Discipline, Rules and the Law of God

"I'm a body with a brain, that's all I am. A physical being, a small part of everything."

"Woe to you teachers of the law". A familiar phrase for Christians. Woe to you who teach law. Woe to you who preach rules.

"Woe to you" is a curse, from Jesus. There will be woe.

Those who would make Christianity into a religion of rules (as has successfully been done for generations) want everyone else to be as dead inside as they are. This is why Jesus said of them:

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.

If you think I'm wrong and my opinion annoys you, there is an easy remedy. Prove me wrong! Be more full of life, more loving, kinder and more alive than me. And I'll like it!

I want to learn from the alive, the loving, the giving. I won't learn from the dead though. Don't be dead, please. You don't have to.

In life, at the moment, I am mostly doing exactly as I please. This seems to be working out, I am stronger and more able to love than I have ever been. I do whatever I want because I trust myself and my motivations. I want to love more than anything else, so I am letting love change me and I am following my desires. And I care not a fig for your rules.

I believe in discipline and an objective law of God (my atheist friends can read this as objective moral law and have it still be relevant).

I discipline myself because I want mastery over myself. I do not think my beliefs mean I get to tell anyone else what to do, other than my children for whom I have a responsibility to keep them alive and healthy.

I meditate for an hour a day and I have done for at least six years. That takes discipline. I exercise twice a day during the week. I take Irina to school every morning and pick her up every evening. I fast (don't eat during the day) most Fridays. I am currently fasting from nicotine on weekdays.

I spent two years writing a published technical book. For six months I learned the self-defence art of Krav Maga so I could learn to channel and control my own aggression without it controlling me.

These are all things that require self-discipline. I am in control of myself and am inexorably gaining more control. One of my current little maxims:

First get a tight grip on yourself, and then let go. Keep doing that. That's the path.

In order to genuinely be able to abandon who you are, your life and personality, to love you have to be in control of yourself and know yourself - but you also have to be able to let go.

I believe that the law of God, ultimate moral law, is love. Nothing less and certainly nothing more. For armchair theologians this seems to have been a viewpoint shared by Jesus, Paul, John & James.

Love is the law, love under will.

The standard is not relative, it is not relativism. The standard is utterly pure love. Utterly. That's the line.

I so admire single minded people who relentlessly pursue what they want. It can make you into an awful person to be around, but it can make you shine so brightly. A soul that shines like the glare from a polished steel blade. Sharp, effective, dangerous.

The good news is that it doesn't have to make you into an awful person. Well at least I hope so anyway... My intention is to pursue that utterly pure love with everything in me.


Love doesn't tell people what to do. Love transforms us so we want to do good things. Love does not tell us what to do.