If parents were to ask me for advice, I would tell them to take great care what people their children consort with at this age. For great harm comes of bad company, since we are inclined by nature to follow the worse rather than the better. So it was with me. I had a sister many years older than I, from whose modesty and goodness – of which she had plenty – I learnt nothing, whereas from a relative who often visited us I learnt every kind of evil. - Teresa of Avila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself (27)
Maybe unsolicited advice from a sainted nun about raising your children is not something that you feel ready to take to heart right now. Regardless of if you have kids or not, taking advice from someone you don’t know is a hard thing – especially when you weren’t asking for advice in the first place. Something about it makes the rebellious streak come out in just about anyone, whether or not they think it’s a worthwhile suggestion.
“Don’t tell me how to raise my children!”
“Don’t tell me who I can or can’t hang out with!”
“Just because you failed doesn’t mean that I will too!”
“Who do you think you are?”
If we stopped and considered this advice from Saint Teresa for a minute, putting aside our knee-jerk rejection and methodically tested what she has to say, it seems like a fair piece of logic. It does matter who we spend our time with. It does matter who we pay attention to. It does matter… but if we’d like, we could always just learn the hard way instead.
Taking advice is hard enough, even if it is good advice, but obeying laws that we didn’t ask for can be even harder. And whether it’s the King of England or the King of Creation, any good American isn’t just going to accept a law or command without good reason.
But you know, advice and commands and laws usually come to us out of experience. Saint Teresa had a lot of regret to look back on when she considered her later years of childhood. Her little piece of advice is trying to prevent others from going the same way. While not every law is going to seem fair to us, there’s almost always a reason for it. We may not understand why God made his commands so strict, but He knows why … and it’s probably for our own good. In fact, the laws of God are specifically for our own good.
Psalm 1 talks about all these things. Doubting God and being rebellious don’t often get us very far in the way of understanding. In fact, meditating on God’s law is seen as far more beneficial. Why? Because He just wants what’s best for us. It matters to God how our lives work out. His commands are not just some unwanted pieces of advice raining down from the heavens, they’re designed to keep us safe and to keep us as His children. His ‘laws’ are actually more than restrictive bits of ancient rule-making – they’re made to point to all the places where He has saved us from everything we’ve failed to do right!
Just like Saint Teresa wanted us to benefit from her knowledge and experience, God wants us to benefit from every good thing that He has to say to us as well.
A Suggested Prayer: Dear God, sometimes it's hard to take your words and your laws as anything more than unsolicited advice. Help me to know that you want much more for me than to simply do what you want me to do… Show me your love and keep me in your care. Through Jesus, Amen.
laws
They say that children actually want structure and rules to follow: it helps to give them a sense of order in the midst of chaos. Can you imagine a world (or family) with real anarchy? I surely would not want to be a part of that!
Anarchy vs. Order
I think most of us want some level of law and order, the real desire isn't so much pure anarchy like we've seen in the race riots of the 60's, the post Rodney King riots in LA, or in New Orleans after Katrina, but it's a debate as to how much law and the purpose of them.
This is something that Christians need to think about when it comes to how we talk about God's Law. Is the purpose limitation or protection? That is, did God give us Law to keep us out of something good or to protect us from something bad?
All too often, when we speak words of law, it comes across as limitation and our human nature prompts us to resist those words because they sound like limitation. It seems much wiser to either meet people who have been outside the bounds of protection and invite them back in, or share the stories of those who have been outside and the damage that was done. We still speak law, but it's far more likely to be received and then prepare people for the good news of the Gospel.
love and the law
I couldn't have said it better, Joe. I once read somewhere that the Gospel doesn't free us from the law but frees us for the law. And Bonhoeffer says that true freedom is not freedom from the other but freedom for the other. In other words, only in serving others rather than ourselves do we find true freedom. The whole purpose of law in a Christian sense is to give shape to our love--not to restrict it.