Break the rules?

It has been said that rules were made to be broken. But what about Gods rules, can you break them?

Religion is all about rules, rules about when to pray, how to pray, what you can eat and when you can eat it, who you can have sex with and when. It is the making and keeping of rules that make religions and make us religious.

Take the Golden Rule.

The Golden rule is taken from the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the mount:

Matthew 7:12 ESVUK
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

The problem with the Golden Rule is that if we make it a rule it does not work.

I have hurt people by adhering to the Golden Rule. If I treat others the way I want to be treated, with a certain amount of humour, irony, sarcasm and satire, then those whose humour is not the same as mine could take what is clearly a joke, the sort of joke I don’t mind being the butt of, seriously. A joke taken seriously is no joke.

We are all individuals, we are all different. Politics tends to group people together into groups, We improve the lot off the less well off by grouping them into a group, call it the poor, or the working class, or the immigrant, and working for that group. To an extent, as politics, that works.

But God does not look on us as groups such as the elite or the proletariat or whatever, God looks on the heart of each individual. When God gives the best to me it could be something different to what he gives to you.

I want to be treated as me. Not as the member of a social or religious group, not as a member of a race. Just as me. Broken, hurting but loved by God, that’s me.

We are all broken and hurting. We are all equally loved by God. We are broken in different ways, we are hurting in different ways. But the love of God is a constant and equal for all.

So how do I want to be treated? As an individual, a unique creation of God. How should I then treat others? As individuals, each a unique creation of God.  So it is not really about rules but love, selfless love that does not ask for reward, or even thanks.

Rules — when should we break them? When the rule gets in the way of our loving other people.

Following God is more about God than religion.

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