golden rule

• living the golden rule › ethical and moral beings can learn to live the g.r.

50:5.85. The epoch of phi­los­o­phy and broth­er­hood. When mor­tals learn to think and be­gin to profit by ex­pe­ri­ence, they be­come philo­sophical—they start out to rea­son within them­selves and to ex­er­cise dis­crim­i­na­tive judg­ment. The so­ci­ety of this age be­comes eth­i­cal, and the mor­tals of such an era are truly be­com­ing moral be­ings. Wise moral be­ings are ca­pa­ble of es­tab­lish­ing hu­man broth­er­hood on such a pro­gress­ing world. Eth­i­cal and moral be­ings can learn how to live in ac­cor­dance with the golden rule.

• golden rule

52:5.8The postbestowal Son age may ex­tend from ten thou­sand to a hun­dred thou­sand years. There is no ar­bi­trary time al­lot­ted to any of these dis­pen­sa­tional eras. This is a time of great eth­i­cal and spir­i­tual prog­ress. Un­der the spir­i­tual in­flu­ence of these ages, hu­man char­ac­ter un­der­goes tremen­dous trans­for­ma­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences phe­nom­e­nal de­vel­op­ment. It be­comes pos­si­ble to put the golden rule into prac­ti­cal op­er­a­tion. The teach­ings of Je­sus are re­ally ap­pli­ca­ble to a mor­tal world which has had the pre­lim­i­nary train­ing of the pre­be­stowal Sons with their dis­pen­sa­tions of char­ac­ter en­no­ble­ment and cul­ture aug­men­ta­tion.

• living the golden rule › spiritual insight essential to

52:6.53. Eth­i­cal awak­en­ing. Only eth­i­cal con­scious­ness can un­mask the im­moral­ity of hu­man in­tol­er­ance and the sin­ful­ness of frat­ri­ci­dal strife. Only a moral con­science can con­demn the evils of na­tional envy and racial jeal­ousy. Only moral be­ings will ever seek for that spir­i­tual in­sight which is es­sen­tial to liv­ing the golden rule.

• cries out against fraud, unfairness, selfishness, and unrighteousness

54:1.8There is no er­ror greater than that species of self-de­cep­tion which leads in­tel­li­gent be­ings to crave the ex­er­cise of power over other be­ings for the pur­pose of de­priv­ing these per­sons of their nat­u­ral lib­er­ties. The golden rule of hu­man fair­ness cries out against all such fraud, un­fair­ness, self­ish­ness, and un­righ­teous­ness. Only true and gen­uine lib­erty is com­pat­i­ble with the reign of love and the min­istry of mercy.

• Andonites were taught

70:1.2War is an an­i­mal­is­tic re­ac­tion to mis­un­der­stand­ings and ir­ri­ta­tions; peace at­tends upon the civ­i­lized so­lu­tion of all such prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties. The San­gik races, to­gether with the later de­te­ri­o­rated Adamites and Nod­ites, were all bel­liger­ent. The An­don­ites were early taught the golden rule, and, even to­day, their Es­kimo de­scen­dants live very much by that code; cus­tom is strong among them, and they are fairly free from vi­o­lent an­tag­o­nisms.

• adherents must maintain adequate defense

71:4.16The ap­pear­ance of gen­uine broth­er­hood sig­ni­fies that a so­cial or­der has ar­rived in which all men de­light in bear­ing one an­other’s bur­dens; they ac­tu­ally de­sire to prac­tice the golden rule. But such an ideal so­ci­ety can­not be re­al­ized when ei­ther the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take un­fair and un­holy ad­van­tage of those who are chiefly ac­tu­ated by de­vo­tion to the ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness. In such a sit­u­a­tion only one course is prac­ti­cal: The “golden rulers” may es­tab­lish a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety in which they live ac­cord­ing to their ide­als while main­tain­ing an ad­e­quate de­fense against their be­nighted fel­lows who might seek ei­ther to ex­ploit their pa­cific predilec­tions or to de­stroy their ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

71:4.17Ide­al­ism can never sur­vive on an evolv­ing planet if the ide­al­ists in each gen­er­a­tion per­mit them­selves to be ex­ter­mi­nated by the baser or­ders of hu­man­ity. And here is the great test of ide­al­ism: Can an ad­vanced so­ci­ety main­tain that mil­i­tary pre­pared­ness which ren­ders it se­cure from all at­tack by its war-lov­ing neigh­bors with­out yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion to em­ploy this mil­i­tary strength in of­fen­sive op­er­a­tions against other peo­ples for pur­poses of self­ish gain or na­tional ag­gran­dize­ment? Na­tional sur­vival de­mands pre­pared­ness, and re­li­gious ide­al­ism alone can pre­vent the pros­ti­tu­tion of pre­pared­ness into ag­gres­sion. Only love, broth­er­hood, can pre­vent the strong from op­press­ing the weak.

