In Reply to: Matthew 7:12 (NT) posted by Passing By on April 18, 2004 at 15:05:47:
Thanks!
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."
Also found in Luke 6:31 "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise"
Great, I was wondering where those verses went!
Sometimes I think of my journey into traditional Christianity via the churches and some of what I learned in the COG, as a beginner's course. It is a strong foundation on which my current faith and spiritual world view is built, but nevertheless it was like a kindergarten for me, and I feel I have moved along and developed from there.
Some of the traditional assumptions and interpretations of "mainstream" Christians seem undeveloped, simplistic and primitive to me. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I have trouble with the traditional interpretation of this verse and the Golden Rule, which assumes that everyone is the same as you and everyone wants to be treated just like you want to be treated.
In my own experience, I've come to realize that it's so much better to understand what people want or need, where they are coming from, and how they want you to treat them, which is often entirely different from where you're coming from, and the way you want or expect others to treat you.
So my interpretation of "do ye even so to them" is:
Treat others as unique individuals who have needs that may be different from yours, just as you are a unique individual who has needs which may be different than those of others.
My reservations are really not towards Jesus, because I think He tried to teach us everything in steps, one at a time. I believe God tried to develop our thinking and spiritual attitude a little bit at a time, using the prophets and Jesus, bringing us from crude ideas of crime and punishment, blood sacrifice and atonement, all the way up through love and union and reconciliation with God's Spirit. My criticism if it can be called that, is towards the way traditional Christian interpretations don't do it for me anymore. I'd go as far as to say, tradtional interpretations hold back spiritual development.
If you isolate what Jesus said, (which many would argue we're not supposed to do, but bear with me) it would seem He tried to negotiate through our selfishness and egos, and sometimes speak in over-simplistic terms. A few examples:
1) Telling us to "be ye therefore perfect" and not like other sinners, which we all know is an impossibility (which is why we need him).
2) Telling us to be better than the publicans and sinners (encouraging us to compare our own righteousness and compete, and let's not get into what constitutes "healthy competition!").
It could be that whoever wrote down the Gospels did a good job of mixing in their own limitations, egos and interpretations. When I read Luke 6, I get a whole different feeling of Jesus wanting us to give willingly with no expections of return, without ulterior motives, compared to when I read the sermon on the mount in Matthew. Could it be because Luke was an empathetic physician and Matthew was a calculating bookkeeper?
Another thing I've come to move past is the traditional idea of what "enemy" means.
Romans 12:20 "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head."
This might be good advice for many situations, on how to gain the upper hand, but still, one way of understanding this is: we are being taught how to gain power and moral superiority, and heaping coals of fire on our enemies' heads certainly makes revenge our ultimate motive, doesn't it?
Granted, that isn't the only way to understand that verse, but my point is that this all appears "primitive" somehow, and it has a lot to do with negotiating with our weak undeveloped spiritual natures. I have trouble with the language of the bible, and the interpretations, but not the deeper spiritual values and meanings.
If we move past that level about how to get back at our enemies, we might for example discover that who we often consider "enemies" are actually our teachers. I don't mean this to the extreme, let's say we're generally not talking axe murderers, but the pain-in-the-asses in your daily life. They came into our lives for a reason. They define who we are, they teach us about ourselves, they toughen and grow us up. A lot of what they press, prod, touch aand trigger, are things you need to deal with inside yourself. Your "enemies" are really good mirrors for yur inner soul. Just as you probably are teaching them something about themselves too. I've come to appreciate these teachers in my life, and even in a few occasions, turned around and become really good friends. So I'm not sure about the traditional primitive "how to screw your enemies back interpretations" I was taught.