Relationship Over Rules: Finding Grace, Mercy and Real Rest

Rigid rule-keeping can feed anxiety and perfectionism. But choosing relationship, grace, and mercy brings true healing over legalism. A Sabbath brings us to a deep rest.

In the little country town where I live, we have a volunteer fire brigade.

At times we hear the fire siren wail, and within a minute we see one of our neighbours drive quickly past our front door.

The speed limit past our home is 50 km/hr but this firefighter would travel in excess of 80 km/hr. It’s an emergency; someone is dire need of his help and he may break the rules.

It could be a fire, a car accident, or maybe it’s a donkey or a child down a well.

Well, the last two examples are probably not going to be things that would cause him to speed and break the rules, but they could be.

When there are emergencies, there is leniency towards breaking the rules.

The rule keeper.

You probably know a rule keeper.

They have a very strict set of rules they live by.

You can do this; you can’t do that.

If you break the rules, then you are frowned upon or even banished and rejected.

It’s the trap of perfectionism. If you do this and that, and if you do it perfectly according to the rules, then you will get the reward. You may even please ‘God’.

God is viewed as being of perfect standards and rules and commandments. There is a standard that must be attained and to not do so means punishment.

Whole religions are built on keeping the rules.

Some churches are very harsh in overt and covert ways of maintaining obedience to the rules.

We quickly run to rules when we dont know how to relate, to go beyond surface level behaviorism.

Groups tend to emphasize accountability when they don’t know how to relate. Larry Crabb

I call it the early stage of faith behaviorism.

Much as a young child needs to know the rules of acceptable behaviour, these churches and religions teach a rule-based faith.

Behaviourism because if you do it right then you’ll get it right and ‘we’ the religious leaders will judge your performance.

This rigidity can lead to anxiety and depression.

Anxiety that you might not get it right and depression when you fail.

It’s a religion of rule keeping not relationship building.

When I listen to people, I often ask myself: are they living their lives in the house of Justice, Mercy, or Grace?

Justice – getting what I deserve.
Mercy – not getting what I deserve.
Grace – getting what I don’t deserve.

Justice demands a set of rules to live by. Not keeping the rules can energise guilt and shame. Not meeting expectations imposed by yourself or others can be crippling.

Which house do you mostly live in? Justice, mercy, or grace?

It’s compassion that lubricates the movement between justice, mercy and grace.

Compassion for ourselves and compassion for others, including donkeys down a well. God’s compassion for all of us.

How much compassion do you have for yourself? Where do your performance standards come from?

The Sabbath rule exception

In the last post, we talked about having one day off a week for rest. In Hebrew, it’s called Shabbat, and it means to cease and stop.

There are some exceptions to the rule.

These exceptions are based on the immediate need for mercy and grace.

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy.

And Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, ‘Is it lawful to cure people on the sabbath, or not?’

But they were silent. So Jesus took him and healed him, and sent him away.

Then he said to them, ‘If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?’

And they could not reply to this. Luke 14:1-6

Interesting words Luke shares here.

He was being watched. The rule keepers with their rule books were microscopically watching to see if Jesus would make a wrong step. They were living in the house of Justice – black and white.

Luke then writes, ‘Just then, in front of him,’ to show a surprise event, something not planned for.

Jesus asks a question. He put the lawyers in a tight spot. It was a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer?

They had to decide if healing was a prohibited act of work. They couldn’t answer him.

Jesus went to grace and mercy. To the need for immediate action. To the plight of the one right in front of him.

It’s the immediacy; it’s the need for help right here, right now. Help that can’t be organised for another day. It’s placing relationship over rule keeping.

There are exceptions to the Sabbath rule, and they always have to do with care for the other (including animals) in the immediacy of the now.

Shearing the sheep and fixing the pump.

My dad had it right. On Sundays, he didn’t work on the farm. Only worship at church and spending time with the family.

The only exceptions to this rule of life were if there was a crisis or something related to welfare of the animals in his care.

Here are a couple of examples.

If the watering system that supplied water to the troughs for the animals to drink from broke down, he would fix it.

If the next day, being Monday, was the day the shearers were going to come and shear the sheep, then we would gather the sheep together and put them in the shearing shed for the next day.

There may have been other times we ‘broke the Sabbath’, but these were the only times I can remember.

My father had a concern for the welfare of the animals.

The Sabbath, the day to stop and cease, was created for us to rest.

What came first humanity or rules?

We like rules. Rules keep us safe, but rules, if taken to the extreme, can keep us from showing mercy and grace to those in immediate need.

Can I do this work another time?

You need to rest. You need to stop, cease, sabbath. That’s a rule for everyone.

But there is always a demand from something that wants to interrupt the rest.

