I remember when I was struck by the idea that I am older now than my parents are in all my memories. Thinking about how irritated I would get at some of their mistakes, and looking at it from the point of view of my current life experience, I was awfully judgemental. I’m not nearly as mature as I remember them being, and the occasional forgetfulness or impatience they showed is way less than some of what I do regularly. It has put a lot in perspective, and I think has improved my current relationship my giving me that perspective on things I would think were unfair or would get so mad about.
Things like unreasonable rules. I would get irritated at how unreasonable the rules were. (Okay, sometimes I’d throw tantrums.) Looking back at the things I was doing as a child, I must have given them a thousand heart attacks. They (and my grandparents sometimes) would make a rule about it.
No rappelling down the house.
You wouldn’t think that would need to be a rule. It’s my fault that it is. I remember one time when I was sent to my room. I don’t remember why, but I did not think that was fair. I remembered a character in a story I’d read tying sheets together to escape out the tower. I stripped my bed. I couldn’t (and was a bit afraid to) tear the sheets, but I tied them together, tied them to the leg of my bed, and climbed out my second story window.
I rappelled right past the kitchen window where my Mom was washing dishes.
I did not get ungrounded.
No using the best hiding places for hide and seek.
That’s kind of a summary; there were a lot of specific rules for particular hiding places. I had great hiding places; I’d always win. My brothers and sister and cousin would never find me.
The adults found them out and made rules like: No climbing up the old apple tree, crawling out on a limb, and dropping down onto the barn roof. No spider-manning up the uneven brickwork of the chimney and hiding on the roof of the house. Grandpa claimed both were bad for the roofs; I suspect they were bad for his blood pressure. The second one was extended; No spider-manning up the side of the chimney and using the roof as a jumping-off place onto a branch that you tightrope walk across to get into the tall tree and climb up out or reach. Grandpa claimed the danger was in the powerline through the tree; I was sure I was smart enough not to touch the wire, and he was being a worry wart. I must have half killed them when they caught me jumping across.
Similarly, no fighting with your siblings while you are all up trees together.
There were four trees across the front of our front yard. We each claimed one and could be really territorial when a sibling tried to climb “our” tree. Likewise in the Christmas tree woods in the back field. My folks did live, rooted trees each year; the trees planted the years we were born were ‘ours’ and woe betide the sibling who tried to climb someone else’s tree. There were also a couple trees we shared and hammered boards across branches to make ‘houses’ that, in retrospect, were pretty darn shaky. Just regular play in a tree – hanging upside-down, swinging from branches, balance-beaming out the longer, flatter branches using another as a rail – is risky enough without adding squabbling to it.
Also, no climbing a tree and using branches and bushes to help you balance as you tightrope walk across the top of the chain-link fence to sneak to Grandma’s house and avoid your chores to eat candy and watch cartoons.
There are a lot of tree-related rules here. We lived next door to my grandparents. I was so sure I was getting one over on my parents. Pretty sure Grandma would call and tell them I was there; I was not happy when Dad would come to fetch me home.
No chasing your brother with knives.
One time I was washing dishes and my brother was pestering and pestering me. I snatched up the bread knife and chased him from the kitchen. Oh, boy, did I get in trouble when he went crying to Mom. I was upset he didn’t get in trouble for being a pest. The things a little perspective gives.
Read at approved times and places.
This is another one with many sub-rules. No turning the light back on after lights out, no reading by flashlight into the night, no reading by bright moonlight on full moon nights, don’t read by the headlights of the car behind us when driving at night.
I was (and am) a bookworm, and I would read at all opportunities, and at some times when I was supposed to be doing other things. My parents would try to set limits on it; very liberal limits – I was fine to read while washing dishes, while eating at the table, while hanging out in one of those trees. Still, I would try to find ways around bedtime and darkness to keep reading late. I wear very thick glasses with a strong prescription now. I’d have glasses – my whole family on both sides does – but I think the thickness may be due to the many ways I found to abuse my eyes as a child.
So Why Rules?
The thing is, all of those rules were meant to help me. There were very real safety dangers in some of them that I didn’t see at the time but can in retrospect. I’d have a conniption now if I saw a kid climbing up the side of the chimney, or fighting with another kid while twenty feet in the air, or swinging from a bedsheet out a second story window. My parents had more experience, more wisdom, and a vested interest in my health and well-being.
There are a lot of rules in the Bible. Sometimes they feel constrictive; we don’t see why we should mind our thoughts and try to teach ourselves not to envy, why we should keep the Sabbath, even if our job doesn’t like it. Why should we eat this way, not that? Why should we keep marriage vows, or be scrupulously honest, or keep from swearing a lot?
The thing is, there is a wider universe out there, and our heavenly parent does not want for us to have any of the myriad of accidents he can see lurking. He can’t prevent everything and have free will, but he does set boundaries that, if we kept them in the correct way, will help us to avoid a lot of pain. He does this with actual rules and laws in several categories (we’ll have a lesson later on how to understand these, as the 10 Commandments are in a different category than say, the civil laws about not leaving your poop everywhere), and through stories of what other people have done and what happened, and with persuasion and pleading for us to listen and “choose life that you and your children may live (Deuteronomy 39:18b)”.
The main point is that God’s laws are not there because God is a control freak, or because ancient peoples were terrible and ignorant and made stupid laws for no reason. They have a point and a principal and are designed to help us avoid pain. Sometimes they get weirdly specific, but just as some of the rules my parents had to make were because of something I did that they needed to make sure I knew not to do because something terrible could happen, or to avoid interpersonal problems between immature and emotional children, or to teach a lesson about how to be a responsible person, so are some of those. My parents would not have had to get that specific if I’d been more able to think about the underlying principals (more on that another day).