How many rules?

Rules and their importance

by Brian Radcliffe

Suitable for Whole School (Sec)

Aims

To encourage students to consider the purposes and sources for rules both personally and corporately.

Preparation and materials

• You will need Jesus’ words found in Matthew 22:34-40

Assembly

1.  Point out that school has a set of school rules. Invite the students to suggest what they are.
   Listen to a range of responses.
2. Discuss the list. You may want to point out that some of the suggestions aren’t actually school rules. You may want to point out other school rules that didn’t appear on the list given by the students, but that are important.
3. Point out that some rules apply to everyone all the time, others to some of us some of the time.
4. Ask the question: Why do we have school rules?
   Listen to a range of responses.
   Explain that throughout history there have been rules within just about every form of society. Jewish people believe that God gave 10 fundamental rules known as the Ten Commandments.
   You may wish to hold a competition to name all 10.
5. The problem was that over the years it became necessary to closely define what each commandment meant, because there was always someone who would try to bend the rules, so to speak. This role of rule defining was dominated by a group known as the Pharisees. Eventually the Pharisees expanded those 10 commandments into a list of thousands of qualifications. It became very confusing and led to all sorts of arguments.
6. When Jesus was on earth and was teaching crowds of people, someone came to him and asked, ‘Out of all these commandments and qualifications, which is the most important?’
   Ask a student to read the words from the Bible passage Matthew 22:34-40:
   ^‘Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?
   Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
7. Jesus replied that he needed to nominate two rules. We recognise the second of these rules quite easily: Love your neighbour as you love yourself. By neighbour he didn’t mean the person who lives next door. He meant whoever we happen to be with at any moment in time. This is Jesus’ version of what we call the Golden Rule. It occurs in many religions in one form or another. It could be interpreted as ‘Treat others as you’d want them to treat you’ or ‘Value yourself and value others equally’. So far, so good. What makes Jesus different is the rule he placed first.
   Jesus’ first commandment or rule was this: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind’.
   Ask the question: Why did he place this first?
   Allow time for reflection

Time for reflection

If we want to make a set of rules, it’s necessary to have some authority on which to base them. The authority for the rules of the road comes from the government. The authority for the rules of this school comes from the senior management team and governors. Jesus said that the ultimate authority for his rules came from God. It suggests that if we have a right relationship with God, then the way we act with others will naturally follow. Some of us may well agree with this. If we have a religious faith, then this will help us to understand the appropriate way to act towards others. If we don’t have religious faith it might prove a little more difficult. How do we know what’s right and what’s wrong? On what do we base that set of values?

Ask the question: In this school how do we decide what is right and what is wrong?

Allow time for reflection and possibly discussion.

Rules, rules, rules!

Optional: We’ll follow this up in group discussion. (See below)

Extension Activity

Invite students to draw up 3 lists of existing school rules:

1. The rules they believe are sensible and necessary.
2. The rules they wish could be changed or even abolished (give reasons why).
3. Additional rules that would help school to be the best community it could be.