It has been my experience that I am not the only person to have had a mother who taught her children that they should do no harm. I have also discovered that it is not always easy to train children to do no harm at all times. In fact, I’m certain that I was not the only little boy to ever give his mother a real hard time about following all of the family rules. However, over the many years I have come to better understand the true meaning of that one key rule: “Do no harm.”
For most people, this phrase is in the back of their memories as sometime taught to all children, and it is also something that Doctors make as a promise when they complete their education and begin their lives as healers and care givers. But what does it mean to say that we will do no harm? One individual wrote on the Web, “Ultimately it means to give thoughtful consideration to our actions. ‘Do no harm’ simply means to consider how our actions may affect the world we all share … to be compassionate in our dealings …”[1] The author continues on to talk about how we need to be responsible in our actions with each other and with this physical world.
Sometimes it is not just our actions which can cause harm. Sometimes it is our words which can cause harm. Sometimes we are all too quick to pass judgment on something or someone. My wife helped me to understand a wonderful way to communicate with others exactly how careful we need to be with our words. You see, once we have spoken a word we can never really “take it back” … that is we can not “unsay” that hurtful or unkind word. One day while one of our young grandsons was in her care, he made the mistake of saying a very bad and unkind word. He said that he was sorry; in a very off handed way. She lead him into the bathroom handed him an open tube of toothpaste and told him to squeeze it out into the sink. With a smile he almost emptied the tube. Then she told him to put the paste back into the tube. That day one of our grandsons learned that when you do harm with words … it’s not easy to take back the words and undo the harm!
The author of the 1st Letter of John shares with us an interesting variation on this powerful expression of being careful to do no harm, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey [God’s] commandments.”[2] Do I believe that God wants us to follow the simple rule that we continue to teach our own children to this day? Yes. Yes I do believe that God wants us to always consider how our actions will affect others.
Jesus told his followers: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”[3] I do not remember Jesus ever turning someone away because of their color, their gender, their faith, their nationality, or their economic status. Jesus only once turned away a woman because she was not Jewish, and then when she reminded him that even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of the chosen. At that turning point in the ministry of Jesus we discover that we are also called to offer the love of God to everyone that we meet without judging them. We are called to do no harm.
We have been called by the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer to do no harm. “… I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my father … so that you may love one another.”[4] The teachings of Jesus, and the advice of the early Christian community, could be phrased in the following simple way:
That your joy may be complete
keep the commandments of God - do no harm
so that you will abide in the love of God forever.
keep the commandments of God - do no harm
so that you will abide in the love of God forever.
[1] www.donoharm.us/
No comments:
Post a Comment