Rules and regulations

Have you ever stopped to watch little kids play? If something happens in their game which is not clearly covered by a rule, they make one up on the spot. I have seen Four-square games with more rules than the Congress can dream up in a session!

What did Jesus rail at the Pharisees for? Aside from their hypocrisy, making all those rules. What did Isaiah write about? Adding rule on rule, precept on precept.

I don't think the natural man is comfortable with freedom! In fact I don't think most men, period, are comfortable with freedom. Take a look at the Roman Catholic Church and all the other religions, cults or not: what is it they all have in common? Tons and tons of rules, rites, and regulations. But what did Jesus tell the woman at the well? The time is coming when we will worship God in spirit and in truth.

Quite a difference.

Something puzzled me about the Ten Commandments once: most of them are referred to before Moses even in the Bible -- Sabbath, murder, even the need for sacrifices. We can look at the Code of Hammurabi, or at least the pieces we have of it, written before Moses' time, and see that other cultures knew these laws, too. But the Code of Hammurabi contains lots of little laws, too.

Did God NEED to carve the Ten Commandments in stone Himself because we made such a mess of them otherwise, even before? And when Jesus reduced the entire thing to the two Great Commandments, was that also partly a way of saying to us, "You folks have GOT to stop adding and adding to things!"

I know that the idea of freedom and the 'practice' of it can be badly abused. But those who practice their personal freedom make up rules about how to do that!

I am wondering if men like or want freedom at all. Maybe deep down we have a terror of not having boundaries, and so we make up more and more simply for our own sense of security. Our sense of being right in what we say and do...

The freedom in Christ does seem to be something utterly foreign to those who are not in Him and even still frightening and somehow threatening to many who are in Him.

Isn't that a strange thing?

 

something you said started me thinking: is heaven, where there will be no sin and no effects of sin, ultimate freedom? With wills in line with His, then anything we want is OK, right?

Wow, gotta think on that one for awhile...!