Becoming a Community of Disciples

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Becoming a Community of Disciples

1. All Christian believers should try to live their life in accordance with a rule. A rule of life sets out the parameters of one’s Christian life. The Bible, of course, is our main rule of life and it tells us many things: to pray, to avoid sin and to love God and our neighbor, for example. But other rules, like the ones by Benedict and Basil, can also help us to see how to live well. For example, the Bible tells us to be humble (James 4:10) but Benedict’s rule fleshes out for us the steps that we can ascend to gain humility. Living a ruled life means being intentional about how we cultivate our spiritual lives and these rules can help us. 2. All Christians should live together in community well and that takes organization. Every family has an unwritten set of rules. For example, I have two teenaged sons and they understand that there are rules in our family though we have never written them down. Most basically we have rules like “lock the door when you are the last one coming inside at night” and “put your dirty dishes in the dishwasher.” But we also have unwritten rules of greater importance like “when you drive the car you will obey the speed limit” and “you can only have friends over with permission.” All of these rules are meant to ensure that our family life runs smoothly and that we do not offend or upset each other. But even if we live in other kinds of community we should still live with others well and, again, that takes effort and some sort of rules and guidelines. To help us do this why not look to those who have gone before us, like Benedict and Basil?