NOTES for Tob 4:15

The so-called "golden rule" of ethics has been known to humanity from the earliest times. The Bible did not reveal it, but only confirmed it. In doing so it testified that this is a God-given principle for the coexistence of people. And it is also sufficiently universal. After the fall, humanity's moral ideas became very diverse.

Some people were opened to fairly high moral norms, while others in this respect remained complete savages. Such different people could not understand one another; the norms and rules of some seemed to others either unacceptable or impossible to fulfill. Meanwhile, the "golden rule" turned out to be universal in this sense: it presupposed that in relation to another person each one proceeds from the understanding of good and evil that he himself has.

At first glance it may seem that such an approach in a certain sense devalues morality itself. Indeed, if one looks at moral life this way, everything in it proves relative. As many people as there are, so many concepts of what is moral and what is not. But on closer consideration it turns out that everything here is not so simple. The rule truly proves universal. It suits everyone. It is universal precisely because it does not require this or that idea of moral norms in order to be applied.

The rule works without attachment to any moral code whatever. It requires only one thing: whoever you may be, treat another exactly as you treat yourself. Here is the true depth and wisdom of the "golden rule." People are different, and no one can jump higher than his own head. One cannot demand Gospel love from people who have very vague ideas about spiritual and moral life. But one's attitude toward another person is the real litmus test of spiritual life.

If I am able to treat another person the same way I treat myself, it means that for me he possesses the same unquestionable and unconditional value that I possess for myself. After all, we love and value ourselves not for something specific, but simply because we are ourselves. So the "golden rule" requires that we look at another person in the same way as at ourselves, recognizing the same absolute significance in him that we recognize when it comes to ourselves. This is already a certain minimum of spiritual life: a person can become such an unconditional and absolute value only when one sees in him the image of God, whatever one may call it. And that means the first step toward God has been made. Which, in fact, is what was required.