Look in the Mirror

Mat 22:39  And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 

I saw something recently that has been ruminating on my mind for quite sometime. It was a tweet from a woman and it went something like this.

I was dating a rich man and he asked me if I could date a struggling person. I said No and he said, “You know, to me, you are the struggling guy right?”

I think this woman would have been as shocked as I was. She saw the struggling man as someone other than her, probably someone with lesser value than she had.

Relating this to Jesus’ searching about the second greatest commandment, if this woman had really put herself in the shoes of the ‘struggling person’, she would have seen what it is.

That’s the thing. Jesus wants us to love others like we love ourselves. That means not simply being in the persons shoe but actually walking in the person’s shoe. That means that before e take an action or pass judgment on someone we should put up a mirror and think on how we should love to be treated if we were in the same situation.

The Good Samaritan didn’t jut pick up his neighbor Jew off the floor. He tended to the person in the same way we would have taken care of our loved ones or even in the way we should pamper ourselves and that’s it. Do you see/treat others the same way you see or treat yourself or do you need to put a mirror to your face?

Honestly, the teaching is not do unto others what you would them to do to you. That remind me of the old covenant of ‘an eye for an eye’ or ‘a sheep for sheep’ but it is do unto other as you would love to do yourself! Not as you would love them to do unto you.

Here is A Practical Difference:

Under the ‘as you would like to be done unto you’ principle, you would give a scoop to another person because if the conditions were reversed, we wouldn’t mind receiving a scoop. But under the ‘as yourself’ principle, it would mean buying a new ice cream or giving at least half to the other person.

I don’t know of any person unregenerate or regenerated that follows this principle a 101%. I guess that’s one of the reasons why the bible says “There is none Good.” We can’t be perfect. Not in this life but we can try. 

The next time you want to take an action or make a judgement against someone you should pick up a mirror and carry out a mock scenario with the face you see staring back at you.