© 2007 Robert Burns
© 2007 The Urantia Book Fellowship
The Golden Rule is a principle endorsed by all the great world religions; yet this simple tenet is not applied to any degree of what is possible in the communities around the world. As simple and straight forward as the Golden Rule is, many find it difficult to consistently put into practice. Living up to the standard of the Golden Rule requires consistent and conscious effort to be used in our personal, family, business and community/organizational affairs. Yet Jesus gave us this rule to help us find joy, pleasure, and delight and not to be a burden. “When I give you this new commandment, I do not place any new burden upon your souls; rather do I bring you new joy and make it possible for you to experience new pleasure in knowing the delights of the bestowal of your heart’s affection upon your fellow men.” [UB 180:1.2] When we align our will in doing our Father’s will, we experience new pleasure and delights.
The Golden Rule of the great religions is reasonably understandable, but the up-stepped Golden Rule Jesus left us is still not fully understood in other religions. The world would be a better place if even these lesser variations of the Golden Rule were more fully incorporated into the societies of the world. “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) Yet as Urantians, we know that Jesus encourages us much more vigorously with the directive: “And so I give you this new commandment: That you love one another even as I have loved you.” [UB 180:1.1]
This commandment, a mandate we are urged to live up to, necessitates our consideration of the potential minuses, even in our sincere attempts to love others as Jesus loves us. The Urantia Book tells us “The golden rule, when literally interpreted, may become the instrument of great offense to one’s fellows” and warns us that “. . .since you are desirous that all men speak the full and frank truth of their minds to you, you should therefore fully and frankly speak the full thought of your mind to your fellow beings. Such an unspiritual interpretation of the golden rule might result in untold unhappiness and no end of sorrow.” [UB 180:5.5]
Consider the potential misuses as we try to proselytize the message, the gift of the revelation, to others. With a little thought, we can see that there are cases where even our most sincere efforts, if unspiritual, end in disappointment for all parties. And yet, what if no one had made the effort that helped each of us receive the revelation? We each know the value of the gift, and are eternally grateful to those devoted souls who made it possible. Do we not want to give it to others? How do we apply the Golden Rule in our efforts to disseminate the revelation? How do we approach other religions and religionists? How do we approach science and scientists and stay true to our Master’s injunction to love others as he has loved us? How could we avoid doing harm by introducing The Urantia Book to others?
Before answering these questions, it is important to see that the Golden Rule is not an infallible guide; it does not give us the answers. Rather it gives us an approach for our actions and decisions. Jesus asks us to use more than sincerity; he asks us to use our experience, imagination, and spiritual insight each time we must “love another even as I have loved you.” This puts a great deal of responsibility on each of us, as it is all too easy to cross the line. In the very least sense, we are limited by our own understanding of how Jesus loves us, how God the Father loves us.
As we attempt to give the gift of the revelation to others, we can remember that Jesus asks us to “. . . go forth into the world to yield the fruit of loving service to your fellows even as I have lived among you and revealed the Father to you.” [UB 180:1.4] If we emanate and reflect the fruits of the spirit: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance and maintain enduring peace, we will find it easier to deal with each situation in its uniqueness. There is no exact formula.
The Golden Rule requires a great deal of spiritual discretion. To all “God-knowing truth lovers, this golden rule takes on living qualities of spiritual realization” and “The golden rule, when divested of the superhuman insight of the Spirit of Truth, becomes nothing more than a rule of ethical conduct.” [UB 180:5.5]
God the Father and God the Supreme require us to be and to do. We cannot hide our talents for safe keeping, play it safe to make no mistakes or have no risk losing the talents, for in doing so we commit the biggest mistake. We are each judged, so to speak, by both our sincere intentions and by what we do. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the apostle John, each in their own way, appear to reflect these realities in saying: “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” [^1] and “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.” (1 John 3:18)
If we intend to share the Master’s joy, we must share in his love. And to share in his love means we share his service. Sharing the Master’s joy and love does not spare us the trials and tribulations of mortal existence. “Such an experience of love does not deliver you from the difficulties of this world; it does not create a new world, but it most certainly does make the old world new.” [UB 180:1.5] All worthy things require effort and deliberate will from us.
