Rules and Systems ...

Thursday, August 25, 2011. All around us we have administrative systems with a lot of rules and regulations. These systems try to control all parts of our life, they try to organize our social interactions … but we all suffer heavily from them, the people who are affected by the rules as well as those who work within the administration and have to carry things out.

We have very sophisticated administrative Systems …

You probably know the administrative jungle as well. You want something, and you need copies of this and that. You try to do something useful, but you have to follow a whole list of rules which might make sense sometimes, but usually they are just annoying.

I am working in a part of the federal government. When ever we want to employ someone, there are many things to be careful about. Temporary employment for scientific purposes, for example, is a delicate process. You need to argue that the duties are limited in time (administration needs to have sound legal arguments before they publish the job advert).

Administrative rules try to shape and control our behavioural patterns and our social structures. One could write a whole book on the growth of such structures over time. It starts with some simple and reasonable rules. Then there are queries how to do this or that. Rules are added to take care of various questions. The branches grow and grow and at some points no one controls anything any more.

Rules are there to serve humans …

The question of rules has been addressed in the bible itself. The Old Testament started with reasonable rules as well, with the 10 commandments and the treaty between God and the people carried out with Abraham and Moses. But then things started to grow. People added to the rules, just to clarify this or that point and sort things out. At the end the original purpose was more or less gone and an extended jungle of rules and commands was there which occupied the mind and heart of people …

Then Jesus came to clean up the jungle. He started to bring it all back to its origin, to the faith which Abraham had, to the commands of love and truth, which Moses had in the ten commandments. Jesus made it very clear: rules are there to serve humans. It is not the humans, who need to serve the rules.

It often appears easy to have clear rules. It appears more difficult to have the origins and work out what to do yourself when a question arises. But when you are connected to the source, you have all the possibilities to evolve rules which truly serve a purpose. But extended systems of rules tend to die and dead rules do not serve anyone! Lets go back to faith, love and truth … as Jesus did! ... more texts