There has been some energy in online-writing circles to think critically about “Rules of Life”. The idea of a “rule” traces back to Benedict (530), but has been picked up recently by Christian authors who are seeking to help readers think about faithful use of time. A few authors writing in this area have been
, Tish Harrison Warren, Rich Villodas, and John Mark Comer.Recently there have been a few critiques of the idea in Mere Orthodoxy (as well as a rebuttal), and my friend
is working on a longform piece to be published on the same topic. I’ve not read these pieces. I want to neither scoop anyone or pile on, but this topic is in my rearview mirror frequently lately. I’d like to include a few ways to think about how a Rule of Life functions ecclesially, and what kind of ecclesial temptations it might reflect.All of this is in the service of building up the church, not piling on or acting as an outside commentator. I find it quite difficult to land some of these critiques, as it can feel to church leaders and pastors that they are getting criticized from every corner when I/we am only trying to help. Consider this instead some insider baseball from someone who is just here to fix the furnace, but knows a bit about how furnaces work.
A side note, and something I’m not sure if I’ve written about before (let me know if I have!). There are different modes of working as a theologian.
One is to play mostly insider baseball. This kind of work aims to clarify definitions or secure intellectual genealogies. It happens at seminaries and academic conferences, and can be quite fun, if you like this kind of thing. But it’s basically like the stamp collector guilds of old; it is really a specialized hobby intended for specialists. We might wish everyone loved stamps! You get the point.
There is also “contextual” theological work. This is the kind of work David Fitch is calling for here. I actually found Fitch’s thesis pretty engaging, until he reached his conclusion. Pastors have always served as on-the-ground theologians, and professional theologians have sought to resource pastors doing this work. I’d speculate that more than half of the books written by theologians intended
”for the church” are actually intended for this type of pastor. My concern here is both that theologians are often a poor judge of what churches need (see stamp collectors, above), and that the kind of training someone would need to be a truly “contextual theologian” is not the kind of training Fitch is advertising. It just won’t be thorough, extensive or diverse enough. I’m happy to be proved wrong on this point, but I don’t think I will be.Additionally there are theologians who are like furnace repairmen. We know furnaces. We’ll come into your building, look at your furnace, and adjust it so that it works more efficiently. We can see things you can’t, because you know little about furnaces. You can tell it’s not doing what it is supposed to do, but we can tell you why. The “why” includes knowledge of the deep structure of the thing, of its history, parts, and function. That’s what theology does, too. It is very hard (very very hard!) for many churchmen to understand this function of the discipline. Theological correction often feels like a personal attack, and many respond accordingly. “Heresy”, for instance, is a *technical distinction*. I used this correction recently in a conversation and immediately realized my mistake. I was being a furnace repairmen, but the individual thought they were receiving a personal indictment. For this reason, I’ve come to dislike my job. But!- sometimes you need the furnace to work better. And then you know who to call.
I play half furnace-repairmen, and half anonymous mother who brings snacks and does what is needed. If the church is going to be built up, it has to be done from within.
So- these observations about “Rules of Life” are from me, the furnace guy, just here to fix furnaces.
A few observations about Rules of Life, that you may take or leave.
Improving people is not the primary work of the church.
But comeon! Don’t you want better people? I’ll be completely honest here- I don’t. Sometimes I wish for worse people, vice-ridden people who come to church because they have tried literally everything else and know themselves only as sinners. Our sin gets in the way, that’s why we are here in the first place. This is when we can receive grace, which is the Church’s unique gift to the world.
People can’t be programmed.
You know that sin I talked about, up above? That will get in the way of your rules, your habits and your desires to follow Christ. Jesus tells us only a few things about what it means to follow him, and what he most often says is that we must come and die. Sure, we pray and give of our possessions and love one another. But so much more of the Christian life is about suffering, picking it up and doing it again. You can’t program that- in fact, usually you just have to look around at the fragments of your own life to know what your cross is. We can deceive ourselves as we seek to improve.
The Church is not a social program.
I know what Brad is after here, and he includes a line or two that demonstrates that he knows, too. Sure, the church is in fact- analog, “real”, communal, etc. But if I have told you anything, it is that *the church is not for us*. It exists only because there is something other than us, with whom we have to do. I am not eager to invite to church those who are needing more in-person community, actually. God can get them for the wrong reasons once they are there, of course. But the church is there not to fix a need you have but to tell you the truth about the world- a truth that is not told elsewhere. This might be turned into an argument about general revelation- as also with the “enchantment” discourse- but I won’t take it there today. “The Real” that Israel encountered in Old Testament religion was God. This certainly reordered their lives around things like care for the poor and the widows and orphans, but it was because the burning heart at the center of reality had made demands on them- the kind of demands that change you from within. We can embrace a more analog life and still have our lives ordered by technology such that we worship science and politics and expect the State to intervene in our finitude. I could go on.
Rules of Life arise from community, they don’t exist as individual devices, or to form a community.
