Overture

12 Rules for Life: an antidote for chaos

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life: Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos. Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2018. Overture pp. xxv-xxxv

Opening Thought:

For this devotional, I prepared by reading the Overture Peterson offered for his book. Peterson reviews some of his personal history which built to inspire the book at hand. What I appreciated about this Overture is that Peterson speaks of himself seeking information about humanity, while he was procrastinating, using online forums to test out little life suggestions. One of the things I was warned about with theology, is that once you get the “bug” for theology it never shuts off, you always want to learn more. I have come to agree with that, but with one minor amendment: once you get the “bug” for seeking truth. Theology for me is a facet for seeking the ultimate truth of God. However, philosophy, science, and other avenues can also serve the search for the truth of God as well. Peterson seems to have the “bug” too. His bug, one could say, lives in the field of psychology, but this bug ventures away from home ss a good bug should. Peterson’s searching begins with the study of the human mind.

There is no doubt that people who take time to study the nuances of the human mind will need to have a strong worldview to stabilize their own wellbeing. Finding peace is not a simple task, taking on the complexity of our own minds and maintaining peace is challenging to say the least. Trying to find the truth of the human mind at the cross-sections of all human minds, well, that would be downright crippling unless you can find meaning in it all. Meaning helps us to process both the order of life but also how to confront the chaos of life. To find peace between the moments of order and chaos, we need meaning to tie it all together.

The title of Peterson’s book shows us that he is trying to give support against chaos, which to me say he will be trying to establish peace for the reader, at least to some degree. I say “peace” with a disclaimer, peace does not mean the removal of order and chaos, or a favour to just order. Rather, true peace, in the Christian sense is experienced by the unification of your will with God’s will, and holding faith to the promise of God, even in the face of the extremes of living. Knowing from other sources on Peterson, he encourages people toward aspiration, dreams, hard work, and morality. None of those things promise an easy pathway but you can hold peace while on a bumpy and chaotic road.

Peterson must believe he can offer rules to help mitigate the destructive nature of chaos in our lives. As a clinical psychologist, I expect that most of the chaos Peterson will address is the chaos within. Sure, we all will face chaos in the world, and it is those natural chaotic events that often trigger the chaos within, but we cannot control the world. We can sometimes control small microcosms of the world but even that control is limited. So, we must be able to control the chaos within. There is no wonder Peterson has an appreciation for religion because most religions are formations to bring understanding to the orders and descriptions and/or prescription for chaos. Having a worldview which anchors you in being, preventing your mind and soul from falling to chaos, means you can progress through life. Religion becomes a pragmatic tool in a way, granting us the internal stability to walk through life, and ideally towards greater aspirations.

Opening Prayer: Gracious God, all our journeys move us through time, but we are also called to move towards you, more and more each day. Let our days be filled with wisdom, dedication, and curiosity so we can ever see you as our target. Amen.

Reflection: I remember one time, sitting with my peers in a theological discussion at one of the seminaries I attended, and one of the people in our discussion uttered the following words. “I don’t like to think of the Bible as a set of rules, rather a general philosophy for life.” Unfortunately, that day, we did not get to dive into this person’s motivations behind this statement, but I think there have been many people I have met in Christian circles who would feel the same way. Out of all the people in memory that I can think of that have uttered ideas to me in a similar fashion, I would say ninety percent of them were born before 1985. Now this could just be my experience, but there seems to be an objection to “rules” at least from a religious standpoint, from the generations which would be known by many as the “Boomers” and the “Gen Xers”. It should be no surprise to think that religious rules may be frowned upon, if you look at the iconic-pop cultural figures which arose for those generations, it should be no surprise. There were three stages in the influences of the pre-85 crowd. The James Dean figure, or as I would describe as the outlier. The person who does not conform to society, by the 70s following the hippy era characters like Luke Skywalker taking on the empire. Suddenly you went from the outlier to the rebel. The outlier was the unique thinker, passionate, and lived life to their own course. The rebel militarizes against systems of power and authority. By 1986, we had the character of Ferris Bueller, the rule-breaker. The hero of the story was someone who not only broke the rules, but used dishonesty as a weapon to do so, and was shown as beloved for it. Within an approximate 40-to-50-year span, the need for rules became less and less obvious in pop culture. No wonder this idea of philosophy over-rules became so predominant within religious fields. There were larger social movements at play than just what popped up on the big screen. And this isn’t a jab at those generations, there is always a chance for stagnation and corruptibility in institutions and power structures, so the outliers, rebels, and rule-breakers will hold their purposes. However, they are not perfect, and their influence can cause damage in areas of society, unbeknownst to them.

