At a critical juncture in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the title character has to decide once and for all whether to do the socially correct thing and turn in Jim, his traveling companion, or to, in his own words, “go to Hell” for the crime of assisting a runaway slave. When Huck settles on the latter, he is choosing “must” over “should.”
Our families, our society, and our culture bombard us with “shoulds.” These range from sound advice to mere social etiquette, but what they have in common is that they all impose choices on us. In this way, we often find them stifling: “I know I should do this, but I’d rather …”
In John Irving’s Cider House Rules a character asserts that while we need rules, the only ones we’re willing to obey are the ones we make up for ourselves. When we do this, these personal rules become what we “must” do, instead of what we “should” do.
Many people associate religion with “should.” To the degree that it functions in our lives as a “should,” religion will spawn guilt and judgment. It’s not something that draws adherents!
On the other hand, faith that springs from a connection with God on a personal level amounts to a crafting of “rules” from within. In a macro sense, we maintain an allegiance to the divine Torah as Jews and Jesus distilled it: loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves. But the particular decisions we make as to how we spend our time and treasure need to emerge from the “must” that flows from within, out of a sense of the specific things God calls us to do.
It’s not that the “shoulds” of our family, and larger culture have no merit. We do well to glean from them what applies to who we are and absorb them into our personal code of “must.”
As we start this new year, however, we do well to filter the outside static of “should.” Choosing the “must” from the voice within, will keep us in harmony with our true self. When we’re true to that self we’re right where God is calling us to be.
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