• taught in Garden of Eden

74:7.52. The golden rule, the stan­dard of so­cial in­ter­course.

• taught in Garden of Eden

74:7.186. The civil codes of the golden rule.

• misinterpretation of g.r. promoted worship of insects

85:3.4The wor­ship of in­sects and other an­i­mals was pro­moted by a later mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule—do­ing to oth­ers (ev­ery form of life) as you would be done by. The an­cients once be­lieved that all winds were pro­duced by the wings of birds and there­fore both feared and wor­shiped all winged crea­tures. The early Nordics thought that eclipses were caused by a wolf that de­voured a por­tion of the sun or moon. The Hin­dus of­ten show Vishnu with a horse’s head. Many times an an­i­mal sym­bol stands for a for­got­ten god or a van­ished cult. Early in evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion the lamb be­came the typ­i­cal sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mal and the dove the sym­bol of peace and love.

• revealed religion emphasizes

101:5.11Per­son­ally re­vealed re­li­gions are spon­sored by the be­stowal spir­its rep­re­sent­ing the three per­sons of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and are es­pe­cially con­cerned with the ex­pan­sion of truth. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion drives home to the in­di­vid­ual the idea of per­sonal duty; re­vealed re­li­gion lays in­creas­ing em­pha­sis on lov­ing, the golden rule.

• golden rule

101:8.4Faith does not shackle the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion, nei­ther does it main­tain an un­rea­son­ing prej­u­dice to­ward the dis­cov­er­ies of sci­en­tific in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Faith vi­tal­izes re­li­gion and con­strains the re­li­gion­ist hero­ically to live the golden rule. The zeal of faith is ac­cord­ing to knowl­edge, and its striv­ings are the pre­ludes to sub­lime peace.

• statements of the golden rule

118:8.10As man shakes off the shack­les of fear, as he bridges con­ti­nents and oceans with his ma­chines, gen­er­a­tions and cen­turies with his rec­ords, he must sub­sti­tute for each tran­scended re­straint a new and vol­un­tar­ily as­sumed re­straint in ac­cor­dance with the moral dic­tates of ex­pand­ing hu­man wis­dom. These self-im­posed re­straints are at once the most pow­er­ful and the most ten­u­ous of all the fac­tors of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion—con­cepts of jus­tice and ide­als of broth­er­hood. Man even qual­i­fies him­self for the re­strain­ing gar­ments of mercy when he dares to love his fel­low men, while he achieves the be­gin­nings of spir­i­tual broth­er­hood when he elects to mete out to them that treat­ment which he him­self would be ac­corded, even that treat­ment which he con­ceives that God would ac­cord them.

• statements of the golden rule › do unto others as you would have them do unto you

131:2.11“Love your neigh­bor as your­self; bear a grudge against no man. What­so­ever you hate do to no man. Love your brother, for the Lord has said: ‘I will love my chil­dren freely.’ The path of the just is as a shin­ing light which shines more and more un­til the per­fect day. They who are wise shall shine as the bright­ness of the fir­ma­ment and they who turn many to righ­teous­ness as the stars for­ever and ever. Let the wicked for­sake his evil way and the un­righ­teous man his re­bel­lious thoughts. Says the Lord: ‘Let them re­turn to me, and I will have mercy on them; I will abun­dantly par­don.’

• statements of the golden rule › do unto others as you would have them do unto you

131:3.6“The fool has said in his heart, ‘Evil shall not over­take me’; but safety is found only when the soul craves re­proof and the mind seeks wis­dom. The wise man is a no­ble soul who is friendly in the midst of his en­e­mies, tran­quil among the tur­bu­lent, and gen­er­ous among the grasp­ing. Love of self is like weeds in a goodly field. Self­ish­ness leads to grief; per­pet­ual care kills. The tamed mind yields hap­pi­ness. He is the great­est of war­riors who over­comes and sub­dues him­self. Re­straint in all things is good. He alone is a su­pe­rior per­son who es­teems virtue and is ob­ser­vant of his duty. Let not anger and hate mas­ter you. Speak harshly of no one. Con­tent­ment is the great­est wealth. What is given wisely is well saved. Do not to oth­ers those things you would not wish done to you. Pay good for evil; over­come evil with the good.

• statements of the golden rule › do unto others as you would have them do unto you

131:4.6“The spirit of the Uni­verse Keeper en­ters the soul of the sim­ple crea­ture. That man is wise who wor­ships the One God. Those who strive for per­fec­tion must in­deed know the Lord Su­preme. He never fears who knows the bliss­ful se­cu­rity of the Su­preme, for the Su­preme says to those who serve him, ‘Fear not, for I am with you.’ The God of prov­i­dence is our Fa­ther. God is truth. And it is the de­sire of God that his crea­tures should un­der­stand him—come fully to know the truth. Truth is eter­nal; it sus­tains the uni­verse. Our su­preme de­sire shall be union with the Su­preme. The Great Con­trol­ler is the gen­er­a­tor of all things—all evolves from him. And this is the sum of duty: Let no man do to an­other what would be re­pug­nant to him­self; cher­ish no mal­ice, smite not him who smites you, con­quer anger with mercy, and van­quish hate by benev­o­lence. And all this we should do be­cause God is a kind friend and a gra­cious fa­ther who re­mits all our earthly of­fenses.

• statements of the golden rule › do unto others as you would have them do unto you

131:9.4“A wise man is oc­cu­pied with the search for truth, not in seek­ing for a mere liv­ing. To at­tain the per­fec­tion of Heaven is the goal of man. The su­pe­rior man is given to self-ad­just­ment, and he is free from anx­i­ety and fear. God is with you; have no doubt in your heart. Ev­ery good deed has its rec­om­pense. The su­pe­rior man mur­murs not against Heaven nor holds a grudge against men. What you do not like when done to your­self, do not to oth­ers. Let com­pas­sion be a part of all pun­ish­ment; in ev­ery way en­deavor to make pun­ish­ment a bless­ing. Such is the way of Great Heaven. While all crea­tures must die and re­turn to the earth, the spirit of the no­ble man goes forth to be dis­played on high and to as­cend to the glo­ri­ous light of fi­nal bright­ness.”

• statements of the golden rule › do unto others as you would have them do unto you

131:10.7“I am learn­ing to prove all things and ad­here to that which is good. What­so­ever I would that men should do to me, that I will do to my fel­lows. By this new faith I know that man may be­come the son of God, but it some­times ter­ri­fies me when I stop to think that all men are my broth­ers, but it must be true. I do not see how I can re­joice in the fa­ther­hood of God while I refuse to ac­cept the broth­er­hood of man. Whoso­ever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. If that is true, then all men must be my broth­ers.

• levels of

140:5.1From the Ser­mon on the Mount to the dis­course of the Last Sup­per, Je­sus taught his fol­low­ers to man­i­fest fa­therly love rather than broth­erly love. Broth­erly love would love your neigh­bor as you love your­self, and that would be ad­e­quate ful­fill­ment of the “golden rule.” But fa­therly af­fec­tion would re­quire that you should love your fel­low mor­tals as Je­sus loves you.

• living the golden rule › restated by Jesus demands active social contact

140:10.5The one char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus’ teach­ing was that the moral­ity of his phi­los­o­phy orig­i­nated in the per­sonal re­la­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to God—this very child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. Je­sus placed em­pha­sis on the in­di­vid­ual, not on the race or na­tion. While eat­ing sup­per, Je­sus had the talk with Mat­thew in which he ex­plained that the moral­ity of any act is de­ter­mined by the in­di­vid­ual’s mo­tive. Je­sus’ moral­ity was al­ways pos­i­tive. The golden rule as re­stated by Je­sus de­mands ac­tive so­cial con­tact; the older neg­a­tive rule could be obeyed in iso­la­tion. Je­sus stripped moral­ity of all rules and cer­e­monies and el­e­vated it to ma­jes­tic lev­els of spir­i­tual think­ing and truly righ­teous liv­ing.

