The Incompleteness Of The Golden Rule

There is a reason the Bible does not simply leave its moral commands as simplistic and vague as the "golden rule"--it is impossible to derive a consistent, detailed awareness of moral obligations from this one principle.  The idea that a person should only treat others as he or she wants to be treated is appealing many precisely because of its simplicity.  Anything more than a superficial analysis quickly reveals just how incomplete it is, if one thinks the whole of morality can be deciphered from it.

A key limitation of the golden rule is that different people want to be treated differently.  One can see this by observing everyday interactions, or one could see what different people claim about morality by conversing with them.  Whether these disparities involve the rights people think they have or the way they think they should be penalized for immoral behaviors, there is a great absence of uniformity--and then people might want to be treated in a way that does not even align with their own moral claims.

One person might want to be treated unjustly in a way that benefits them.  Another person may, for whatever reason, wish to be treated cruelly.  Perhaps he or she feels deserving of cruelty, mistakes a cruelty for a virtue, or enjoys cruelty in a sadistic or masochistic way.  A person who wants people to only live by the golden rule probably does not expect the full range of possible ways that someone could live the rule out.  Since perceptions of morality, in themselves, are purely subjective (which neither means that morality itself is subjective or that it does not exist), the golden rule is entirely incapable of serving as a foundational ethical principle.

In Matthew 7:12, Jesus uses the golden rule to summarize the obligations revealed in Mosaic Law, meaning that the golden rule itself is not the foundation of morality; it is a general description of a multitude of other moral obligations.  To regard it as anything more is to elevate it to a status contrary to the one the Bible assigns to it.  It cannot stand on its own apart from the many commands it summarizes.

The "golden rule" can be helpful, but only in the context of full acknowledgment of God's more detailed commands about how to treat other people.  Divorced from an explicit connection with the teachings of Mosaic Law, the golden rule can only be applied in a wholly arbitrary way at best, and a very inconsistent way at worst.  Treating others as we want to be treated can only be moral if we want to be treated in a way that is just--and issues like how we should want ourselves to be treated are the very things the golden rule sheds no light on.