The Golden Rule and “You will remain in my love if you do as I command”

This is more elaboration on a point I made in this post on John 15.

First to Recap:

The “golden rule” is for many the “gold standard” for how we should treat each other. I should be treated as I wish to be treated. This becomes our implicit definition of love.

John 15 has the wonderful command of “love”.

• Christians are to love one another (John 13). “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” This in the context of Jesus washing his disciples feet.
• We like to imagine that “love” is opposite of obligation and constraint but in John 15 the two are seen as one thing. Is this in alignment with the golden rule or opposing it?

John 15:9–17 (NET)

⁹ “Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete. ¹² My commandment is this—to love one another just as I have loved you.¹³ No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that remains, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. ¹⁷ This I command you—to love one another.

Canadian Lesbian Ring Shoppers

A story hit the net a couple of weeks ago of a lesbian couple in Canada who ordered wedding rings from a jeweler. They were pleased with their service until one of them noticed a sign in the shop reflecting the views of the store owners that marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman. The couple decided to cancel their order and request a refund (which the store was not required to provide) and it was granted.

Now let’s work at applying the golden rule.

Let’s assume the jeweler is one who is trying to love their neighbor. How did the couple wish to be treated by the store? Apparently how they initially were. They were welcomed, their wishes were discussed and accommodate to the satisfaction of the couple as demonstrated by their entering into the contract with the jewelers.

Upon one of them later seeing the sign they decided to cancel the order not because of our they were treated, but because of what the jeweler thought and expressed through the sign about the jeweler’s beliefs about same-sex marriage. What would they have the jewelers do about the jewelers moral or religious beliefs? Surrender them for the sake of the sale? They believe the jeweler is wrong and because of that they should surrender their belief and no longer promote it with words or signs.

Let’s imagine the jewelers didn’t put up the sign but kept it quiet. Let’s imagine the couple so pleased with the results and the service invited the jewelers to the wedding and the jewelers declines, and if asked why confessed their moral beliefs. Would that be love? The couple went out on a limb to invite them to the wedding. They didn’t have to. Only later to found out how the jewelers “really felt”.

Let’s imagine the jewelers demurred on the wedding invitation but later the couple bumps into the jewelers leaving a conservative church or a anti-same-sex marriage rally. Would the couple feel that they had been deceived in their friendship? It is not hard to imagine that the couple would then have felt that the jeweler should have disclosed their ideas at an earlier stage in the relationship. This isn’t hard to believe either.

Love is Complicated because “have them do TO YOU” is not always containable

Let’s imagine a couple goes out to eat to a favorite restaurant of one of the parties. Let’s say “spouse X” seems very friendly with the wait staff. There is eye contact, casual touching, laughing. Spouse Y suddenly feels a bit upset or insecure. Spouse X protests “I haven’t done anything wrong TO YOU”. But we all know that a spousal relationship is amazingly intertwined.

“Maybe you haven’t done anything, but I’m afraid you will. If you loved me you wouldn’t be so familiar with this person I don’t know…”

Consider a parent/child relationship. A parent makes claims on all sorts of things about that child. What they do. What they think. What they believe. etc.

Differentiation

Now we might rush in and say “well a secure, well differentiated person would not be so insecure about this” and there is certainly truth there. But it is also true that we swim in some libertarian waters that are dishonest or deceptive about the kinds of expansive claims that love makes in multiple directions.

Why would we say that a dishonest or cruel son dishonors his parents? Is that a failure of differentiation on the part of the parents or is it a failure of the son to love?

The golden rule can be seen as a complete claim on a person because one person binds themselves, their thoughts, their everything to the purview of the other’s desire.

We quickly see how difficult it is to love a person who has desires, beliefs, longings we don’t or even cannot share or fulfill. While responding to another at a basic, simple level in alignment with their desires is a good place to begin, this idea alone seldom can sustain us indefinitely. At some point we must look for deeper alignments and figure out what to do with differences.

The Desire of Others and Personhood

What the lesbian couple imagines the jeweler “does to them” cannot be undone unless the jeweler surrenders their beliefs. This destroys something of the jeweler’s personhood and freedom we believe.

We can look at it from the jeweler’s point of view as well. When the lesbian couple comes in and asks for rings in this scenario is that loving towards the jeweler? The couple’s relationship is their sign. Should they hide it from the jeweler? Is it loving to continue their relationship within the mental purview of the jeweler or continue to voice their demands or requests? Ought the jeweler’s moral and religious belief restrict the behavior of the lesbian couple? If the lesbians follow the golden rule to its end it should, but few of us believe that. Again, we will want to come down to a question of right and wrong and this will involve choices.

We might say “live and let live” but we all know that doesn’t mean much in a world where we need and demand justice. People hurt each other and we demand it end. The lesbians claim services because they demand justice. The jeweler demand the right to their beliefs because they claim justice. We all wish the whole world to do to us as we desire, including God.

Jesus prays “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Anyone who wants to love God then does what he wishes. That’s what John 15 says. But what does God want? Can we know? Do we care?

Do To God as you would have God do to you

If we rewrite the Golden Rule in this way we see how asymmetrical our relationship is with God. This is not a pairing between equals in any way.

We live in a world (Read Charles Taylor on Providential Deism in A Secular Age) where we imagine we ask or need nothing from God. Everything is provided by this cosmic order that provides us with a planet with food, air and other creatures.

As moralistic, therapeutic deists we construct a God of the gaps between our power and desire. We want God to leave us alone until we reach the end of our power to secure what we want, especially from other people.

What are we willing to do for God? Well then we slip back into our Providential Deism. This God who needs nothing really can’t make a claim on us apart from his desire. Without revelation what does this God ask for? He’s silent.

We then decide we need rules based on “nature” and “reciprocity” so the golden rule works nicely, except when it fails as seen above. The evolutionary psychologists will discern from nature what is “naturally right” and science will resolve all our disputes. No love is needed. All we need is the right law.

Into this the Son of Man comes and we put him on a cross for failing to comply with the Golden Rule across the culture war spectrum of Pharisees and Herodians who could not agree on much beyond that the world would be better without Jesus.