The ideal we’ve called the “Golden Rule” since the 17th century is actually an ancient teaching found in various cultures. Given its name by Anglicans, it’s not an explicitly Christian concept. Similar ideas have been found in writings hundreds of years before Jesus in Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, and elsewhere.

However, those ancient statements generally framed the teaching in a negative sense. Like in Egypt: “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.” Or how the ancient Greek philosopher Isocrates put it: “Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you.” Or as Tim Walz puts it, “Mind your own damn business.”

The teaching in the negative sense is important. If people would at least follow that, it would make our society better. The fact that people aren’t even meeting that level of the Golden Rule is part of what makes Walz’s line work in campaign speeches. But Jesus went further, framing it in the positive sense. Like when he summarized the teachings of the law and the prophets as “do to others what you would have them do to you.” This marked a shift from other teachers at the time.

“The Golden Rule was not invented by Jesus; it is found in many forms in highly diverse settings,” evangelical scholar D.A. Carson wrote in his commentary on Matthew. “About AD 20, Rabbi Hillel, challenged by a Gentile to summarize the law in the short time the Gentile could stand on one leg, reportedly responded, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to anyone else. This is the whole law; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.’ Apparently only Jesus phrased the rule positively. Thus stated, it is certainly more telling than its negative counterpart, for it speaks against sins of omission as well as sins of commission.”

Carson added that Hillel’s version would mean the “goats” in Matthew 25 would be acquitted even as they did nothing to help “the least of these.” But Jesus’s version of the Golden Rule indicts not just those who hurt others but also those who don’t help others.

Similarly, the biblical command to love your neighbor as yourself — which is found repeatedly in both testaments — frames our responsibility as a positive affirmation. It’s about what we do for other people, not just what we don’t do to them. In this light, “do not harm” isn’t enough. We’re also supposed to actively work to help our neighbors, just as the “Parable of the Good Samaritan” teaches. With just a negative rendering of the Golden Rule, we cannot condemn the first two people who passed by. But with that parable, Jesus raised the ethical expectations.

That’s where Walz’s “Golden Rule” line falls woefully short. Treating others as we want to be treated sometimes means we get involved in their lives. Loving our neighbors sometimes means we don’t mind our own business. It might mean like the Samaritan in the parable that we stop and help someone. It might mean like the “sheep” in Matthew 25 that we feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the imprisoned.

Ironically, the rest of Walz’s DNC speech last night made it clear he doesn’t actually follow such a limited, negative rendering of the Golden Rule. Perhaps more than any other DNC speaker, he emphasized the importance of being a “good neighbor” (a phrase he even used). As he talked about growing up in a small town in Nebraska, he said such communities teach you “how to take care of each other. That family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do, but they’re your neighbors and you look out for them and they look out for you.” Later in his speech, he said he ran for Congress with the goal of living out what he tried to teach his students: “A commitment to the common good, an understanding that we’re all in this together, and the belief that a single person can make a real difference for their neighbors.” And he framed his political agenda as one that helps “our neighbors in need.”

Whether you agree with specific proposals or not, Walz frames his life and his politics in a positive version of the Golden Rule. Despite his crowd-pleasing line about minding our own business, he’s actually pushing a vision of actively helping and loving our neighbors. He’s lifting up the importance of seeing people around us as our neighbors and being a good neighbor to them. It’s an attitude and rhetorical focus we need more of in our politics today. I just wish he’d drop that “damn” line.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor