There, mused Sue with satisfaction. This lemon pie ought to let Tom know I’m really sorry I was so unreasonable this morning. It’s my best recipe, and it turned out perfectly.

Coming in from work a few minutes later, Tom saw the pie cooling on the kitchen counter. “Not again, not another lemon pie,” he muttered under his breath. He guessed correctly that Sue was saying she was sorry, but wondered why she couldn’t have said it in a different way. After all, he was on a diet. And his favorite pie was apple!

“Well done, Pete,” Dad announced, congratulating his son for having graduated from the eighth grade. “Now, Mother and I would like you to have something I always wanted. We have bought you a fine violin, and we will pay for lessons, starting next week!”

How could Pete say that he appreciated Dad’s offer of violin lessons when he could only see himself strumming a guitar with his friends singing around him? He
needed that guitar to help him belong.

The note on Aunt Bess’s present read: “Dear Jill, on your eighteenth birthday I want to start your collection of grown-up jewelry. I hope you’ll treasure this necklace and wear it for special occasions. With love, Aunt Bess.”

As Jill fumbled with the tissue paper and noted the exclusive store where Aunt Bess had bought the necklace, she wished she could have helped Aunt Bess see that, as a newly baptized Seventh-day Adventist, she had come to value simplicity and could never be comfortable wearing that necklace, beautiful as it might be.

“Oh,” she sighed, “if only she had given me a good nursing watch.”

What do these three scenarios have in common? People give what they themselves value. Isn’t that what the golden rule suggests: “Whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them” (Matt. 7:12, HCSB)?
¹

True, but the other common element is that the recipients were less than thrilled. Why? Because the gift was not what they liked, needed, or valued.

Is it possible that the golden rule does not always apply? Perhaps the following addition might help clarify. “Whatever you want others to do to you, do to them as if you were they.” If Sue were Tom, she’d have wanted to respect his wishes about his diet and the kind of pie he preferred. If Dad were Pete, he’d want a guitar. If Aunt Bess understood Jill’s value system, she’d want a sweep-hand nursing watch.

It’s so easy for me to do for others what I’d like for myself—without taking into consideration that they are not me. How selfish it is for me to please myself by giving or doing what I want for myself.

Only when I put myself in the shoes of the one to whom I’m making the gift can I begin to truly live out the golden rule.

Only when I regard the other person’s needs and desires as my own will I show the attitude of Christ. Paul’s recommendation was that we should “regard one another as more important” than ourselves. We should “look out . . . for the interests of others.” As believers, we do this having “this attitude . . . which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:3-5, NASB).
²

So much for suggesting to my husband that we go to the beach when I know he’d much rather go to the mountains.

“Be like Jesus, this my song,

In the home and in the throng;

Be like Jesus, all day long!

I would be like Jesus.”
³

1. Scripture quotations marked HCSB have been taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission.
2. Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
3. The Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1985), no. 311.