I suspect this is
angle, so I’m going to leave this here. If he doesn’t address it, I’ll pick it back up after his piece is published.
If we do not stop expecting worship to do something, it will never do the thing it is actually for.
The question I get most often is how we actually “do” what I’ve called for. The misunderstanding at the heart of this question is huge. Our desire to create a system so fine-tuned that we don’t have to be good- or in this case, so that we won’t be as sinful- is *the* technological vice that Ellul calls out in The Technological Society. I think Ellul’s insight basically stops there, BUT this insight is worth the price of admission. When you consider a man to be something to be improved, you abstract from him that which makes him a man- Christianly speaking, you make him something other than “prone to sin”. I’ll tell you now that I think sin, and its opposite, grace, is the chief misunderstanding we are having in our technological age. It’s not “the problem of the human” merely; it is how we operate, what kinds of things we are prone to, how we will and don’t and how our desires can so turn us against ourselves that we become hedgehogs, operating at a remove from ourselves, we desire to outsource virtue and vice. This is why things like algorithms and advertising are so so hideous. We consider that man himself might be bought and sold and formed, as an outcome, as a product, as a result. I am concerned this might need to be my next book and let me tell you, someone writing a book about sin is great at parties. No better way to make friends that I know of.
6. One more thing! I fear the Rule of Life exhibits one of the characteristics of the modern American church, which is that we need something to do. We have so minimized worship as the work of the church that we find ourselves needing to demonstrate our value by adopting programs and strategies to achieve results. We are acting awfully like a marketplace.
And so I will continue to risk the misunderstanding and say again, you do not need a technique or a strategy or a Rule. The fact that you think you do suggests to me that what you do need is a better understanding of what it is you are. A creature, a vessel, a sinner in need of grace. “Holiness” is not an output.
Lots of thoughts, and I hope to write more at length on this. Briefly: the purpose of a rule, according to Benedict at least, was to “safeguard love” and “amend fault.” I think this is the most reliable impulse of a rule (not self-improvement, not even faithful use of time). It aims at mortifying sin and obeying the great commandments. And Benedict’s rule certainly isn’t the earliest. We have the Didache as an example of the regular habits that early Christians leaned as part of the way of Jesus.
Benedict’s rule arose out of a cultural context of decadence and compromise. I think the parallels to our time make some sense of our return to the practice. Also, culturally we’re living in a time where attention is being bought and sold, where “drift” is assured without active resistance. A rule, which is to say “pre-commitments to what you’ll make regular in your life as a follower of Jesus” seems all the more important in this attention economy.
Communal rules are the ideal - but communal time-keeping, especially post-pandemic, is disappearing. We live asynchronously, and this makes communal rules (as practiced in the monasteries) more difficult. Any rule that doesn’t prioritize life lived in community is not a Christian rule.
That’s a start! Thanks for joining this important conversation, Kirsten!
I spent many years serving bivocationally; essentially 'learning and helping others learn, in community'. I served as an elder who spent a lot of time learning together with other adults; and I spent a lot of time as a faculty member learning with other adults, in medical centers (serving in clinical departments, though there was more 'furnace engineer AND technician' interactions with other furnace engineers and the technical staff who ensured the furnace was running well and the house was warm).
I read Jacques Ellul in the 70's, during college... I say that, because at the age of 71, it's striking to see the cycle returning today, on many issues in our world. Issues that were major in the seventies, are back in full force and almost identical language, today; the slogans are even identical now as then...
You gain some helpful perspective when you've seen the debates run their course over decades, and come back into full force, unresolved....in a context where the polarization and division across our world is even more difficult and divided than it was then (if that's possible).
The questions are good ones, and clearly valid ones to pose and mull over carefully and with purpose.
But the questions being directly asked, aren't 'enough'.
The furnace is going full blast; but the house isn't staying warm (or vice versa-the HVAC system is running at full force in the summer-but the temperature outside is reaching levels we've never experienced, and it can't keep up).
There are some 'systemic' issues not yet in focus, that need to be attended-and you clearly are saying this--as I listen to what you write... the paradigm you are using is helpful.
There's a need to expand the categories-there are furnace engineers as well as furnace technicians; I shift to another paradigm to explain this a little better. let's consider an automobile; the engineer versus the mechanic. The engineer designed the car, based on understanding of the engineering specs; but do NOT go to the engineer who designed it if you want it fixed-the engineer will engineer a fix-create something new (and untested) based on what the engineer is best at--novel engineering design. the problem that has come because parts are worn, or something broke-a mechanic who works intimately with worn and broken cars of the same design, and knows other automobiles that have different engineering to accomplish the same purpose-is the one who knows the system well enough to repair it and keep it running, optimally.
Expanding the framework to 3 categories isn't quite right, though; there's value in thinking conceptually about the categories-but expanding them, they don't quite match reality now..
And that's because I think we're meant to have a larger framework and a 'continuum' based on discipleship; that involves 'replication' that isn't very well done today.
