Finding The Balance: Rules To Live By Might Mean Breaking The Rules

Civilized life requires rules to operate properly. Without rules society would be a chaotic mess and an oxymoron. The icon for Justice is a scale which represents balancing different points of view and weighing one idea against another. The basic concept of balancing scales demonstrates the ambiguity and imperfection of laws and rules. If all the laws and rules were absolute and certain then Lady Justice would be holding digital scales or price computing scales. Life is not so clear and the rules we live by often have their intentions subverted.

Rules are put in place to serve those living under them. That is the concept anyway. A red light means stop and accidents and fatalities are avoided. Often rules become counter productive or take on a life of there own. A red light at 2:00 a.m. on an empty street still demands a driver to stop and wait, even if there are no other cars for miles around; it’s the law. In some places you can get a parking ticket during certain hours on street cleaning days; which is fair enough. You can also get a ticket during those hours even if the street cleaners have a holiday. Like every part of life, rules require balance, they are after all here to serve us, not us to serve them.

There is a tale of two Zen monks hiking down a path. They came from a monastery that demanded celibacy. The rules were stringently enforced and demanded that the monks avoid all contact with women. The two devotees arrived at a river and found a lovely woman in a fine silk dress at the waters edge. The bridge had been whisked away by the river. The woman was late for an important ceremony, but couldn’t find away across the river without ruining her fine clothes. Without a second thought one of the monks lifted her on his shoulders and carried her across the river. She thanked him for his assistance and said he averted great pain and humiliation her family would have had if she failed to show up, or arrived in muddy garments. The woman went on her way and the two monks continued their journey. They walked for several miles, the older monk enjoying the bird songs and the younger monk stewing in silence until the younger monk had to speak up. “How could you pick that woman up and carry her across the river? Touching a woman is a violation of our devotional obligations?” The older devotee turned and smiled. “Is that so?” he said. The younger devotee considered this for a moment. After a pause the older monk continued; “Besides. I set her down on the other side of the river, but it seems you are still carrying her.”

If the older monk had obeyed the regulations exactly, he would have ignored the woman’s needs and abandoned her by the waters edge, failing his higher values to be of service in the world. Jesus once passed through a cornfield with his apostles on the Sabbath. Hungry, they plucked, shucked and ate some corn. When charged with breaking the Sabbath Jesus replied that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The trials of Nuremburg relied on the notion that rules, laws and orders are not to be blindly followed when they clash with higher moral principals.

Many religious teachings, many philosophical thinkers, and many legal arbiters all try to remind us that rules and laws are meant to serve society, not the other way around.