OldSoul.blog

Headlines this week have included a call from politicians and educationalists for a ‘ban’ on access to social media for people under the age of 16 years.  The primary intention, it seems, is to protect young people from the increasing incidence of cyber bullying by their peers, and perhaps also to keep them safe from online predators.  On the surface this sounds like a positive initiative, one it would be hard to argue against.  But will legislation to prevent access address the core problem, or will it simply mask it?  Children and young people are not bullies by nature, rather they ‘learn’ such behaviours, primarily from the adults they observe and respect – some who might be close family or friends, some who may be sports stars or music icons, and some who might be characters on TV or in movies.  So, the core problem may not be how young people use or abuse social media, it may be how their adult role models behave in the world around them.

My daughter and her family are moving house and are therefore experiencing the tension that anyone who has ever moved house has experienced: what to keep and what to throw away.  How does one make that assessment: on the basis of frequency of use, on monetary value, on emotional attachment, or on a random mix of all the above?

Things to keep and things to throw away.  It’s a pretty good metaphor for life really.  Our journey toward wisdom and understanding has much to do with discerning what to keep and what to throw away.  What to hold on to and what to let go.

When I was a child, men would rarely go to church without a tie (my grandfather even wore a tie to the football), and women would never go to church without a hat and gloves.  It was a rule – an unwritten rule I’m sure, but a rule nonetheless.  Fortunately, that rule has long been thrown away.

When my own children were kids, a program was launched in schools across the State under the name ‘stranger danger’ – our kids were warned not to talk to strangers and to be wary of people they didn’t know.  It wasn’t a new rule (we’d all been raised on the ‘don’t talk to strangers’ mantra), but it was given new emphasis and in the context of the times it helped promote child safety.  What we didn’t realise was that at some point it ceased to be helpful, and became a wall between different cultures, a fence that divided neighbour from neighbour, a barrier to open communication and trust, fostering fear and suspicion where none was necessary.

That’s one of the problems with rules – they are sometimes too rigid, too inflexible, too unyielding, and they often fail to address the core problem, or heal the deep hurt, or mend the brokenness.  Rules can too easily become an unexpected burden on those they are meant to support, producing unanticipated consequences in the societies that create them.  And even more problematic, when one rule becomes unworkable or unreasonable we jump to create new rules to reinterpret or qualify the unworkable rule!  What a strange lot we are, creating rule upon rule upon rule in the belief that rules will help create the free and harmonious society for which we yearn!

It’s reminiscent of the world that Jesus encountered in Jerusalem, a world in which the Law had swelled from the basic Ten Commandments to over 600 precepts that the pious Jew was required to observe.  The Law had become an unassailable burden for the average citizen, a suffocating system of regulations and impositions that was life-denying rather than life-giving, promulgating injustice rather than justice. 

When Jesus entered the Temple on that fateful day and saw the trappings of this burdensome religious system, he entered the ‘things to keep and things to throw away’ mode and began the cleaning out process that would feature so strongly in his practical theology.

One could reasonably surmise that the core mission of Jesus was to replace the ‘rule of Law’ with the ‘rule of Love’!  It may be idealistic, but it is true, that a world governed by the law of Love will always be a healthier, better balanced, more just world than a world governed by the rule of Law.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not advocating anarchy!  I’m not advocating the abandonment of all laws and rules.  Clearly, laws are necessary for the proper ordering of society.  But my point is this: legalistic systems have always been an imperfect way to fashion community and to shape society, because law fails to impact upon the heart and soul, it fails to radically alter human nature.

Let’s face it, after thousands and thousands of years of rule-making the world is still riddled with injustice, unscrupulous people still manage to exploit the system, and major conflict erupts throughout the world despite rules and conventions and agreements designed to prevent it.  There is clearly a certain futility in believing that rules and regulations will lead us to the new and better world for which we yearn, that the ‘rule of Law’ will be our salvation.

Too often, the ‘rule of Law’ does the opposite: the proliferation of rules and regulations becomes a burden that dampens freedom, diminishes hope, and denies life.

The great mission task of those who would follow Jesus in this day and age is not to draw lines in the sand, or build walls, or define boundaries that separate the good from the bad, the deserving from the undeserving, the righteous from the unrighteous.  It is rather to demonstrate by the way we live that God has done away with the boundaries and bestows grace and favour upon all people – no matter whether we might label them good or bad, righteous or unrighteous, deserving or undeserving.

The very best thing we can do for the salvation of the world is not to stand on the metaphorical street corner proclaiming doom and gloom and damnation to those who don’t follow Jesus and keep his rules.  The best thing we can do is model Jesus’ rule of love for all people.  For love, not rules, is the way to move the human heart, to stir the human spirit, to redeem the human soul!  

Things to keep and things to throw away?  If were up to me, I’d be throwing away rules and keeping love!

David Brooker.

22^nd May 2024