Opinion: Golden Rule
Everyone has heard of the Golden Rule: "Love one another as yourself," "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." There are many ways to express it because it is almost ubiquitous. It is found in almost every religion and culture all over the world. This is one of the many truths I have adopted over the years due to its almost omnipresent nature. Of course, I didn’t start out knowing how widespread this notion is; I learned it in a very Christian context. I have spent over half my life in some form of Christianity: a half a dozen denominations and over a dozen churches, and I’d like to share some things I’ve found to be true as it relates to Christians and the Golden Rule.
My mother didn’t take me to church, but she did read me bedtime stories from the book of Revelations. I had to seek out God’s people and his teachings on my own. The first church I went to was a Methodist church where my neighbor (not the one that molested me) taught Sunday School. Sachi, I hope I spelled that right, was a very kind and loving Japanese woman in my neighborhood. My questions sometimes made her uncomfortable, but luckily it was usually just her and I in the Sunday School room when I made her answer questions like, “Doesn’t 'thou shalt have no other Gods before me' suggest the existence of other Gods?” I couldn’t have been older than 5, and I was already asking uncomfortable questions of the adults around me. It was in Sachi’s classroom that I was introduced to the Golden Rule. Now, I don’t know if it’s the CPTSD or if maybe I am autistic or what, but I took that to mean that we should be good to one another. It was unfortunate and uncomfortable when I realized that most Christians failed to even live out the most basic of Jesus’s teachings.
Sure, I have found that Christians tend to be good at performing love with acts like: picking you up for church, praying for your situation, laying hands on you in prayer, and supporting you but only if you are heading in the “right” direction. In my experience all of that looks like: Chaotic Sunday mornings filled with verbal and emotional abuse (again, not my home, but people close to me), gossiping about your neighbor disguised as prayer requests, general “pick-me” behavior that deserves its own post, silencing abuses of any kind, and of course, no Sunday service would be complete without judging and condemning the folks you are supposed to love like Christ loved you. Folks that literally showed up “as they are”; in jeans and tee shirts, too much or not enough makeup, over or underdressed, not being repentant in the correct ways, and even “wrong” color choices for hair, clothes, and makeup. I observed a disconnect in the way Christians are called to behave and the way they actually choose to behave. As I grew older and started digging into the Bible for myself, I discovered that when an elder puts you through an edification process, you are to obey, but if you try to edify another member on how their behavior is not Christ-like, their cognitive dissonance will engage and cause them to act even more unChrist-like.
It was this cognitive dissonance that sparked my curiosity as to WHY they were behaving that way. You see, anytime someone told me I was acting poorly, I believed them and adjusted my behavior. These were my “elders” after all, and I do appreciate edification. Edification is used over and over in the Bible, yet so few Christians seem to appreciate it the way I do. Even now, 15 years post-Christianity, I see value in learning how to interact with everyone - by practicing love. To me, practicing love is the essence of the Golden Rule. Practicing love can look like: sitting with the newcomer dressed “poorly” and hearing their story without judgment and showing them the available resources that the church or community has to help, inviting the divorcee over for Sunday dinner and asking them, with true intention, how you can best support them. It’s respecting people's identity and lived experience, including pronouns - even if you don’t “get it”. (Do you really think Jesus cares about what’s in someone’s pants?) It is offering kindness, support, and encouragement - even when their path is different from yours. In my 18 years of searching for truth in the Christian sphere, I found that Christians are very good at performing love but are lacking the ability to practice it.
Eventually, I started to think about why the Golden Rule is so hard for so many folks. Was it a lack of understanding? A lack of empathy? A lack of reading comprehension? Maybe. However, in observing my own family and those closest to me, I realized that so many people are not raised on love but survival. Many of the families I got to observe used fear, guilt, shame, abandonment, and other forms of abuse to raise their children to be “god-fearing”. I was taught fear of hell and the Old Testament god. I observed others being taught to fear people that were “othered”; gay, queer, black and brown, homeless, sex workers, poor or rich, etc. I was taught shame around my body, my personality, my curiosity, and my observational prowess. Others were taught shame for having basic human needs like love, food, safety, and health. I was taught guilt for treating others the way I wanted to be treated - regardless of hierarchy. Others were taught guilt surrounding their very being. I was taught I was unworthy of love in spaces that are supposed to be dedicated to loving. The adults I grew up around internalized the same things they were teaching me and their children. It is hard to truly practice love when you are not taught you are worth loving. How can we love someone else the way we want to be loved when we don’t even know what healthy love looks like? How can I love you when you are going through active addiction when I was taught that makes you a bad person? How can you love someone going through an abusive situation when it looks normal? How can you call out unloving behavior when you treat yourself with judgment and succumb to shame?
The good news is we can learn to practice love within ourselves, and eventually, that will help us truly practice love with others. It is a long road and hard, but one worth taking.
With love and compassion,
Mia Marie
