“Love does no harm to another; Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” Romans 13:10

“Probably all laws are useless; For good people do not need laws at all, and bad people are made no better by them.”  Demonax the Cynic, 70 – 170 AD

Demonax, a Greek philosopher, had it right.  Though he evidently wasn’t a follower of The Way, his words reflect the core principal of Jesus’ teaching:  What matters is not God’s laws (He came to fulfill those completely), nor man’s rules (which are even more flawed than the one’s making them, if that’s even imaginable), but rather The Heart Rules. 

And what ARE The Heart Rules?  How would you answer that question for yourself?

In a world that is familiar with the latest updates to phones and innovations that too quickly become passing fads, it might be logical to assume that coming up with some new-fangled faith-forms to whip people into shape is what Jesus had in mind.  My guess is that many Christians think of him as a new Moses, and his message a new mandate to motivate all mankind for moral improvement.  If that is what we think we couldn’t be more mistaken!  Jesus was not interested in behavior modification.  His motto was NOT “Good, better, best, never let yourself rest; until your good is better and your better becomes your best!”  Jesus was not trying to get people to BE anything, in fact, other than simply being OURSELVES.  “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.”  I wonder, what would it look like if you simply focused on being you, as you are?

The first sermon recorded in the Gospel of Matthew clearly reflects this truth, as Jesus speaks all about what it means to BE blessed.  So does the first one in Luke, in which He quotes the prophet Isaiah, NOT Moses or one of the books of the law.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to bind up all of those who are bruised (and broken), to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

Nothing in there about “how to do or be something that you should, could or would.  These words recorded in Luke could be understood literally—for Jesus certainly did all of that on behalf and for the sake of others—but also figuratively, applying to all of us who have beaten down and broken, held in bondage to the attempts to follow God’s laws.  

Consider this conundrum: 

The harder one tries to follow laws, the more inclined we are to break them;

 The more we break them, the more of a failure we feel ourselves to be;

  The more of a failure we feel ourselves to be, the worse we feel about ourselves (And the more likely we are to blame others);

The worse we feel about ourselves the harder we try to be something other than a failure and resort back to trying to be better at following the laws;

And then the process starts all over again.

There is a simple way out of this self-vilifying vortex:  “The Heart Rules”.

This is an intentional double entendre.  On the one hand it means that what matters is what proceeds from inside, from one’s heart.   This is site that God makes sacred, and which is most effective at providing guidance and direction in life.  It is Divine love, not flawed laws, that makes the most, yes the only difference, and that have the most lasting impact and effect, not only on ourselves but on others as well.  Without love we are merely making an outwardly inauthentic show of our own imaginary self-righteousness.  But with love as our guide we are truly capable of being love for ourselves and others.  What would you put on your list of heart rules?

The other meaning of the phrase is that in the end the heart has the authority.  The heart rules over all else.  This is true for ourselves, as the heart rules over the brain and the body, and it is also true for others as it is love, not laws, that has the most lasting and indelible effect on other people

How does one live according to The Heart Rules?  By letting go of the laws, be they God’s or man’s, and by practicing love.  By living and breathing love.  By loving oneself and others and all of creation.  Over time, little by little, step by step, one will discover to our delight that The Heart Rules.

“When one is following the Way, actions flow naturally from the heart”.  Paragraph 18, the Tao Te Ching