Return To The Gold Standard

About 50 years before Jesus’ time, two famous rabbis were competing for the future of Judaism. One, Rabbi Shammai, was an engineer known for the strictness of his views. The Talmud - that is, the authoritative commentary on the Hebrew scriptures - tells that a gentile came to Shammai and told him that he would convert to Judaism if Shammai could teach him the whole Torah in the time that he could stand on one foot. Shammai drove him away with a builder's measuring stick! Rabbi Hillel, on the other hand, converted the gentile by telling him, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.”

Well, by the time Jesus came along Shammai’s followers - the really strict ones, who had absolutely no time for Gentiles - had pretty much won the day. Hillel was just too easy on those Gentiles; why, everybody knew that there were 623 laws that you had to obey, laws about what you could and couldn’t eat, laws about what you couldn’t do on the Sabbath, laws about what you had to give to the temple, enough laws to make you dizzy. How could you possibly sum it all up in one little sentence?

Even if they had remembered what Hillel had said, they might have thought to themselves, “That’s Jesus for you. Taking everything just a little bit too far.”

Because Jesus didn’t quote Rabbi Hillel. Just a little earlier in this passage, He said that the righteousness of his disciples had to surpass that of the Pharisees. When the scribe asked him “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” [Mk 12:28-31] You see, all Hillel said you had to do was to refrain from doing harm. Basically, don’t be rude, don’t be mean, don’t be dishonest. But Jesus said, “No. That’s not enough.”

You can do what Hillel required just by staying home and minding your own business. But that’s not good enough for Jesus. That’s not good enough for his disciples. In order to follow Jesus, you have to love people, which takes effort. It takes initiative. You have to go out and meet people. You have to see them, touch them, talk to them, find out what they need and then do something about it.

Now, you might say, “Well, all I want is for people to leave me alone. So when Jesus says, ‘do to others as you would have them do to you’, that’s what I do. I leave them alone. And of course you have a point. But we can’t leave it there, because of course the whole thrust of the Sermon on the Mount is to learn to be like Jesus. And he certainly didn’t stay at home and leave people alone! Remember that wonderful passage in Philippians,

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." [Phil 2:5-8]

Jesus certainly didn’t need for himself what he gave to the world. Jesus didn’t need to be rescued. But - and this is the key - if he had needed to be rescued, he would have wanted someone to rescue him. Right? If we were to take that objection literally, we would never give someone a glass of water unless we ourselves were thirsty, which is manifestly absurd. So the lesson is, that we are to do for others as we would like someone to do for us if we were in their shoes.

Now, in this politically correct age, some people are trying to take this rule another step. The idea now is, that we are to treat other people the way they want to be treated. And on the surface, that sounds good, doesn’t it?

But think about it. Far too often, what people want isn’t what is good for them. From alcohol to candy to R-rated movies, people want to be left in their sins - until the consequences begin to overwhelm them. And even then, far too often people manage to convince themselves that whatever bad has happened to them is someone else’s fault, not the result of their own bad decisions. In fact, most of the time they want to be told that what they’re doing isn’t sinful at all. We’re in the culture of everything goes: “I’m ok, you’re ok.” Tolerance is king and the only sin is to have firm standards of right and wrong. Love equals affirmation.