The Master asks us for loyalty, not sacrifice, as he wants our wholehearted affection. He asks us to not be servant minded, because he wants us to experience the thrill of serving a friend. He further states that friendship transcends all convictions of duty and that service in friendship is never a sacrifice; it is an honor and a privilege. “You have called me Master, but I do not call you servants. If you will only love one another as I am loving you, you shall be my friends.” [UB 180:1.3] Again, we are limited only by our understanding of how Jesus loves us. As we understand this, we are empowered to live up to the Golden Rule to its highest standard!
Some persons discern and interpret the golden rule as a purely intellectual affirmation of human fraternity. Others experience this expression of human relationship as an emotional gratification of the tender feelings of the human personality. Another mortal recognizes this same golden rule as the yardstick for measuring all social relations, the standard of social conduct. Still others look upon it as being the positive injunction of a great moral teacher who embodied in this statement the highest concept of moral obligation as regards all fraternal relationships. In the lives of such moral beings the golden rule becomes the wise center and circumference of all their philosophy.
In the kingdom of the believing brotherhood of God-knowing truth lovers, this golden rule takes on living qualities of spiritual realization on those higher levels of interpretation which cause the mortal sons of God to view this injunction of the Master as requiring them so to relate themselves to their fellows that they will receive the highest possible good as a result of the believer’s contact with them. This is the essence of true religion: that you love your neighbor as yourself.
But the highest realization and the truest interpretation of the golden rule consists in the consciousness of the spirit of the truth of the enduring and living reality of such a divine declaration. The true cosmic meaning of this rule of universal relationship is revealed only in its spiritual realization, in the interpretation of the law of conduct by the spirit of the son to the spirit of the Father that indwells the soul of mortal man. And when such spirit-led mortals realize the true meaning of this golden rule, they are filled to overflowing with the assurance of citizenship in a friendly universe, and their ideals of spirit reality are satisfied only when they love their fellows as Jesus loved us all, and that is the reality of the realization of the love of God.
This same philosophy of the living flexibility and cosmic adaptability of divine truth to the individual requirements and capacity of every son of God, must be perceived before you can hope adequately to understand the Master’s teaching and practice of nonresistance to evil. The Master’s teaching is basically a spiritual pronouncement. Even the material implications of his philosophy cannot be helpfully considered apart from their spiritual correlations. The spirit of the Master’s injunction consists in the nonresistance of all selfish reaction to the universe, coupled with the aggressive and progressive attainment of righteous levels of true spirit values: divine beauty, infinite goodness, and eternal truth to know God and to become increasingly like him.
Love, unselfishness, must undergo a constant and living readaptative interpretation of relationships in accordance with the leading of the Spirit of Truth. Love must thereby grasp the ever-changing and enlarging concepts of the highest cosmic good of the individual who is loved. And then love goes on to strike this same attitude concerning all other individuals who could possibly be influenced by the growing and living relationship of one spirit-led mortal’s love for other citizens of the universe. And this entire living adaptation of love must be effected in the light of both the environment of present evil and the eternal goal of the perfection of divine destiny.
And so must we clearly recognize that neither the golden rule nor the teaching of nonresistance can ever be properly understood as dogmas or precepts. The can only be comprehended by living them, by realizing their meanings in the living interpretation of the Spirit of Truth, who directs the loving contact of one human being with another.
And all this clearly indicates the difference between the old religion and the new. The old religion taught self-sacrifice; the new religion teaches only self forgetfulness, enhanced self-realization in conjoined social service and universe comprehension. The old religion was motivated by fear-consciousness; the new gospel of the kingdom is dominated by truth-conviction, the spirit of eternal and universal truth. And no amount of piety or creedal loyalty can compensate for the absence in the life experience of kingdom believers of that spontaneous, generous, and sincere friendliness which characterizes the spirit-born sons of the living God. Neither tradition nor a ceremonial system of formal worship can atone for the lack of genuine compassion for one’s fellows. [UB 180:5.6-12]
Currently serving as president of the The Urantia Book Fellowship, Robert Burns is also the treasurer for the Los Angeles Society (UBLA) and active in local service organizations. He and his wife Cindy host regular study group meetings in their home in Irvine, CA.