I know and have seen 'discipleship' work to some effectiveness, in the equipping of 'physycians of the body' but not so well in the equipping of 'physicians of the soul'.
As was brought into clear focus in the debate preceding the passage of the Affordable Care Act, there's been a real deficit in equipping everyday americans and the physicians who serve in the role of the 'shepherd-elder' in the church (along side the deacon-who is focussed on actually caring for people's practical needs, modelling 'loving your neighbor' where the rubber meets the road in day to day life, in the context given in Ephesians 4, the health care system in America spends LITTLE TIME focussed on 'well care'; being now in Medicare, it's nice that ONE annual appointment with my physician is ensured to be paid for, under the 'well care' provisions. But one annual meeting isn't even a beginning of 'well care'. It needs to start early in life, guiding young people into developing healthy habits that teach them good nutrition and the benefit of regular exercises-which cover a spectrum.
I think we need to do what you are directly doing-but realize-we need to 'step back further' and rethink what you are rethinking, in the direction of your thinking, but go FURTHER.
Asking the questions you pose, is good. The questions do lead in a good direction. But I think they need to go further and broader.
The furnace design may not be adequate for the task of keeping the house at the right temperature and humidity, and maybe the house design needs to be looked at; and the windows--do they operate well, are they leaking air, in our out; is the house staged right so that as the seasons change, the sun warms through windows in the cool seasons, but doesn't let the warmth in, in the summer seasons more an issue of positioning of the windows and location of the eaves, perhaps-other factors need to be considered-as come in from another diretion-is there an impact of living in an ever increasingly 'technological' society-and how does changing technology of daily life, impact social connections and 'community').
In the field of 'caring for our bodies', those charged with caring for souls, could benefit by seeing things that do work-and seeing where the problems are, as well; as there are clear parallels between caring for the body and caring for the soul, and often, we are meant to learn from the physical, to guide us in dealing with the spiritual.
I know the system i spent most of my time in , quite well; it's strengths, and its glaring deficiencies (and some of those were impressed on me in God's Good providence-in ways I could not overlook them :). I served in positions of service, in both the academic medical community-medical schools aren't isolated but central within a place where people come for healing by the physicians who are both being trained, and training the next generation of physicians.
We need more full 'embedding' of theologians in our churches; we need the kind of 'unity of mind and purpose' as Paul commands in Phil 2, in our churches, as exist in an academic medical center. Everyone who comes to work in an academic medical center, KNOWS that the mission is truly a 'life and death' one; but that isn't true in our churches-that deal with matters of eternal life....hmmm...
We need an integration of purpose and a recognition that a diversity of gifts and talents are required to meet the spiritual needs of the Body of Christ. No physician who cares for the body, can deal with the major problems, without the help of a full health care team; the most talented physicians-require MULTIPLE talented and highly trained specialists, to deal with the most difficult health care problems. And the breadth of abilities and of needs-spans from someone skilled in use of fine motor skills, to someone who ensures the hospital bed sheets are sterile and won't infect a person recovering from surgery...
Every person in a hospital complex plays a role that matters.. and works in 'community' to help people heal, physically.
We have a crying need for healing for people suffering with intense spiritual wounds that are complexed with deep neurophysiological wounds that 'impact our bodies'; the body truly does 'keep the score'. Trauma of all kinds, impacts us and always has a spiritual aspect.
And those who are trained theologians, are the specialists meant to be guiding this healing process, as well, which requires more than just the specialist; but a whole team who can minister to the whole impact-on the spirit, the soul, the mind, and the body.
I spent decades engaged as a researcher in medicine, serving as a research title series faculty member in two university medical schools; both of them state funded. Abuse is a widespread problem in our world; and I encountered it at multiple levels and in some cases, to a serious degree. Addressing abuse formally, ended my career... and brought an intense impact that will not likely heal in this life (but perspective brings wisdom as we walk through life for decades... the time remaining for me is relatively short and I've lived my full seventy years; so I'm 'content' with what remains for me...and it will not be much longer, should God keep me here another decade or two, before i'm 'home' with Him...there is an up side to growing older...
There's a lot of 'deconstruction' going on, today, in not just the church, but the culture we live in. We need a faith community that walks in love and lives out the Good News that Jesus has come, and that 'loves one another' and reaches out with the love of God, in tangible ways, to the hurting world we live in. And theologians play a vital role in 'reshaping our fundamental thinking'. But we also need the full breadth of gifts and talents the the Spirit of God distributes to individuals, as He wills, and we need the life given us, in our Union with Jesus, and the strength that comes from the 'communion of the saints'.
As far as the 'rules of life' goes; I read with interest, Rod Dreher's book, 'The Benedict Option', maybe five years ago or so. Found it gives an interesting perspective on the topic in focus in your post...
You requested people to engage fully, in your request to 'please argue'. I hope this meets your request; but i'm not disagreeing at all, rather, I'm seeking to 'think deeply together'. Hope this meets your request.. I find your thinking very helpful as I struggle to understand what God has set my focus on in life.