Perspective: Rules and Priorities

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Rules and Priorities

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

We will work with each other; we will work side by side

We will work with each other; we will work side by side

And we'll guard human dignity and save human pride

And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love

Yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.

From "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love" by Peter Scholtes

as printed in The Faith We Sing¹

One day, Jesus healed a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years, and this single act of mercy sparked a major controversy.  Jesus said to the man, who had been lying on a mat next to a pool known for its healing properties, "Stand up, take your mat and walk."  When the religious leaders caught the man carrying his mat, they informed him that he was in violation of the Fourth Commandment, and the man pointed them to Jesus who had just healed him.²

The fourth of the Ten Commandments designates every seventh day as holy.  On this day, which is known as the Sabbath Day, people are forbidden to do any work.³  Carrying things and administering medical treatment were both considered work, and, because Jesus healed the man and told him to carry his mat home on the Sabbath Day, the religious leaders found His actions problematic.  They confronted Him for His breaking the Fourth Commandment and His encouraging others to do the same, and He replied, "My Father is still working, and I also am working."  This comment offended the religious leaders even more, so they set out on a campaign to destroy Him.⁴

Even though Jesus flagrantly violated the Fourth Commandment, Christians still contend that He was without sin; therefore, we can deduce that simply breaking a religious rule is not sinful in and of itself.  The simple fact of the matter is that sometimes rules must be broken.  It has been said that one needs to learn the rules in order to learn how to break them properly.

Wherever two or more rules are gathered, a situation will inevitably emerge in which following one rule will require breaking another.  For example, the Jewish Law mandated that male infants were to be circumcised when they were eight days old.⁵  There is a one in seven chance that a baby boy's eighth day of life would fall on the Sabbath Day.  In such a situation, one rule or another must be broken: either the circumcision must occur when the child is not eight days old, or the work of circumcision must be done on the Sabbath Day.  In a later altercation with the religious leaders, Jesus pointed out that, though they were willing to perform a medical procedure like circumcision on the Sabbath Day, they still had a problem with his giving medical attention to an invalid on the Sabbath.⁶

It seems to me that, in a situation in which two rules conflict with each other, a person's priorities will determine which of the two rules the person will break.

Jesus and the religious leaders had different priorities.  The religious leaders prioritized their religious and cultural identity markers, among which were circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath Day.  They were willing to break the Fourth Commandment only for the sake of circumcision.  Jesus, on the other hand, prioritized the well-being of others.  He never hesitated to heal people on the Sabbath, and He had no problem with His hungry disciples' picking grain on the Sabbath.⁷

Once, when Jesus was questioned about His seemingly flippant attitude toward the Fourth Commandment, He replied, "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath."⁸  Not long before the Israelites received the Ten Commandments, they were slaves in Egypt.  They were treated not as human beings but as machines, forced to meet ever-increasing demands, day after day without a break.  The Fourth Commandment, which forced the Israelites to take one day off from work every week, was meant to uphold human dignity and ensure that the kingdom of Israel did not become another Egypt.⁹  For the religious leaders, the Sabbath had become an identity marker and an obligation, but Jesus still viewed the Sabbath as a gift that should not prevent someone from helping others.¹⁰

I believe that some of the same criticisms the New Testament makes against the first-century Jewish religious leaders could also be made against twentieth-century American Christians.  I think that we far too often prioritize identifying ourselves as Christian over actually being Christlike.  If we really want to follow in Jesus' footsteps, as our name suggests, we need to adopt Jesus' priorities.

Jesus was once asked about His priorities.  Specifically He was asked which rule in the whole Jewish Law He considered the most important.  He replied that the greatest commandment is to love God with all one's heart, soul, and mind and that the second commandment, which is like the first, is to love one's neighbor as oneself.  He went on to suggest that every other religious rule was derived from these two rules.¹¹  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that to be perfect is not to perfectly follow rules but rather to love perfectly.¹²

It is not the rules that determine what sins are.  Instead it is our sins that determined what the rules are.  The Bible would not say, "You shall not murder,"¹³ if people weren't already murdering each other.  The Fourth Commandment, which was the center of so much controversy throughout Jesus' ministry, exists because people were being dehumanized through inhumane labor practices.  Ultimately, sin is a failure to love.  Rules exist because we do not love each other as we ought to love.  If we all loved each other as we were created to love each other, we would never have needed rules in the first place.

There was a time when I thought that Christianity was all about following rules.  Now I see that the primary concern for Christians is not following the rules but rather loving God and neighbor.  Jesus said that it is by our love that people will know whether or not we follow Him, so we need to set love as our top priority.  Though we should never use love as an excuse to break the rules, sometimes love necessitates that we break the rules as Jesus did.


Notes:

1. 2001, Abingdon Press.
2. John 5:1-15
3. Exodus 20:8-11
4. John 5:16-18 (NRSV)
5. Genesis 17:9-14
6. John 7:21-23
7. Mark 2:23-3:6
8. Mark 2:27 (NRSV)
9. Rob Bell and Don Golden.  Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for a Church in Exile.  2008, Zondervan.  pp. 33-35
10. Mark 3:4
11. Matthew 22:34-40
12. Matthew 5:43-48
13. Exodus 20:13 (NRSV)

Christ at the Pool of Bethesda was painted by Artus Wolffort in the early 1600s.