the golden rule

so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. -- matthew 7:12

do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself. -- confucius

i've been doing some reading lately that has caused me to ask which version of the "golden rule" the church is following: jesus' or confucius'? jamie and i just finished a long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier by ishmael beah. i don't really need to tell you what the book is about [i think the title is self-explanatory], but beah's story perfectly encompasses the human experience: sin, evil, suffering, redemption. please, read the book. then, just yesterday, i started reading not for sale: the return of the global slave trade -- and how we can fight it by david batstone. once again, read the book. it has opened my eyes to evil that i didn't even know existed in this world. i found these statistics particularly gut-wrenching:

"a research study conducted in mid-2006 reveals that close to 35 percent of the vietnamese families living in cambodia sell a daughter into the sex trade, and another 25 to 30 percent seriously consider the option but do not follow through with the sale."

"the lucrative market in virgins tempts parents to sell their pre-adolescent daughters to a brothel for a high premium. it's a bizarre business: a john may pay $750 for one night with a young girl, and one week later that same girl may be seeing ten clients a night for $2.50 a session."

sometimes i think that we have fallen captive to the delusion that just because we're not the ones perpetrating such evil or because that kind of evil doesn't happen in our country [and, for the record, that kind of evil DOES happen in our country. the US is a thriving center for human trafficking], we must be doing the right thing -- following the "golden rule." according to confucius, that way of thinking adds up. don't do something to someone else that you wouldn't want done to you and you're good to go. but what does jesus say? his way is different, his way is radical, his way says that it's not enough to not sin against your fellow human beings. jesus says that we should be actively pursuing good for our brothers and sisters, strangers, and enemies.

i like how gary haugen, founder of international justice mission, puts it: "if i were trapped in a brothel, what would i want? i would want someone to get me out! if i were enslaved in a brick factory, i would want someone to end my bondage! if i were being trafficked, i would want to be rescued. that's our work. to love our neighbors and set them free.

i'm pretty sure that if tomorrow, a group of rebels decided to overthrow obama, kill everyone who voted for obama, recruit young boys to serve in their rebel army, and take young girls as their sex slaves, we would want the rest of the world to notice and to help us. we would want people to step up and adopt our children, vulnerable and voiceless as they'd be, so that their childhoods would not be lost to violence and death. we would want people to give of their time and money to help prosecute those who had perpetrated such evil. we would want people to open their homes to those who had survived the coup, even if those refugees didn't know the language or culture of their new home. we would want others to think of us, pray for us, acknowledge our plight, and live their lives differently because we exist.

if all that is true, don't you think we desperately need to be figuring out how we're going to live out jesus' version of the "golden rule" to this hurting world? don't you think we need to figure out how to actively pursue good for others -- child soliders in uganda and sierra leone; orphans in the US, russia, china, ethiopia, guatemala; sex slaves in cambodia and vietnam; the homeless in downtown winston-salem -- because that's exactly what we would want them to do for us if the situation was reversed? i can't get over knowing that my life is supposed to look different because these people exist and they are my brothers and sisters. the hope of the gospel is as much for me as it is for them.