Rules or Relationship

by Devin Dummel

In my fifteen years of working with students and their families, I can't tell you how many times I've seen it.  The conversation is always familiar as I have the parents of a teenage student sitting across from me.  The catalyst for the conversation is usually some newly discovered information.  Their child who is a "good kid" has been deceiving them, and they have learned about some unwanted to choices or behaviors that have gone well beyond the rules they've put in place.

It’s always a tough conversation.  But it’s a necessary one.  It’s the conversation that has the potential to be a game changer not just for the student who has been breaking all the rules but for the parents who suddenly feel vulnerable in their relationship.

Over the years, I've wondered why this happens so often.  In our parenting structures and styles, what have we missed (outside of believing our teenagers are angels) that allows us to find ourselves in these situations so often? After giving it much thought, I don't know if the solution is hard to find although it may take quite a bit of energy to correct.

I have come to the conclusion that we can easily misdirect our children when we are more focused on setting up boundaries and rules than living life with them in a relationship.

At first glance, you might wonder – “What does that mean?” 

Let me unpack it for you.

In Matthew 22, we find an account of Jesus being asked a question by one of the religious leaders of His day – a Pharisee.  This was the question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Now before you read Jesus’ response you must understand something about the Pharisees and the way they viewed all of the laws and commandments – and there were hundreds of them.  These guys were the religious elite and everyone looked to them for their opinion on the right way to live.  What this particular group did was they elevated the value of the laws in their lives.  They made rules the most important thing as they made their decisions.

This choice led to an interesting practice that some scholars refer to as “fencing the law”.  The meaning was the Pharisees would create new rules – more conservative rules – to ensure that you never got close to breaking one of God’s laws or rules.  For example, God’s people are told not to use His name in vain; so the Pharisees promoted a belief that you could never say God’s name at all in fear that you might somehow say it in vain.  The idea would be if you never broke the boundaries of the new rules (the fence) then there was no way you could ever break the actual command of God.

This seems like a good strategic move from the outside, but think for a moment if you told your child not to do something, what’s the first thing they want to do?   That’s right as soon as the words leave your mouth that’s the only thing they want to do.

The Pharisees forgot an important component to life.  They neglected the truth that life isn’t all about the rules but most of life is actually about relationships.

The question is, where did this strategy get them?  Were they actually better people because they had more and more rules?  Later on, in this same encounter, Jesus would describe the Pharisees in very stark terms.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.  In the same way, on the outside, you appear to people as righteous but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." (Matthew 23:27)

You see the rules only dealt with the outside of the person, but relationships are what impact the inside.  With all of their focus on the rules, the Pharisees may have looked clean on the outside to the rest of the world, but God could see what was going on underneath the surface.  He could see what was happening on the inside.

And we face this same challenge for ourselves and to help raise our children.  You and I are called to be different than the world.  While that includes obeying God and keeping His commands – if we only worry about the rules we will always miss the relationship.

That’s why when Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?”  he responded the way He did:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Jesus’ point was that love is all about relationships.

There is nothing wrong with boundaries and rules.  They are very helpful in pointing us toward the best life that God has for us.  But if we really want to be the best people and the best parents then it can't just be about the rules.

We become the best parents when we guide our children through relationship and love instead of simply leveraging rules and laws.

When we live in relationships we can help our children see why playing by God’s rules always leads us towards Him and towards the best life we could possibly have.