seluR (aka backwards rules)

A couple weeks ago I was roaming around the amazing used bookstore downtown. I really wish I could spend more time there. Anyway, while I was there I was looking around at my own pace, scoping out the Christian non-fiction section, but I soon became caught up in what was playing on the radio. It was an interview with a christian author from the states. Her name is Rachel Held Evans and she was being interviewed because many "Christian" Bookstores are refusing to sell her new book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood. The reasoning that bookstores are giving, is that the book contains a female anatomy word. The human body is very much a part of life. Evans was responding in the interview, stressing that people should read the book before debating it's place in a bookstore. If a book that could bring women closer to God is being banned from so called "Christian bookstores", (which by the way I don't like that term) then what does that show about Christianity? 

You know what I don't understand? Rules that counteract their reason for being.

I'll give you an example from the life of Annie. 

In my first year of university I lived in a female residence. On school nights we would have to keep our doors shut after ten pm to insure a quiet atmosphere. Now, my door, no matter how I closed it, would make a loud banging sound when it closed. So one night when I went to brush my teeth, I stuck a doorstop in between the door and the door casing so that it wouldn't bang and the door would still be almost shut. I came back to my room with a Residence Advisor standing outside my door, aggressively reminding me of the quiet-hour rules. I tried to tell her my reasoning behind it, but ultimately it was her job to in force the rules, not quiet, so every time I left my room after 10pm my door would make a loud bang and my neighbour would complain.

Here is an example of me on the other side of things. 

A few years ago when I was working for a church, and I was asked to type up an environmental awareness notice in the weekly bulletin. The church was making a step in the environmentally conscious direction and wanted to inform the rest of the congregation about this...the only thing was that the notice was printed in the bulletin....a two page and stapled document that got printed 70+ times, folded, distributed, looked at, and then thrown out, or at best recycled. I suggested just making a poster, but I was stuck and had to do what I was instructed, even though what I was asked to do defeated the purpose of why I was doing it.

Sometimes rules are really silly things. Can you think of any rules in your life that counteract their existence? Think about it, there just may be more than you realize.

I have added
"Read A Year of Biblical Womanhood" 
to my life list.