• statements of the golden rule › love for father, love among children

142:7.4He next ex­plained that the “king­dom idea” was not the best way to il­lus­trate man’s re­la­tion to God; that he em­ployed such fig­ures of speech be­cause the Jew­ish peo­ple were ex­pect­ing the king­dom, and be­cause John had preached in terms of the com­ing king­dom. Je­sus said: “The peo­ple of an­other age will bet­ter un­der­stand the gospel of the king­dom when it is pre­sented in terms ex­pres­sive of the fam­ily re­la­tion­ship—when man un­der­stands re­li­gion as the teach­ing of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man, son­ship with God.” Then the Mas­ter dis­coursed at some length on the earthly fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of the heav­enly fam­ily, re­stat­ing the two fun­da­men­tal laws of liv­ing: the first com­mand­ment of love for the fa­ther, the head of the fam­ily, and the sec­ond com­mand­ment of mu­tual love among the chil­dren, to love your brother as your­self. And then he ex­plained that such a qual­ity of broth­erly af­fec­tion would in­vari­ably man­i­fest it­self in un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice.

147:4.1On the evening of this same Sab­bath day, at Beth­any, while Je­sus, the twelve, and a group of be­liev­ers were as­sem­bled about the fire in Laz­a­rus’s gar­den, Na­than­iel asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “Mas­ter, al­though you have taught us the pos­i­tive ver­sion of the old rule of life, in­struct­ing us that we should do to oth­ers as we wish them to do to us, I do not fully dis­cern how we can al­ways abide by such an in­junc­tion. Let me il­lus­trate my con­tention by cit­ing the ex­am­ple of a lust­ful man who thus wickedly looks upon his in­tended con­sort in sin. How can we teach that this evil-in­tend­ing man should do to oth­ers as he would they should do to him?”

147:4.2When Je­sus heard Na­than­iel’s ques­tion, he im­me­di­ately stood upon his feet and, point­ing his fin­ger at the apos­tle, said: “Na­than­iel, Na­than­iel! What man­ner of think­ing is go­ing on in your heart? Do you not re­ceive my teach­ings as one who has been born of the spirit? Do you not hear the truth as men of wis­dom and spir­i­tual un­der­stand­ing? When I ad­mon­ished you to do to oth­ers as you would have them do to you, I spoke to men of high ide­als, not to those who would be tempted to dis­tort my teach­ing into a li­cense for the en­cour­age­ment of evil-do­ing.”

147:4.3When the Mas­ter had spo­ken, Na­than­iel stood up and said: “But, Mas­ter, you should not think that I ap­prove of such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of your teach­ing. I asked the ques­tion be­cause I con­jec­tured that many such men might thus mis­judge your ad­mo­ni­tion, and I hoped you would give us fur­ther in­struc­tion re­gard­ing these mat­ters.” And then when Na­than­iel had sat down, Je­sus con­tin­ued speak­ing: “I well know, Na­than­iel, that no such idea of evil is ap­proved in your mind, but I am dis­ap­pointed in that you all so of­ten fail to put a gen­uinely spir­i­tual in­ter­pre­ta­tion upon my com­mon­place teach­ings, in­struc­tion which must be given you in hu­man lan­guage and as men must speak. Let me now teach you con­cern­ing the dif­fer­ing lev­els of mean­ing at­tached to the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of this rule of liv­ing, this ad­mo­ni­tion to ‘do to oth­ers that which you de­sire oth­ers to do to you’:

147:4.4“1. The level of the flesh. Such a purely self­ish and lust­ful in­ter­pre­ta­tion would be well ex­em­pli­fied by the sup­po­si­tion of your ques­tion.

147:4.5“2. The level of the feel­ings. This plane is one level higher than that of the flesh and im­plies that sym­pa­thy and pity would en­hance one’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of this rule of liv­ing.

147:4.6“3. The level of mind. Now come into ac­tion the rea­son of mind and the in­tel­li­gence of ex­pe­ri­ence. Good judg­ment dic­tates that such a rule of liv­ing should be in­ter­preted in con­so­nance with the high­est ide­al­ism em­bod­ied in the no­bil­ity of pro­found self-re­spect.

147:4.7“4. The level of broth­erly love. Still higher is dis­cov­ered the level of un­selfish de­vo­tion to the wel­fare of one’s fel­lows. On this higher plane of whole­hearted so­cial ser­vice grow­ing out of the con­scious­ness of the fa­ther­hood of God and the con­se­quent rec­og­ni­tion of the broth­er­hood of man, there is dis­cov­ered a new and far more beau­ti­ful in­ter­pre­ta­tion of this ba­sic rule of life.

