A Two-part post today:
Part One: What if there were no rules for our favorite sports? What if there were no officials? What if the games we played were completely unregulated? I was reading to my five year old son a week or so ago. 
We read a story that had some follow up questions and suggested activities. One of the activities was to play a favorite family game and allow everyone to make up their own rules. This kid is in Kindergarten, but he got it. He looked at me and said, “Dad, that would be terrible. You can’t play a game when everyone makes up the rules however they want.”
We can’t live life that way either. We’ll hear people talk about the Bible or the 10 Commandments sometimes. Well meaning, intelligent people might say things like, “No one can dictate what’s right or wrong for others. We have to be allowed to decide it for ourselves.” It sounds nice. It sounds liberating even. But you don’t have to think about it too long to realize it doesn’t work. It can’t work. I don’t wish this on anyone, but I wonder if those who champion the right for us all to decide right/wrong for ourselves would appreciate someone breaking into their homes and stealing things. And there are 1000 other examples we could think of. Is that not wrong? Universally, across the board, there are things that are just wrong.
I thank God for the 10 Commandments. Unlike the rich ruler we read about in Luke chapter 18, I don’t claim to keep them perfectly. I wish I did. I want to. But despite that, I thank God that in His infinite wisdom, He saw fit to lay out for us clear boundaries and guidelines that lead to the good life that’s available to us (to borrow an idea and phrase from the teachers at Christ Community Church). There is certainly much that God doesn’t spell out for us about how to exactly and precisely live our lives and make decisions. But the guidelines or ‘rules’ that are given to us are a great gift. If you don’t agree, let me know, and I’ll come rob your house. Not really.
Let’s move on.
Part Two:
So knowing the rules of the game and following them perfectly makes us great players, right? Wrong. Same author that I quoted two weeks ago, Paul Marshall, gets quoted again here. Marshall writes, “Michael Jordan is not a great basketball player because he (usually) keeps the rules. He is a great player because he has learned what the possibilities are within the rules, and he has the skills to act out those possibilities.” Think about that for a second. How absurd is it to believe that the best basketball player is the one who never commits a violation? Or that the best writers are those who best understand sentence structure and grammar? Or that the best musicians are measured by their ability to play scales? Or that the best Coaches are the ones who have memorized the rule book?
Certainly there are fundamentals that are essential to any discipline. Great writers know about grammar. Great musicians can play every scale forwards and backwards. Great Coaches know all but the most obscure rules of their sports. But these qualities do not make them great. Greatness comes not from adherence to rules, but from development of the abilities and gifts we have been given. Each of us is created to be great. God made us all to be great in some way.
So the two ideas here go hand in hand. There are rules to follow and obey as we work toward greatness. And rather than being designed to hold us back, the boundaries for human living established by God are given to us to provide a framework for the pursuit of that greatness as we learn to ‘play the game’. Without rules, greatness is unattainable, making it impossible for us or anyone we lead to achieve any level of excellence.