So, I took a brief sabbatical over the holidays, but now I’m back. I’ll try to write more, but life is just busy right now. Between wedding planning and trying to figure out where I’m headed at work I just have a lot on my mind and plate these days.
Over the course of my 23 years of vast experience in life, I have come to notice three types of outlooks on rules….
1) The “rules are meant to be broken” mentality,
2) Rules are put into place for a reason but we must always question those rules to ensure that they are still there for a reason
3) Rules are rules and we must follow them no matter what.
Perhaps I have oversimplified this and of course as with anything different folks have different degrees of how well they match each of these statements. But for the most part, I feel like these are relatively accurate and fair.
I am a rule follower. I don’t like it when people get up and move about the cabin when the pilot has the “fasten seatbelt” sign on. I would describe myself as an abnormally obedient child and never understood my peers need to “rebel.” After all, what did we have to rebel against? Warm beds and food on the table? I just never thought it was unreasonable for my parents to have a curfew or rules that I was expected to follow. God had entrusted them to bring me up in the way that I should go so that when I was old I wouldn’t depart from it. Why wouldn’t I trust my parents to do as best of a job at that as they could? And even though at times I hated their quasi over protective and sheltering parenting style, I knew deep down inside that it was better to have parents like that then have parents with no rules at all. I think I have digressed too much from the topic at hand, let me move on to my point…
I have probably taken rule following to a bad extreme in my life. I think I followed the rules of life so closely at times that I forgot to question what benefit those rules actually had in my life. So, I became a legalist and this attitude that “perfection just might be achievable after all” spilled over into my walk with the Messiah.
And over the past few years I’ve been trying to overcome this. But I’m faced with a new temptation…perhaps I can’t exactly describe it as the “rules are meant to be broken” mentality, but its something like it. I saw a lot of my peers go this way while I was at Lipscomb in particular. It’s that feeling that if it’s not explicitly stated in the Bible that I can’t do it, then it’s not wrong and I should be allowed to do it without judgment from others. Or even the attitude that “yeah, well I sinned and no one’s perfect and you can’t hold me accountable because I’m not perfect either.”
But I think the best outlook I can have on what God tells His people is that God cares for me. He wants the best for me. And yes, maybe there’s not a line in there saying that I can’t become a chain smoker, but if I look at the heart of the text do I really believe that God would be ok with me doing that to my body? I think we’re all guilty of taking the Bible and making it a list of rules so that we can either a) get away with what we want to get away with, or b) make a bunch of rules that no one can possibly live up to. And I for one just don’t want to live that way.
I want to live in a manner that I find favor in God and in man. Because I really do believe that living a Christ-like life will do both. No one is going to find blame and fault with someone full of compassion and grace that is constantly seeking to serve others. And I think if we begin to focus on living a Spirit empowered life as Christ did we might find that there really aren’t that many occasions in life to check the “rule book” for a decision; perhaps the “rule book” will simply become a text full of hope and encouragement toward living a life we’re striving to lead. By believing my parents wanted me home before 12 AM was just a rule that they made up for their own entertainment is limiting my view of how deeply my parents care for me. I’m choosing to limit the amount of wisdom I believe they have. And it’s the same with God. He has such great and powerful things in store for us as we work in the Kingdom that by limiting God in our life to a guy that makes rules we’re limiting our ability to seek and save the lost. And I just don’t want to do that anymore. Is anyone with me?