147:4.8“5. The moral level. And then when you at­tain true philo­sophic lev­els of in­ter­pre­ta­tion, when you have real in­sight into the right­ness and wrong­ness of things, when you per­ceive the eter­nal fit­ness of hu­man re­la­tion­ships, you will be­gin to view such a prob­lem of in­ter­pre­ta­tion as you would imag­ine a high-minded, ide­al­is­tic, wise, and im­par­tial third per­son would so view and in­ter­pret such an in­junc­tion as ap­plied to your per­sonal prob­lems of ad­just­ment to your life sit­u­a­tions.

• statements of the golden rule › love fellows as Jesus loved us

147:4.9“6. The spir­i­tual level. And then last, but great­est of all, we at­tain the level of spirit in­sight and spir­i­tual in­ter­pre­ta­tion which im­pels us to rec­og­nize in this rule of life the di­vine com­mand to treat all men as we con­ceive God would treat them. That is the uni­verse ideal of hu­man re­la­tion­ships. And this is your at­ti­tude to­ward all such prob­lems when your su­preme de­sire is ever to do the Fa­ther’s will. I would, there­fore, that you should do to all men that which you know I would do to them in like cir­cum­stances.”

147:4.10Noth­ing Je­sus had said to the apos­tles up to this time had ever more as­ton­ished them. They con­tin­ued to dis­cuss the Mas­ter’s words long af­ter he had re­tired. While Na­than­iel was slow to re­cover from his sup­po­si­tion that Je­sus had mis­un­der­stood the spirit of his ques­tion, the oth­ers were more than thank­ful that their philo­sophic fel­low apos­tle had had the cour­age to ask such a thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tion.

• living the golden rule › restated by Jesus demands active social contact

159:5.16The Jews had heard of a God who would for­give re­pen­tant sin­ners and try to for­get their mis­deeds, but not un­til Je­sus came, did men hear about a God who went in search of lost sheep, who took the ini­tia­tive in look­ing for sin­ners, and who re­joiced when he found them will­ing to re­turn to the Fa­ther’s house. This pos­i­tive note in re­li­gion Je­sus ex­tended even to his prayers. And he con­verted the neg­a­tive golden rule into a pos­i­tive ad­mo­ni­tion of hu­man fair­ness.

• statements of the golden rule › love for father, love among children

163:4.87. Teach that man’s whole duty is summed up in this one com­mand­ment: Love the Lord your God with all your mind and soul and your neigh­bor as your­self. (This they were to teach as man’s whole duty in place of the 613 rules of liv­ing ex­pounded by the Phar­isees.)

• living the golden rule › restated by Jesus demands active social contact

178:1.12You must not seek to pro­mul­gate truth nor to es­tab­lish righ­teous­ness by the power of civil gov­ern­ments or by the en­ac­tion of sec­u­lar laws. You may al­ways la­bor to per­suade men’s minds, but you must never dare to com­pel them. You must not for­get the great law of hu­man fair­ness which I have taught you in pos­i­tive form: What­so­ever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.

• literally interpreted, g.r. may become great offense
• statements of the golden rule › love fellows as Jesus loved us

180:5.5The golden rule, when di­vested of the super­hu­man in­sight of the Spirit of Truth, be­comes noth­ing more than a rule of high eth­i­cal con­duct. The golden rule, when lit­er­ally in­ter­preted, may be­come the in­stru­ment of great of­fense to one’s fel­lows. With­out a spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment of the golden rule of wis­dom you might rea­son 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.

180:5.6Some 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.

180:5.7In 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.

180:5.8But 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.

180:5.9This 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.

180:5.10Love, 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.

• living the golden rule › understood only by living

180:5.11And so must we clearly rec­og­nize that nei­ther the golden rule nor the teach­ing of non­re­sis­tance can ever be prop­erly un­der­stood as dog­mas or pre­cepts. They 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.

• based on infinite worth of finite

196:2.10He taught men to place a high value upon them­selves in time and in eter­nity. Be­cause of this high es­ti­mate which Je­sus placed upon men, he was will­ing to spend him­self in the un­remit­ting ser­vice of hu­mankind. And it was this in­fi­nite worth of the fi­nite that made the golden rule a vi­tal fac­tor in his re­li­gion. What mor­tal can fail to be up­lifted by the ex­traor­di­nary faith Je­sus has in him?