Imagine if a person decided to become a pilot, and was immediately placed in the cockpit of an Airbus A380 facing strong headwinds. What if a young teen, aspiring to complete medical school someday, was handed a scalpel and pushed into the operating room to complete open heart surgery? Or, if the child playing house was handed a couple of screaming newborns, a mortgage, and the keys to a Honda Odyssey and told, “Good luck! Oh, and by the way, the twins both have colic.”
Imagine the chaos!
In many spheres of life—the hospital, the home, and certainly the sky—we understand that the most important things require practice. And not just the kind of practice you schedule once a week. Constant, daily practice. Practice that takes years, or even decades. Practice that we reorient our lives around. Why is this? Well, because no one is born with all of the skills and knowledge to be an expert surgeon, or a skilled pilot, or a loving, patient parent. In the same way, no one is born with all of the skills and knowledge to be an authentic follower of Jesus.
And unfortunately, we don’t naturally drift into Christlikeness. Selfishness, impatience, and greed are much easier to fall into than selflessness, patience, and generosity.
On the slippery slope away from Jesus, our culture starts us off with a good shove: everything in the Western ethos reinforces individual freedom over collective good. The dominant cultural narrative is, “Me first! What I want, at all costs! If I don’t feel like doing it, that means it’s not who I am. And my chief aim in life is to be exactly who I think I am.” As apprentices to Jesus, we recognize this as false. God works in everything, so we want God in everything: our waking and our sleeping, our work and our leisure, our joy and our mourning. We know that our purpose is not to be exactly who we are right now. It’s to enjoy the process of being slowly shaped into the likeness of Jesus, and surrender to God’s best for us. So, what do we do when what is best for us feels unnatural—in the same way flight was once unnatural? Or studying when you’d rather be sleeping? Or exercising when you’d rather be watching your sixth consecutive hour of Ted Lasso?
Well, we create a structure for our practices, one that reinforces and fuels our growth. And then, we live by it. This is the beauty and purpose of a Rule of Life. A Rule of Life is not a spiritual trend or New Age philosophy. It’s been around since the early church fathers and mothers. It was central to the lifestyle of the Benedictine and Franciscan monks.
What do we learn from this? Well, that even the most devoted followers of Jesus—those who have dedicated their entire lives to the ways of Christ—need a structure to support their growth. No one is exempt from the temptation to hustle and strive, so we all need rhythms to support our flourishing.
In the words of Ken Shigematsu, “A Rule of Life is simply a rhythm of practices that empowers us to live well and grow more like Jesus by helping us experience God in everything.”
There is good news and bad news. The good news: If you are alive today, you already have an unspoken Rule of Life. We all have daily routines, practices, and preferences that shape who we’re becoming. The bad news: If you haven’t intentionally shaped this Rule of Life around the teachings of Jesus, it’s probably been informed by Western culture or your own background.
So, we have an invitation. (It’s remarkably similar to the one Jesus gave his followers again and again.) The invitation is this: Stop. Give up your unwritten rule of your life. God has something so much better. Like a vine to the trellis, connect yourself to an intentional framework that connects you to God’s best for you.
