A Simple Life
Although it is hard to say how serious he was about it, my grandfather once said, "Rules were meant to be broken." Independent of his seriousness in saying it, the culture of man's brokenness agrees. When it comes to moral questions anymore, the existence and nature of the "rules" is more the question that the former has led us to. Still is it true? It would seem it is false and our post on Psalm 147 would demonstrate this. The "rules" it seems are given this negative connotation because people are less and less ok with having restrictions placed on them (independent of political party, it seems our destination is anarchism). The question fails to be asked whether they are right. The rules rather are to guide us to maximum happiness. An argument like this may be claimed as a claim to validate authority, however, such a claim would be near-sighted since I am arguing from a would-be subjugated position. On the contrary, following the rules is where liberation is found, from not only negative feedback loops but also avoidable complicating and suffocating situations.
No one really thinks about rules positively, but this is truly backward. I heard a Jewish scripture scholar refer to the ten commandments as the "ten great life simplifiers". What makes them so is their origin in what is proper to human functioning at the macroscopic and microscopic levels i.e. their connection to natural law. Thus, the product one's life has by following these commandments, even to analogical extents like "killing someone" in word or thought and not just deed, improves every aspect of one's social life. The truth is the Church teaches us how to avoid the complexities sin presents us with, the choices that put us into increasingly difficult situations. As a case example, if one does not have a mistress, they do not have to worry about potentially divorcing the wife they had initially loved, there is no guilt, there is no risk of scandal, no temptation to contraception, or much worse abortion. On the contrary, working out problems with one's spouse promotes dedication and new paths of love and growth for both spouses and promotes actions that bring life rather than forsake it (our next post will speak to this).
In conclusion, let us not think of the rules as oppressive but helpful. The rules liberate us from slavery to lives we don't actually or naturally want. A simple life of love is what we were made for and is the true context for happiness. Of course, we are to make the most of what we got, but that does not include making more bad choices as though it is a limitation of the situation. The longer we persist in making bad decisions not only will we be habituated to making bad decisions, but they will be less and less opportune. Why make them maximally opportune? This is the path of virtue i.e. not only avoiding bad but seeking the objectively good. Does that sound oppressive to you? I hope not because if it does, you are committing yourself to making life more and more complex, disintegrating from the good and nature of things and people, and finding yourself stuck fast in the downward spiral of sin. After all, isn't love what we want? This is the singular command given to man i.e. to properly love (God and neighbor and thereby oneself). Even where we live with complications from past sins or wounds, our purification is brought about by dealing with them properly.
