Rules are there for reason

The NCAA Manual, the rule book governing major college athletics, is around 600 pages thick.

Steve Rushin, writing in Sports Illustrated, said even the NCAA officials admit it is impossible to keep in its entirety. When asked if he had obeyed every rule while athletic director at Arizona, NCAA executive director Cedric Dempsey confessed, "No, it was almost impossible to do that."

"Why do we need so many rules?" ask athletic directors, coaches, and even NCAA executives. Why can't we trust each other to do things right and get rid of most of the rules?

That question is echoed in the halls of business and of government. Why do we need so many antitrust rules, environmental rules, traffic rules, and safety rules, to name just a few categories currently being questioned?

"Get them down to a manageable and realistic number, and then we will obey them," is the cry of those against whom the rules were written.

But we need to remember that rules, or laws, or regulations, didn't pop up overnight through some sort of spontaneous generation. Most of them were written because we weren't doing things right in the first place. All of the rules in the NCAA Manual are there because the member schools wanted them, Dempsey reminded us. "Those rules have been made because of mistrust for each other within the membership."

We're dealing with human nature here, and human nature is inherently self-centered. We are more likely to look out for Number One than sacrifice our own comfort and security for the sake of someone else. We obey those laws that benefit us, but we break those that we don't like (especially if we think we can get away with it).

When the speed limit on all interstate highways was 65 miles per hour, most drivers went 70, assuming the state police would give them the benefit of the doubt.

Then states like Michigan raised it to 70, on the logic that since everyone is already driving 70 we might as well make it legal. As a result, more and more drivers started going 75, again assuming that the state police will give them the benefit of the doubt. The speed limit changed, but human nature didn't.

The human heart is "extremely deceitful and desperately wicked; who can really understand it?" observed the prophet Jeremiah. Jesus said that it isn't what goes into a person that makes a person selfish and evil; it's what's already inside him. That's why We need rules in our society. And the more rules we have, the more ways we find to get around them.

Eventually the whole structure becomes so unwieldy that it collapses under its own weight and we have to start over. But that's just the beginning of another cycle, not the cure for the disease.

The only true cure is a change of heart, from one of convenience and self-centeredness to one of integrity. The Bible tells how that change of heart can come about through following Jesus, but most of us apparently aren't interested. We'd rather complain about the rules than change the way of living that makes them necessary.