"Play by the Rules!"

My oldest son is an avid golfer.  From the time he first picked up a club in grade school he had a natural swing, and loved the game.  When we moved to Idaho, Dieter would spend as much time as possible out at Hidden Lakes golf course.  He was on the high school golf team, the golf pros at the club knew him, and were more than willing to pair him up with other players whenever he asked.  On one such day he was playing with another gentleman, apparently a quite serious golfer.  On one of the early holes, it being just a practice round for him, Dieter ‘took a gimme’.  When his back handed tap in missed, the other player was adamant that there were no “gimmes”, it didn’t count until he actually sank the putt, so finish out.  “Play by the rules!”

Dieter was pissed off by the gentleman’s rather uncompromising, anal attitude toward the rules, especially as it was only a casual practice round for him.  “Ok, if we’re going to play serious, then we’ll play serious!”  The next hole was a par three and Dieter proceeded to hit a hole in one.  On the eighteenth hole, his third shot was from about 125 to 135 yards out, and again, he knocked it in for an eagle.  After Dieter had left, the golf pro reported that this gentleman had walked into the clubhouse stunned, and asked “Who in the hell was that guy you paired me up with?”  For the next few times I played with Dieter, the clubhouse would announce our tee time with “Next up on the tee, Tiger Woods and his dad.”

The moral of this story is that if you are going to be anal about the rules, you may just end up getting your butt kicked.

I am amazed that within the Lutheran Church, after 5 centuries of continually preaching that we are “justified by grace apart from works prescribed by the law” (Romans 3:28), that many if not most of our people still are preoccupied with ‘playing by the rules’.  The USGA (United States Golf Association) web site states:  “Learn and play by the rules for maximum enjoyment of the game. We’re here to help.”  For many Christians, a slight variation of this could serve as the mission statement of the Church:  “Learn and play by the rules for maximum enjoyment of life. We’re here to help.”

Certainly, within the scriptural and doctrinal history of the Church there is ample reason for the preoccupation with rules.  A recurrent theme throughout the scripture is “obey and live, disobey and die”.  Sin and righteousness are often the defining categories of our spirituality and doctrines, and obedience or disobedience are our only choices in life.  The “Law and Gospel” is how Lutherans understand God’s Word.

Is this the operative world view for most Christians?  That God created the game of life, established the rules of living, and now stands as the judge and jury, ready to condemn or reward each according to the way they played the game?  For many people the answer is a straight forward “Yes.”  Even when we add to this picture a means of forgiveness and redemption, with the special rules governing how we may be forgiven or redeemed, it still remains the same game of playing by the rules.  However, if we are honest, the “rules” we live by are strange.

Imagine, for example, that the rules of golf were binding on all players, with one exception.  If you are a member of the USGA, any penalties imposed by the rules will be forgiven, and everyone may turn in his/her scorecard recording not their actual score, but the best score possible.  “What was your score today, Honey?”  “18”  “How can that be?”  “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Although many would maintain that the Bible is a ‘book of rules’, God’s Word according to which we must live in obedience—no one actually is willing to obey everything in the Bible.  The most people are willing to do is selectively obey those portions of scripture that they find acceptable.  This is a conversation I have had on numerous occasions with those who profess a literal belief in the scripture’s inerrancy.  My favorite passage in scripture to ask them about is Deuteronomy 22:28-29:  “If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are caught in the act, the man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife. Because he violated her he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.” (NRSV)  Not once has anyone ever suggested that such a Biblical mandate should be obeyed.  We may like the principle of the Bible as a book of Laws, but we don’t care much for the application.

An even more difficult aspect of viewing the world through the lens of obedience and disobedience, of seeing the scripture as a book of rules, is that “if you are going to be anal about the rules, you may just end up getting your butt kicked”, to recall the moral of the above story.  More specifically, as our tradition states emphatically, if we’re going to start counting offenses everyone stands condemned.

When our proclamation is based on this legalistic understanding of life, we also come face to face with our own hypocrisy.  Many outside of the Church see this as one of their major objections.  We proclaim a message of obedience to the will of God, and yet none of us obey.  Another problem for evangelism and proclamation is that the credibility of our witness in the world is not good.  How many people outside of the Church turn to the Church for moral guidance and insight into how we shall live?  Very few, I’d guess.

The difference between the USGA and the Church is this:  The USGA’s authority regarding the game of golf continues to be normative for the sport.  The Church’s authority has become highly suspect regarding the game of life.  What is clear to me is that in today’s context the question “What should we do?” is not very often the dominant question on people’s spiritual quests.  Even within the religious community I am struck by how seldom people seek the guidance of the Church on this question.

In a post on my blog Eugene A. Koene said “I would suggest that a question, if not THE question, for people today is, "What does it really mean to be human?".  I agree wholeheartedly with this statement.  And what I am suggesting is that “playing by the rules”, is not, finally, what it means to be human.  Which is why when the Church becomes preoccupied with the Law, it rarely speaks to the yearnings of the human heart.