The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Friday, May 30 2008, 20:36:05 (CEST)
from *** - *** Non-Profit Organizations - Linux - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

You’d think it would go without saying that Christianity brought nothing new with it, not even the idea of a Redeemer, or the Scapegoat. But it’s their dearest fiction that there was something new and revolutionary in their religion and we must humor them when it can’t be avoided. Take the Golden Rule, which is much, much older than Christianity. I’m convinced it was one of the very first “moral” teachings dating back well beyond written history. Not all people wrote down their laws but one of the first places it appeared was among the Chinese 500 years before the birth of Jesus. To quote Dr Durant again:

“The Master (Confucius, mine)said…’Not to do unto others as you would not wish done unto yourself.’ The principle is stated again and again, always negatively, and once in a single word. ‘Tsze-kung asked, is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?’ The Master said, ‘Is not ‘reciprocity’ such a word?’ Nevertheless he did not wish, like Lao-tze, to return good for evil; and when one of his pupils asked him, ‘What do you say concerning the principle that injury should be recompensed with kindness?’, he replied, more sharply than was his custom: With what, then, will you recompense kindness? Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.”

How much more sensible and noble is this than our confusing version…which rewards bad behavior with the rewards due good behavior…making no distinction between good and bad. How absolutely sane and sublime to treat the bad with justice, not revenge, and the good with good.



---------------------


The full topic:



***



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9