So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)
Have you
ever stopped to think about this? We hear it and may even quote it, but the
whole basis of this verse is the question of how we want to be treated. How do
you want to be treated? There are some easy answers – with love or lovingly,
with dignity, with honor… as adult, capable, competent, courageous, fun to be
around, intelligent, needed, responsible, valuable … Feel free to add your own
wishes.
At the
same time, I strongly doubt that you want every person you encounter – on any
day, let alone every day – to enthusiastically sing your praises to everyone in earshot, or to
thank you repeatedly for being such a wonderful person. After maybe an hour,
you might want to hide or beat someone about the head and
shoulders if they so much as open their mouth. Sometimes, we don’t need the “Oh
you’re wonderful” as much as we need a “We need to talk. There’s a problem.”
And that’s part of loving, too. And sometimes, what we want more than anything is
for people to just leave us alone!
Sadly, we
don’t have little LED displays over our heads to tell each other how we want to
be treated now. It doesn’t help that sometimes, we don’t know how we want to be
treated either. Some people have a knack for reading people. For those of us
who aren’t or who spend a lot of time in their own minds so we don’t even notice
the clues we’re given, taking some time to consider the answers.
One idea
that has come part-way to mind is to come up with a different question than “How
are you?” or with a question that follows up on “How are you?” I’m not sure
what that question should be. One possibility would be for us to practice
saying “How can I pray for you?” It would seem awkward until we got used to it.
This is a
habit we can build. I know because I’ve built a similar habit. I used to answer
“How are you” with some snarky answer. I decided that since people generally answer
this question the same way, I would respond with some variation on “I’m doing
wonderfully” It’s now my automatic response. If I can learn to do that, I can
learn to ask how I can pray for them. And I can either pray on the spot, or pray
as I walk away, because if we don’t pray, we shouldn’t ask.
That
brings us to another somewhat obvious habit to build. Whether or not we mention
praying for people, when we see people or as we walk away after talking with them,
we should pray for them. I don’t know about you, but that’s an obvious way we
can do as we would have done to us.
Another
possibility would be to work on the habit of finding something about every
encounter that we can thank or compliment the person for. This might be easier at times, because we can
always thank someone for holding a door, letting us go first or some other
little service. If we happen to like
their car, their hat, their pet, or their pleasing manner, or something else, why
not tell the person so?
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