When I learned the Golden Rule as a child, I thought it meant that if I wanted people to be nice to me, I had to be nice to them first. That interpretation is a wise and helpful proverb in resolving differences and showing openness toward s others. However, as we develop in our faith, we find more in this passage than this children's proverb. I want to explore how this complete passage, especially verse 35, speaks to our relationship to God and to our relationships with others.

The last phrase in verse 35—"He is kind toward the unthankful and evil"—reminds us of how God's thoughts are entirely different than our thoughts. We correctly call God the "King of Kings", but we must not assume that God has the same demand ing ego as history's human monarchs. Earthly kings imprisoned or executed those who refused to show a grateful attitude or who responded to the king's benevolence with anger. We all agree with the scriptures that "God is worthy of our praise", but this passage stops us from concluding that God demands, or even that God needs, our worship.

Instead, it is our need to worship God that must be fulfilled. It is God's nature, demonstrated perfectly in the life of Jesus, to love unconditionally, and we need to commit ourselves to that kind of love in our worship, our study, and our prayer so th at all of our being becomes more like God. God is unchanging, and worship changes us.

In that understanding, we can consider the story of the ten lepers recorded in Luke 17:12-19. Outside a village, Jesus was met by ten lepers who called out to Him for mercy. With a word, He healed them and sent them to the priest so they could be accep ted back into their villages. Nine of them, excited to have their lives back, ran to find the priest, but one instead ran to Jesus to praise God for this miracle in his life. To that one, Jesus noted it was his faith in God that made him well. The ski n sores on the other nine were healed, but the tenth was made whole both in soul and body. Jesus commented to His disciples that ten were healed, and only one offered praises, but with this passage in Luke 6 as our guide, we recognize His comment as ins truction on the value of worship, not an expression of disappointment.

The last phrase in verse 35 also challenges us to extreme responses to love individuals the way God loves individuals. There is an ancient heresy about the nature of God postulating that because God is perfectly holy, God cannot have anything to do with evil,. This heresy produced all sorts of odd theories challenging the belief that Jesus was both fully God and fully human, but I am not aware of any mainstream religion that today still argues that Jesus's earthly body was some sort of heavenly optica l illusion. At the same time, this heresy over the centuries has offered all sorts of explanations for how we as redeemed sinners would be permitted only after proper cleansing to survive the presence of God. Yes, our salvation is a priceless and wholl y undeserved gift from God through Jesus Christ. However, God is already all around us, eager to be present with each person, believer or unbeliever. God has never held back from offering kindness and goodness to those who are uninterested in God, to t hose who are ungrateful for the daily blessings God gives, and even to those who reject God's guidance and choose selfishness and evil.

This thankless loving that God offers and God commands of us frightens us. One of the reasons earthly kings have been so ruthless towards subjects with ungrateful attitudes is their justifiable fear of rebellion and assassination. In that same way, we k now that offering kindness towards those who don't like us means that we are allowing them to take advantage of us. Jesus' instructions specifically called on us to lend our possessions to our enemies with the knowledge that we would not get them back. We can only obey this commandment if we have faith that God will supply our needs even while we give away what God has given to us already.

Our motivations in thankless loving count. We cannot share information with an office rival in hopes that our kindness will defuse the rivalry. We cannot take brownies to a neighbor who dislikes us with the idea of persuading them that we are worth the ir acceptance. We even need to be cautious in how we think of Proverbs 25:21-22, which Paul quoted in Romans: "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink: for you will heap coals of fire on his head, and Yah weh will reward you." The consequence of our thankless loving may be to disrupt evil thoughts, but our motivation must be solely that we are obedient to God.

This may be beyond what the scriptures state, but I believe we are not to choose to have human enemies. Yes, there are enemies of God, and the scriptures call these "principalities" and "spirits of darkness". Yes, there is a small fringe of humanity th at claims to worship these principalities. Yes, there are far, far more people whose sinful choices advance the goals of these principalities in spreading hatred, encouraging selfishness, and ultimately bringing about death and destruction. However, we are called to love these people just as if they sat beside us in Sunday School, for God loves everyone. They may choose to identify us as their enemy, and we may recognize that they have affixed that label to us—but that is their choice, not ours .

We are commanded to love. There are no limits to that love, for it is not our love but God's Love we carry. There are no prerequisites for Love, there are no required gracious responses to Love, and we may receive only hatred in return for sharing Love . That is how Love must work in this life, but we can anticipate living in the complete fulfillment of Love in the next.