Rel paper

I am not a religion person and I thought all the religions rules are very rigid and harsh. For example, I know Muslim needs to pray many times a day. There are also very rigid rules for Muslim women. They need to cover their bodies and faces with black robe. For Buddhism in China, they also many harsh rules. They cannot eat any meat includes eggs and fishes. They cannot be married or have any sexual or love relationship with women. (Well, it is interesting to find most of rules are for men. All women need to do is to follow, or they just ignore women at all.) There were not a lot Christians around when I grow up, so I am not familiar with the rules of Christians. I imagined it is also harsh and rigid. But after reading this article, I feel not only this rule is acceptable, but it also can give non-religions people a hint of how they can live a meaningful life. There are somethings in the rule I really agreed and also somethings I feel need to be updated.

I like Benedict said his rule is “nothing harsh, nothing burdensome”. He did not give his followers a lot of unreasonable and weird practices. Instead, he asked his followers to seek god in the ordinary circumstances of everyday life. I like this rule because for human, the essential of life is not finding the god but make a living. Even for some people, finding god is the primary thing in their life, they have to have a life first. They need to make a living and feed themselves firstly. This rule is really realistic. It encourages people to make a good living, and it is not only useful for Christians, it is also a good advice for all the human. We want our life to be meaningful. Firstly, we need to make a good life. We need to work hard, and study hard. We need to do our best.

The rule also asked his followers to balance their prayer and work. It is not asking followers to take most of their time to prayer, but to reflect themselves during the work. I like it because spending plenty of time in prayer is wasting time to me. With all those times, people can do more things and create more values. It is also a good guidance for non-religious people. We all need to balance our life with work, study, playing or connecting with others. This balance is needed in my college life. There’s a rule said, in college, one can only have two among enough sleep, good grades, and social life. I do not feel I can only have two of three, but it is true that putting too much energy in one will lessen the existence of two other ones and it is bad for our life. Therefore, learn to balance these three things is a big lesson in college. It is also a life-long problem. When I start working, how to balance time between working and family is essential to my life. Think about it, if I work all day and have little connection with my wife and children, they might leave me. My girlfriend is very needy. I need to be around her. However, if I put too much energy in family and not working hard, I might get fired or I just cannot be promoted. If I cannot feed the family, my wife can also leave me. Thus, having a balance life is very important.

Community is important in Benedict’s rule, but I do not like the idea of keep living in the same place and never move. It may have good meaning in the ancient time, but in this era, we cannot be trapped in the same place. We need to travel to see more and learn more, and reflect about our life in the traveling.