Salvation Is Jesus

What’s With All the Rules?

Sometimes people don’t like the idea of Christianity, or any other religion because of the rules. What’s the deal with all these rules anyway? Well God gives us rules (laws) to follow because he wants us to have freedom in our lives. That’s right. When you follow the rules that the Bible lays out, a greater degree of freedom results.

First we have to understand that no one is completely free. There are things that are just too big for us and completely out of our control. For example, we can’t decide that we don’t like gravity anymore and be free to fly around like Superman. God, being the creator of gravity, and all the other laws that hold the universe together, was kind enough to lay out some rules, that when followed, work well with the laws of His created universe.

Some Examples.

Let’s start with something obvious. A rule that most people in the world agree with from Exodus 20:13:

You shall not murder

As a human being, do I have the right to murder someone? In one sense I do. I am physically capable of killing someone for selfish reasons. People around the world do it all the time. But doing so not only affects my freedom in every other part of my life, but it also affects the freedom of others… the victims freedom to live, the victims loved ones’ freedom to be with him, the freedom to feel safe in the world without having to worry about murderers, etc.

God is not only concerned with your own freedom, but the freedom of all the people he created. If you look at it this way, many of the rules that people would rather not follow start to make more sense.

Sex is the most obvious example I can come up with for our culture. Most would agree that sex is a very powerful thing. So powerful that our culture is completely obsessed with it. The Bible says that the only place sex is intended to take place is between a married man and woman. Sure people can choose to invoke their freedom of having sex outside of the rules that God gave, but doing so almost always limits more freedom than it produces. Sex outside of marriage will almost always result in at least one of the following losses of freedom.

• Freedom to live without an STD
• Freedom from life long emotional scars and heartbreak
• Freedom to have a healthy home with a mother and father
• Freedom from being the victim of adultery
• Freedom from unwanted pregnancy
• Freedom from unwanted child support

This concept of freedom from God’s rules proves itself historically. Nations and civilizations that follow the rules laid out in the Bible - which are also put in man’s heart (Romans 1:20) - are the nations and civilization that end up providing a solid foundation for its citizens’ freedom. The USA is a great example of this. You’ve probably heard that our nation was founded on “Judeo-Christian” values. That simply means that most of the reasoning behind our laws were based on the values and rules that the Bible lays out. As a result, the American people have had great freedom. It’s our nations’ motto. History will show that when a people start acting more and more immorally, the civilization slowly starts to crumble and people lose more and more freedom.

One final example. Teachers in our public school system are being more and more restricted on teaching basic values. This is because there are a few parents out there that for some reason don’t want to burden their kids with morals and values. How dare they infringe on the student’s freedom of defining their own morality! Recently in my area, I heard on the news that one school district is now making it against the rules to wear a hood over your head in cold weather, because too many students were getting mugged by other students who wore hoods, making them harder to identify. Great, so now we’re free from morals, but not from being mugged or wearing hoods over our heads on a cold day.

If you can think of some more examples, please feel free to explain with a comment on this post.