Beatnik Christianity Extends the Trajectory from the Golden Rule to the Platinum Rule

Just about every great religious and philosophical tradition has some version of the Golden Rule. It’s an ethical framework dating back some 4,000 years to ancient Egypt. 2,000 years ago, at a time when common Jewish thinking was “an eye for an eye” retributive justice, the Sermon on the Mount upped the standard. In the context of explaining our heavenly Father giving good gifts, Jesus asserts, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” as a summation of the law and prophets. For better or worse, this ethic of reciprocity remains the Christian standard.

My question is, is this principle the highest possible ideal to which Jesus followers should aspire? Throughout the redemptive arc of Scripture is an unfolding ethic that keeps raising the bar. The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 being the quintessential example. Yes, Jesus is spiritually pushing the envelope of the possible, but is the Golden Rule the greatest possible ideal? Is it the peak of the highest mountain or only the next point on an upward trajectory of culturally incarnating love, forgiveness, and grace? Personally, I’m convinced the path continues upward.

The Golden Rule is great, but its limitation is the lack of empathy. It only needs us to stay within ourselves and ask how we’d like to be treated rather than inhabit another person’s story. It doesn’t call for an emotionally intelligent ability to momentarily put aside their own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and life experiences in order to inhabit someone else’s space.1 The next level is true empathy. The best representation I’ve ever seen of this in pop culture is Everlast’s 1998 song, “What It’s Like.” There the speaker crosses over and builds empathy for each character’s struggle.

The Platinum Rule says, “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.”2 This outlook retains the all-important reciprocity but adds a much-needed dose of empathetic compassion. It requires getting over a myopic, self-preoccupied perspective to cross over into another person’s perspective to see the world through their eyes. Inhabiting their story, if you like.3 No, I’m not saying Jesus was wrong. Yes, I’m saying that we need to keep extending the redemptive trajectory into own time and space just as Jesus did in first century Israel under Roman imperial occupation.

The original beatniks were fans of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. A lot of what I see in their writings is a call for loving people by empathetically crossing over to understand their struggles. My goodness do we need more of that in Christian culture! One of the single biggest macro-level problems we have is that people are so emotionally retarded.4 So many of our conflicts, from the political to the interpersonal, distill down to a sheer lack of emotional intelligence in basic empathy. We keep treating others only as we’d like to be treated. That’s good yet insufficient.