Golden Rule

The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as one would wish to be treated. In the book, Jesus’ instruction appears within a challenge to love even those who behave as enemies, and becomes a basis for practical marital counsel: give love in the form another person can receive, while recognizing that the response remains their choice.

Biblical Form and Ethical Reach

In the sermon quoted by the author, Jesus joins the Golden Rule to commands to love enemies, do good to those who hate, bless those who curse, and pray for those who mistreat. The instruction to treat others as one would wish to be treated is therefore not limited to reciprocal affection. Its force is clearest when the other person has not first behaved with kindness.

The author returns to this passage while considering Ann’s marriage. Ann’s husband had refused her requests that he seek counseling or learn about marriage, and, as she reported it, maintained that he had no problems and that she was the one at fault. Years of criticism had depleted her emotional energy and damaged her self-esteem. The Golden Rule’s placement beside the command to love enemies made it relevant to her predicament, but did not make the prospect easy or settle whether the marriage could change.

From Principle to Marital Experiment

The author proposed an experiment: Ann would learn her husband’s primary love language and speak it consistently, with the aim of meeting his emotional need for love. The couple’s agreed objective was to see whether, after six months, they could have a loving relationship. The Golden Rule supplied an ethical direction for Ann’s action, while the love-language hypothesis offered a specific way to put that action into practice.

The author explicitly distinguished this principle from a method of control. Kindness may tend to elicit kindness, but people remain independent agents who can reject love or walk away from it. Ann’s efforts therefore could not guarantee that her husband would reciprocate. The experiment was a possibility to test, not a promise of a particular outcome.

Service as an Example of Love

The book also connects love expressed through action with Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet. In the account, Jesus takes a basin and towel and performs a task customarily assigned to a household servant, then urges his disciples to follow his example. The episode gives concrete form to the Golden Rule’s ethic: love is not only an attitude but something enacted for another’s benefit.

The author further links service to the idea that greatness consists in serving others, and cites the apostolic injunction, “Serve one another in love.” In the book’s framework, practical acts such as doing work a spouse would appreciate can communicate care when undertaken with a positive spirit. The emphasis is not on a single prescribed task, but on attention to what the other person would value.

Choice, Faith, and Consequence

The Golden Rule belongs to a broader account of love as chosen action. The author argues that a spouse’s lack of loving behavior does not make loving conduct impossible, though it can make that conduct difficult. In discussing his own marital struggles, he describes returning to the roots of his Christian faith and coming to regard Jesus’ death as an expression of love and his resurrection as evidence of power. He says that this faith gave him inner spiritual energy to love without reciprocity.

The principle’s consequences are presented as relational rather than automatic. When emotional needs for love are met, the author argues, couples may find it easier to handle disagreements with friendliness, understanding, and negotiation; when those needs go unmet, conflict and withdrawal can deepen. The Golden Rule thus provides the ethical orientation, while the book’s advice about love languages describes one way to act on it. Neither removes the other person’s freedom to respond.