Similar to how politics is downstream from culture, so is our religious experience. What I have seen in those born after 1985 is a larger hunger for rules, an established set of norms to distinguish right from wrong. In interviews, I have seen Peterson mention that many of the people who come out for his talks are young people. I am not surprised to hear this, because what Peterson is offering both in this book but also with his general platform, is some standardization to the struggles of life. Peterson uses the wisdom of his trade and the pragmatic elements of many other fields to help people who feel lost without rules find a way to regulate their lives. The people born after 1985, which includes myself, were not raised with hard-defined rules and societal expectations, in some cases we were educated to say the rules were optional. I remember when I was in grade school, one of my teachers handed out a colouring assignment, the image was some sort of Canadian Flag/Canada Day celebration page, and the teacher said, “we did not have to stay in the lines or use any particular colours.” That may seem harmless to many of you, but that constant easement of lack of guidance was troubling. Especially as it was more and more poured out on us. “Be yourselves!” or “Do what is your truth!” - hard things to sort out if you don’t have anything to build off of. In the liberal approach of the generation prior, trying to free people from the needless boundaries of society, it left many people feeling without. However, there is a healthy balance, in my opinion. Sometimes rules and philosophies can work together. Sometimes you follow the hard and fast rule, and when the rules don’t seem to fit or you’re unsure how to apply it, follow the philosophy the general rules provide.

Scripture Brought to Mind: Matthew 19:9 and John 8:1-11

And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

___

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.

“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”

They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

“No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

Jesus at one point says it is better to cut out your eye than look with lust, but also forgives a woman caught in adultery. How can this one standard of rule make sense with the action of Jesus with the woman? One thing that should be noted, is that Jesus in the first portion is speaking in hyperbole, so the exaggeration of prescription is meant to convey a point. Those points being: sin is dangerous for us and the boundaries of marriage are sacred. If everyone that looked lustfully beyond the boundaries of marriage cut out their eyes, there would be no eyes left to see. Even though we are not to cut out our eyes, we ought to take our sins seriously, and hold what is sacred as such. That philosophy of the rules is played out in Jesus’ encounter with the woman. The rules to protect against adultery are not there waiting in hopes of punishment, rather to inform people of the danger against sin, to protect them from boundarylessness. That is why the verdict by Jesus is to “Go and sin no more.” Jesus tells the woman to get right with the rules of living. He forgives her for breaking the rules, in hopes she will find a new appreciation for them.

Continual Work: How do you feel about the rules? Are you more of an outlier, a rebel, or a rulebreaker? And if you are what is your motivation? Are you breaking societal rules to be an outlier with God, or are you breaking God’s rules to rebel with society?

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: I am always trying to ensure my will is as close to God as I possibly can figure out. No easy task for sure. But in many ways, I am a Ferris Bueller at heart, if I don’t see the value in a rule, I have a hard time following, sometimes to my detriment. So, I aim to seek truth in the rules; however, if any of the rules the world dictates that I can not reconcile with God, I will spend more time pondering their usefulness, or lack thereof depending on the circumstance.

Prayer for your week: Lord, help us see the value in the rules you set forth for us. Whether those be the rule found in the scripture or if they are the boundaries spoken to us from the law written upon our hearts. Let us be open to seeking wisdom in both the liberties of life but also the boundaries of life. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Artistic Close: Here is a preview of the rules to come.