Jesus's rules rule

There's a really good show on TV, and you want to stay up late to watch it. "It's past your bedtime," your mother says, and sends you to bed. "What a dumb rule!" you yell, and stomp away to your room.

All rules seem unfair sometimes. What's wrong with your staying up late, you think, just this once? Jesus would understand how you feel. In this week's Gospel (Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23), He talks about unfair rules -- and good ones.

Some people saw that Jesus' followers weren't obeying one of their laws: They didn't wash their hands before they ate. "Why don't your disciples follow the law?" the people asked Jesus. He answered, "You've made laws out of habits. Those laws didn't come from God." Having dirty hands wouldn't hurt the disciples, Jesus added: "What hurts people doesn't come from the outside, but from inside their hearts, when they sin."

If a rule seems dumb to you, that's probably because you have a different idea about what's important than the person who made the rule does. It's more important to you to see a great TV show than to get enough sleep, but your mom doesn't think that!

Jesus felt like you about some rules. He thought it was much more important for people to worry about whether they had clean hearts than clean hands. If we hurt another person, He said, that's a lot worse than forgetting to wash up before dinner!

Some rules are important. Your mom probably knows that if you stayed up late once, you'd always want to do it. Then you'd always be tired and cranky.

Even though Jesus thought hand-washing was a silly rule, He said some other rules were very important -- like the Ten Commandments, loving God and treating other people as we want to be treated.

Jesus didn't worry about rules about things; the rules He taught us were all about people!

PRAYER FOR THE WEEK: Jesus, help me to always follow the most important rules: yours! Amen.

(08-28-97)

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