One of the most common questions for personality tests asks you to complete the sentence:
Rules are meant to be…followed/broken?
We can learn a bit about ourselves by how we answer this question. This Sunday’s Gospel challenges both responses. Choose your adventure/reflection…
Reflection II:
Rules are meant to be…followed/broken?
We can learn a bit about ourselves by how we answer this question. This Sunday’s Gospel challenges both responses. Choose your adventure/reflection…
Reflection II:
-Rules are meant to be broken…
When was Jesus ever called polite or a rule-follower, right? Jesus scorched his own trail! He didn’t go along with the authorities but constantly debunked the law: “Let you without sin cast the first stone”. Today’s Gospel is vintage Jesus: “You have heard that it was said…but I say to you…”; he upends the old laws. We aren’t called as Christians to just ‘go with the flow’ and follow the rules but to be radical imitators of Jesus.
Yet Jesus starts off the Gospel saying that “I have come not to abolish[the law] but to fulfill.” While Jesus is radical in his loving, He speaks from a tradition that understands laws as helping to (re)direct us toward God. If we were able to constantly live with an awareness of God’s love for us we would not need any laws but because of our forgetfulness we need laws to help guide us and inform our conscience when we have decisions to make. What is most important is that we learn to see laws as protective guides that allow us to be most active in loving God and others radically in God’s playground (our world).
-What is a rule that you do not understand or appreciate? Look up its meaning or ask someone about it.
-Is the child playing on the roof in the above picture able to play more or less actively if there were walls along the edge? (Sometimes religious laws/rules are the walls for our life that allow us to play most fully in this world. Do you agree/disagree? Why?)
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