An email that needs answering.
A meal that needs to be prepared.
A visit to the shops for a birthday present for a friend

The question is

Can this be done tomorrow?
Could this, with better planning, have been done last week?
Is this really so important that I need to stop my rest? If so, why?

Jesus points to the example of a child or an ox in a well. Immediate action is required, but if this keeps happening all the time, then one wonders about the seriousness of how the welfare of the child or donkey is considered.

Perhaps that well needs a fence placed around to stop a child or donkey wandering into it.

The fence is built in the six days ahead of the week so that on the seventh, the day of rest, you don’t have to worry about a dangerous well.

It’s about grace

Jesus said this

The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath. Mark 2:27

In other words, the command to have a day of rest was made for the benefit of humans and our need for rest. Humans weren’t made so that they could keep rules.

So we grace ourselves and others. We plan our week.

We respond to the immediate calls for help, but then we build fences for donkeys and small children.

A Sabbath Centric life.

I like the idea of a spiral, and I actually have a spiral as my logo for Turning the Page.

I want to grow in my life what I call a ‘Sabbath Centric’ lifestyle.

To have my energy and life coming from that special time when I am grounded in Sabbath awareness.

From this place I move out and around and into my world. I then spiral back to the centre. Back into the grounded place of the Shabbat.

How to keep the Sabbath centric

Plan to

Cease. Plan to stop all your normal, everyday work type activities. Plan ahead for the sabbath and for the week ahead.
Rest. Plan how you will rest. Sleep, napping, taking a walk. Birdwatching, play.
Enjoy. Dive in deep, savour the tastes of your food, eat slowly, drink slowly, smell the roses.
Worship. Give worth and praise back to God who brought all of this together.

Further notes

Notice the pulls. Notice the pull of things that ‘need to get done’. What are they? Could they be done tomorrow? Could planning during the week help relieve the tension?
There maybe be ‘donkeys down the hole’ Emergencies that need immediate attention. Show grace to yourself and to others. Don’t get all legalistic about this.
Take millimetre movements. If you have not been part of a culture that keeps the sabbath this will be a new thing to learn. Take millimetre movements with this. Try little things and make progress.
Connect with others. Not for accountability or comparison (that is sure to kill the joy) but to celebrate.
Make some time for reflection on your cup. One of the metaphors I like to share with people is the picture of a cup. We have cup drainers and cup fillers. Sabbath is a time for reflection on your cup of life and particularly to focus on those activities that will fill your cup.
Sunset to sunset. A day, according to Genesis, started at sunset and went through to the next sunset. Start your Sabbath at sunset.

Quotes to consider

Groups tend to emphasize accountability when they don’t know how to relate. Better behavior through exhortation isn’t the solution, though it sometimes is part of it. Rather than fixing psyches or scolding sinners, we must provide nourishment for the disconnected soul that only a community of connected people can offer. Larry Crabb

Quit keeping score altogether and surrender yourself with all your sinfulness to God who sees neither the score nor the scorekeeper but only his child redeemed by Christ. Thomas Merton

The perfectionist measures her personal worth before God in terms of the acquisition of virtue and the elimination of vice, because her vision is a triumphal forced march along the purgative and illuminative trails to the unitive bivouac, the outcome is an unrealistically negative self-image.
There’s a conspicuous absence of peace and joy.
The yawning gulf between the ideal self and the real self-makes an attitude of gratitude impossible and the likelihood of wide mood swings highly probable. Henri Nouwen

His 100% pass is ours to rest on / accept / appropriate. In other words, there are no more ‘brownie points’ left for you to earn, ‘cos Jesus has got the lot, on your behalf. Is this real for you yet, or are you still focused on others opinions of you, or yourself and your own performance? Remember Paul’s words; “Indeed I do not even judge myself, but leave all that to Him…” (1 Cor. 4:3). Result; a joyful end to unhealthy introspection, idealism, perfectionism, guilty condemnation, spiritual ‘drivenness’ and inadequacy – fear of failure. David J Riddell

A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us — not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives. Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

Sabbath is the time set aside to do nothing so that we can receive everything, to set aside our anxious attempts to make ourselves useful, to set aside our tense restlessness, to set aside our media-satiated boredom. Sabbath is the time to receive silence and let it deepen into gratitude, to receive quiet into which forgotten faces and voices unobtrusively make themselves present, to receive the days of the just completed week and absorb the wonder and miracle still reverberating from each one, to receive our Lord’s amazing grace. Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers

If you don’t take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You’re doing too much, you’re being too much in charge. You’ve got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you’re not doing anything. Eugene H. Peterson

For Sabbath’s Sake Build a Fence Around That Well