Whose Rules: Mine or Thine?

Are you familiar with Calvinball? It was the brainchild of Bill Patterson, the cartoonist who brought us the classic newspaper comic, Calvin and Hobbes. Among the mischievous antics of a six year old boy (Calvin) and his friend (Hobbes) — a stuffed tiger, though very much alive to Calvin — was the game in which each made up self-serving rules as they played along: Calvinball. The only rule was that one could not use the same rule twice. It was hilarious. And relatable.

For the playwright George Bernard Shaw once opined, “No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.” The atheist’s hyperbole exposes his cynicism certainly — his use of “ever” and “always” is harsh — yet I think there is for us at times a temptation to “make up new rules,” misconstruing God’s Word to suit our liking. We are capable of bending the Bible toward our way of thinking, rather than to submit our way of thinking to the authority of the Word. “Spiritual Calvinball,” in a sense.

What might this look like? “Religious syncretism,” for one. (Think “cafeteria religion.”) It is the blending of two or more belief systems into a new one, or allowing one belief system to compromise another. Take King Solomon, for instance, and his 700 wives. “When Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.”¹ A little rationalization here, a little marginalization there, “broad-mindedness” devolves into dull-mindedness, and truth is compromised for comfort.

Or consider the misappropriation of grace, condoning sin because Jesus has borne its penalty. A pastor friend once said of a particular sexual sin, “I’m not so sure that’s a sin any more under the new covenant in Christ.” (Would we say the same about murder?) His was one voice articulating a troubling trend among believers today: the notion that Jesus’ love tolerates sin (it doesn’t) as if to make sin OK (it isn’t). Paul castigates such thinking: “How can we who died to sin still live in it?”² God’s law is not supplanted by “new rules,” rather He has, as promised, put His Spirit in us to cause us to walk in His statutes and be careful to obey His rules.³ For His Spirit will never lead us away from His good and right ways.

So let us resolve here and now not to bend God’s truth to our worldly inclinations, but to submit our will entirely to His Word and always for His glory.

Father, “Make us holy by Your truth; teach us Your word, which is truth.”⁴ In Christ we pray.Amen.

¹ 1 Kings 11:4 ESV
² Romans 6:2 ESV
³ Ezekiel 36:27 ESV
⁴ John 17:17-19