Rules or Robots

Have you ever heard someone, maybe a preacher or a parent, say something like, “The Bible is not a rule book; it’s a love letter from God,”?  Maybe you said it yourself.  And, in a sense, the preacher or parent or you were right.  It’s not a list of rules like you see posted on the gates of a community pool or at the entrance to one of those drive through animal parks.  The Bible is not even like the Student Handbook they give you at the beginning of every semester at school.  But let’s be honest – it has a ton of thou shalts and thou shalt nots.

Of course, Jesus said you could sum up all the rules in one sentence.  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, love your neighbor as yourself.”  You could put that on a tee shirt.  Well, a big tee shirt, anyway.  Even so, there are still hundreds of commands describing what loving God and loving your neighbor look like in the daily grind of living.  Oh, and Jesus also said, “If you love me, keep my commands.”

So there’s really no getting around it.  The Bible, though not a rule book, is, none-the-less, a book full of rules.  Why is that?

God could have created a world in which every person always did the right thing.  No one would ever lie to someone else or take their stuff or do anything other than protect, honor and serve them.  Sounds like a great place to live, doesn’t it? As long as you don’t mind giving up free will.  And I don’t think God was keen on creating a world full of obedient robots.

So he arranged things differently.  He set it up so that if justice and righteousness and love and kindness are going to exist on this planet, humans are going to have to help God make that happen.  We have to partner with him.  That’s why all those commands are in the Bible. They describe what it looks like to work with God to make the world a good place.  And it helps explain how love and obedience are connected.  If I love God, I will value the things God values.  His way of doing life — what we commonly call rules — will become the way I want to do life, too.

The upside of that arrangement is that we get to be a part of something significant.  If justice is administered or peace is forged or kindness is shown, we had a hand in it. And it always feels good to see something you participated in produce good in the world.

The downside, though, is that sometimes we don’t do our part.  Sometimes justice is denied, peace is broken and kindness is killed.  That’s why all those commands about forgiveness and loving your enemy are in the Bible. They describe how to respond when people choose not to work with God.

You and I can see the Bible as nothing more than a book full of onerous rules.  Or we can view it as a guide explaining how to participate with God to bring about the kind of world we all want to live in. And how to respond when others – or we ourselves – fail to follow the rules.

Maybe that doesn’t do much for you, but it helps me.  Now, in any given moment of my day, when I have to choose how I’m going to live or how I’m going to respond to someone else’s decision, I can ask a simple question: Of all the available options, which thought, word or action is most likely to make me a partner with God?

And if I’m stumped, I know where to look to find the right answer.