PLGRM

I was made fun of a lot as a kid. I was skinny, arty, sensitive, and smart. I was the target of a lot of people’s attention.

My parents tried to make me feel better by telling me the other kids were just jealous of me (that made absolutely no sense as a child) but they seemed more concerned that I should not retaliate. “You need to show them you’re better than that.” Plus, as Jesus famously said:

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Jesus wasn’t the first teacher to advocate an ethic of reciprocity. Almost every religious and wisdom tradition since the dawn of time has some expression of treating others the way we want to be treated.

300 years before Christ, an ancient Hindu text instructed:

“One should never do something to others that one would regard as an injury to one’s own self.”

The Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote in one of his Letters:

“Treat your inferior as you would wish your superior to treat you.”

On the face of it, the beauty of this teaching is how practical it is. If I don’t harm you and you don’t harm me, then we’ve all got a pretty good chance of surviving. This way of living has helped humans navigate a lot of conflict over the years, but it is, sadly, eroding.

According to a new survey released by Character.org:

…very few American children today are learning about the Golden Rule. In fact, less than one in five parents (14%) said they use the Golden Rule phrase with their children at all—and over a quarter of all parents (28%) said they are unfamiliar with the meaning of the Golden Rule.

The good folks at Character.org are, in my opinion, a little too fixated on the use of the Golden Rule language itself (rather than the principle behind it), but their concern still stands: Kids are not learning the basic idea of reciprocity.

I see this evidenced all over the place. The way I usually talk about it is it feels to me like people everywhere are on a crusade to justify being mean. If someone believes they have been wronged in any way, the justified response is to belittle and hurt the one they believe is responsible. There is no consideration of the humanity of the other. There is no questioning to ensure motive. Nothing. I feel hurt and you are to blame.*

I can understand being angry. 100%. We have all been there. But, as a pastor, I worry about the state of people’s souls when they give into this anger.

In my faith tradition, we speak of being “hard of heart” by which we mean that someone does not have compassion for another, cannot see another as a real person, and is willing to justify all manner of things because the other is not functionally “human.”

There are so many people who are trying to justify being mean, and what’s more: they are trying to justify it using religious – specifically Christian – rhetoric. As a kid who grew up in a religiously “fundagelical” community, it feels way too familiar. “You must do X or you are a bad person and not worthy of love from God or us.”

And, again, what I worry about most is the state of someone’s soul when they behave like this. the more a person cuts themselves off from recognizing the humanity of another, the harder it becomes. And, yes, it is hard to deflect the assaults we face from others, but the real, long-term damage done is to the one inflicting pain. Religious and wisdoms traditions throughout the ages have taught is that:

Sticks and stones make break our bones, but the throwing of those sticks and stones will result in a career-ending spiritual rotator cuff injury.

That was clumsy, but you get my drift. 🙂

I value my humanity too much to begin a never-ending game of insult tag. An eye for an eye has always been a bad idea, and I don’t care how someone tries to justify it.

*I am duty bound to draw a distinction here between the topic at hand and the rage and anger produced by historic, systemic injustices. This is not a call to “civility” of the kind that is routinely used to quiet and sideline those with legitimate grievances. While not a precise correlation, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King named for us that “riots are the language of the unheard” (even as he denounced riots in favor of non-violent direct action and protests). None of what I write should be read as a call to acquiesce to systems or authorities denying the rights and dignity of our human siblings.