Why the Golden Rule is Good
Every major religious leader for the past several thousand years has taught the “Golden Rule,” which says, “Do to other people whatever you wish they would do to you.”
Think about this a minute. Suppose that we didn’t believe the Golden Rule was the way to live. Would we believe the opposite of the Golden Rule? “Do to other people whatever you wish they would not do to you?” In other words, if you don’t want someone to hit you, you should hit them instead?” Is this what we should do? Some people would say that this is what we should do, but we all know that they are bullies and bad people. We don’t need to say much more about that.
There is still another possibility if we don’t believe in following the Golden Rule. The third possibility is that we might follow this rule: “Do to others whatever they do to you.” If someone is good to you, be good to them. If someone is bad to you, be bad to them. We call that “retaliation,” and a lot of people believe it is the way to live, but it isn’t. The Golden Rule is much better.
There is an old Iroquois story that was told to teach that retaliation will get you nowhere. Here it is:
One day as an Indian boy was following a trail near a stream he saw a snake running through the tall grass. He watched it, and soon discovered that the snake was after a frog. The frog was leaping for his life, doing his best to reach the stream. One more leap and he would have made it, but the long sedge grass proved an enemy. It caught him by the legs and held him, and that last leap was never taken, for as he struggled to free himself from the sedge grass, the snake was upon him.
With a hissing war cry, the snake struck the frog and seized him in his mouth. Again and again the frog struggled to free himself from the grip of the snake, but the snake held him fast, and with head high in the air swung the frog from side to side, as if to boast of his power.
As the boy watched the battle he remembered what an old man had said the night before as he sat by their lodge fire. This old man, who seemed to be wise, had said, “Do to others what they do to you.” “This must be a good law,” thought the boy. “I will tell the frog about it; it may save his life.” So the boy called to the frog, “Do what the snake is doing, do what the snake is doing!”
Now it so happened that just as the boy spoke, the snake raised his head very high and swung the frog far around to the back of him. The frog heard and understood the boy’s words. His great bulb eyes were quick to see his chance. The next time he was swung back and around, the end of the snake’s tail was seized in his mouth, and the frog began to swallow the snake, as the snake was swallowing the frog.
There was now a ring of snake and frog lying in the grass—and that ring was growing smaller! Each was eating the other up! Down, down, down went the tail of the snake in the frog’s throat, and less and less frog-leg was to be seen hanging from the mouth of the snake.
The ring had grown very small now, for as more and more frog went down the snake’s throat, more and more snake went down the frog’s throat.
In amazement the boy stood and watched the struggle, and as the ring grew smaller and smaller, the boy’s eyes grew bigger and bigger. Then he could scarcely believe his eyes at all, for as the snake swallowed the last bit of frog, the frog swallowed the last bit of snake—and nothing at all was left. Each had eaten the other up!
The boy searched long in the grass where but a few moments before there had been both a snake and a frog. Not a speck of either was to be found. Each had done what the other had done to him.
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SOURCE: Powers, Mabel. Around an Iroquois Story Fire. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1923, pp. 113-115.