The audacious offensive of love

Conventional wisdom, fueled by pompous comedians and other uninformed sources, holds that audience members at Monday night's Republican debate in South Carolina "booed the golden rule." Candidate Ron Paul bore the brunt of audience displeasure by suggesting a "golden rule of foreign policy," not doing to other countries what we don't want them to do to us.

Like so many politicians who attempt to invoke biblical metaphors, Congressman Paul did not do his homework here. Likewise, media personalities who have made hay over South Carolina voters "booing the golden rule" have failed in their responsibility to do adequate biblical fact-checking. The "golden rule," stated by Jesus in Matthew 7:12 is traditionally rendered (in King James language), "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," not "Don't do unto others what you wouldn't have them do unto you." The difference is subtle, but profound.

Any number of ancient philosophers taught a negative ethic of refraining from doing evil to others in the hope that others would reciprocate. Jesus, however, taught something wholly different, and quite revolutionary. The ethic of the kingdom of God is not passively refraining from doing evil in hope of reciprocation, but actively seeking to do good without regard for what others might do in return. The former is rooted in a desire for self-preservation; the latter in a devotion to giving oneself in selfless service to others.

E. Stanley Jones, the great missionary to India, was well acquainted with the passive resistance ethic of Ghandi. He was convinced, however, that Jesus taught a higher ethic. In his classic exposition, The Christ of the Mount, he makes the case for active resistance as the true ethic of Jesus and the kingdom of God.

Jesus is not teaching passive resistance, but an active resistance on a higher level. The account does not say, "If a man smite you on one cheek, let him smite the other also," but it does say, "Turn to him the other also." It is this audacious offensive of love that forces the man to go further and thus break down. He tries to break your head, and you, as Christian, try to break his heart. In turning the other cheek you wrest the offensive from him and assume moral charge of the situation. You choose your own battleground, and your own weapons, you refuse his and compel him to stand on ground with which he is not familiar and to face weapons he does not know how to face. If a man compels you to go with him one mile, you are his slave; but if you voluntarily go with him two, then you rise from your slavery, confer a bounty on him and thus become his master. If he sues you at law and takes away your coat, you are his servant, but if you confer on him your cloak also, you assume the mastery by your own moral daring.

Allowing a man to smite you on one cheek, and letting him have the coat, and submitting to him when he compels you to go one mile does little or no good. The fact is that it does harm to the man who does it and to the man who submits to it. It is the other cheek, the cloak also and the second mile that do the trick. It is this plus that turns the scale. The one cheek, the coat and the one mile--this is passive resistance; but turning the other cheek, giving the cloak also and going the second mile--this is active resistance on the plane of unquenchable good will. Passive resistance may reveal nothing but weakness; this active resistance of love reveals nothing but strength.