rather, the intention is that the principles underlying the explicit laws should be applied to situations where no explicit law exists. This approach is more flexible, and more importantly, it aims at the heart rather than merely at external actions.

And of course it is the heart that Jesus is interested in. He has no intention of giving people rules of conduct that can be applied mechanically without any thought for the condition of the heart. If I were indeed to give all my money to my neighbor while at the same time despising him in my heart, I would not have fulfilled Jesus’ Golden Rule in the least. Jesus’ ethical teaching offers his disciples neither a minimum to be done in order to be “in compliance,” nor a maximum at which people could boast of having done everything. What Jesus wants from his disciples is that they adopt an entirely new perspective, replacing the question “What do I have to do?” with “What can I do?” His teaching is not designed to regulate a society, but to inspire those who have been transformed by God’s love to pass on that same love through their own lives.

And this is where the positive version of the Golden Rule shows its superiority over the negative version. The latter proposes reasonable boundaries; as long as I stay within my borders I have not wronged my neighbor. I may not have done him any good either, but that’s not necessary. I may decide to go above and beyond, but the “Golden Rule” in its negative version can be also be satisfied by simply ignoring my neighbor.

As for Jesus, he removes the border entirely. Jesus pushes me toward my neighbor: What good can I do for him? How can I serve him in love? How can I help him understand that God is love and that he is establishing his kingdom on earth? Jesus’ teaching has nothing to say about how I can pursue my own private enlightenment; his disciples are called to be salt and light in a dark and decaying world.

So as it turns out, Hagen is entirely right to say that Jesus’ version of the Golden Rule has no reasonable limit. It does not, and intentionally so, because the love of God has no reasonable limit. Rather, “God demonstrates his love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

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I finished The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright which I can happily say rewards the reader for his investment. Now I’m going through Counseling the Hard Cases for a Masters class and I’ve started on Le comte de Monte Cristo.

A very sweet video, and (if you ask me) good news for this summer. (There are English subtitles.)

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Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.
1 Corinthians 9:24