One of the guilty pleasures of getting home in the afternoon to pack for a trip is being able to watch daytime television. This is perfect viewing for my distracted brain: light, fluffy nonsense to half-pay-attention-to while I’m locating and folding and sealing into ziplock bags.
Having said this, the last time I had such an afternoon, I did get caught up in a particularly fascinating episode of “Oprah”. She was talking to people who suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). To illustrate their problem, her camera crew followed a group to a camp where they were subjected to “total immersion therapy”. People who feared spiders had to hold them. People with a fear of germs (one guy kept his left hand in his pocket at all times to keep it sterile) had to put their hands on the floor and then lick them! It all seemed very cruel, but also fascinating and of course all the participants were on the show to say how much the experience had helped them recover and live a normal life.
What struck me was one segment of the narration where Dr Oz, Oprah’s health guru, said that, although OCD behaviours (e.g. going back to the house 10 times to make sure you turned the oven off, washing your hands every 2 seconds..etc) seem like a waste of time and energy to those of us who don’t suffer from the disorder, they make perfect sense to the individual engaging in them. The reason is that they have constructed a set of rules in their head which make the behaviour make sense. “If I don’t wash my hands very 2 seconds, I will get sick and die”. If you really believed this, wouldn’t you be tempted to wash your hands every 2 seconds too? Wouldn’t you rearrange your schedule to make sure you could keep your hands clean?
What I took from this, more than a greater understanding of OCD, was a greater respect for the power of rules. There are some which are obvious, good for society and therefore enforced by law, but there are many other smaller rules which we orient our lives around. “I have to be in bed by 10 and up at 6”. “I have to do grocery shopping on Saturday afternoons”. “I have to have only one serving of carbs each day”. These are small rules, and may be different for all of us, but they are no less powerful. We are reassured when we keep them and shameful when we don’t.
As our church prepares to look in more depth at God’s rule about the Sabbath, I think this requires us to first identify the other rules we live by, ask ourselves where they came from and why we hold onto them so tightly. Did God tell you anything about carbohydrate portions? Will He be mad if you have fries with that? What will happen if you don’t do your weeks grocery shopping straight after church? There seems to be a big difference between God’s rules and our rules. God’s rules are for His glory and our good. Our rules are for our glory (sense of control) and lead to exhaustion.
Let’s all take a nap, and start our day again....
Philomena
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