Why Most Rules of Life Don’t Work
Because we start in the wrong place
This article is for anyone who’s tried a rule of faith and found it hard to stick with, or anyone thinking about starting one. If you have one and it is working and helping you grow, wonderful, keep at it. But for many of us, a rule of faith can quietly become a setup for failure. Because, I want to suggest, there is something wrong with most rules of life, and it is not what you think.
The problem is not that they are too demanding. It is not that people fail to keep them. It is not even that they produce guilt when abandoned in February like a New Year’s resolution.
The problem is one of theological maladaptation.
Most rules of life rest on an assumption that almost nobody examines: that identity is something you construct. That the spiritual life is, at bottom, a building project. You survey the topography of your soul, design a blueprint for the person you want to become, and then select the practices that will get you there. Prayer and scripture in the morning, an examen before bed, fasting on Fridays, and silence once a month. You act with sincerity and discipline, and over time, you expect the structure to become as you imagined it would be.
This is not a Christian understanding of the human person. It is a modern one wearing Christian clothing.
Two Visions
The way and why we choose a practice for a rule of life is generated by our — often unconscious — understanding of identity. In particular, where our identity comes from.
The modern world has a very clear answer. Identity is self-generated. We decide who we are and want to be. We construct a self from our choices, our values, our commitments, our carefully curated habits. And it is instinctual to bring this into our life of faith. We simply swap secular goals for spiritual ones. Instead of asking “What kind of professional do I want to be?” we ask “What kind of Christian do we want to become?” But the grammar is identical. The self is still the architect, and our life is still the construction site.
We imagine the person we would like to be, then work backwards to identify the practices that will form us into that person. We measure success by consistency and sustained output. Did we keep the rule? Did we show up? Are we becoming the person we set out to become? This version is spiritually sincere. It often produces real discipline. But underneath it, the core of our self often remains untouched, because the whole enterprise is still a project of control. We are often managing our own formation.
The Christian tradition says something different. Identity is not constructed but received. It is given in Christ, revealed through participation in him, and is discovered rather than invented. We do not become ourselves by assembling a life according to a plan we made. We become ourselves by receiving the life that is already being given to us in Christ. A rule of life built on this foundation begins somewhere else entirely. It begins with what is already happening. It asks not “Who do we want to become?” but “Who is Christ already forming us to be?” It does not measure faithfulness by achievement or consistency but by alignment. It asks, are we living in step with what is already true about us in Christ?
The difference between these two visions is not stylistic. It is not a matter of temperament or preference. It is a difference in theology.
What Practices Are Actually For
This difference changes what spiritual practices are about and for. They are not techniques for producing transformation. They are not tools for building a better version of ourselves. They are ways of positioning ourselves so that participation in Christ can occur more fully.
Think of it this way. Prayer does not manufacture closeness to God. It makes us available to a closeness that is already real. Silence does not create space for God to show up. It quiets us enough to notice that God has not left. Scripture does not fill us with information about God. It places us inside a story that is already our story, whether we have recognised it yet or not.
Practices slow us down enough to receive. They stabilise us enough to notice. They arrange our life with a poise that is already at work. They do not create life. They make us available to it.
This is why the language of “spiritual disciplines” can be misleading. Discipline implies effort directed toward production. But the Christian life is not a production. It is a participation. And the practices that sustain it are less like training exercises and more like acts of trust. We show up, not because showing up will build something, but because showing up is how we remain open to what is already being given to us by God.
When rules of life are built on the unexamined assumption that identity must be constructed, they all too easily become tools of self-creation. They may be well-intentioned, carefully designed, even beautiful in their ambition. But they still leave us in the driver’s seat, trying to build our way to God.
Charisms: And how to form a rule of life
When identity is received in Christ, a rule of life becomes something else entirely. It becomes a way to participate with Christ to discover more of who wants us to be.
So if identity is received rather than constructed and if practices are participation, not production, then how do we actually form a rule of life?
Not by starting with habits.
But by following a different sequence of discovery: our charism, then our vocational rhythm, and then our rule of life.
Discover Your Charism
Before we organise our life around rules, we have to notice the life already forming within us—our charism. We might be more used to the idea of leaders having a charism. But we all have a charism. Our charism is not something we invent. It is the particular way Christ’s life is becoming visible through us. And we begin not by stating what we want it to be, but by paying attention to what it already is.
We can discover our charism by spending time with the Lord and asking some questions: When do we feel most aligned—most ourselves in God? What seems to flow when we are not forcing it? What do others consistently receive from us? What kind of presence do we leave behind?
This takes time to discern. Often, it will come as a simple recognition that this is how Christ seems to meet others through us. Peace. Clarity. Encouragement. Depth. Energy. Faithfulness. Whatever it is, we name it and receive it. This is not a kind of egotism. It is our core participation with Christ.
Notice Your Vocational Rhythm
Once our charism begins to come into view, a second layer emerges. We start to notice that certain patterns of life either sustain it or disrupt it. This is our vocational rhythm. Not a list of “shoulds,” but the actual conditions under which our life with God tends to flourish.
We will begin to recognise things like: when this is present, we are more aligned. When this is missing, something in us drifts away from our charism. These are often remarkably simple, but non-negotiable things. Things that might be: space for silence, unhurried presence with people, physical movement or rest, Scripture read in a particular mode, creative expression, meaningful conversation, learning and studying.
These are not random habits we picked up from a podcast or ideas from a book. They are the supports of our charism. Our life already takes shape around them, and even more as we press into them. And there is the flip side to this. There are habits and patterns that do not just fail to support our charism but actively deform it. Some things we have built into our life are quietly working against the very thing God is forming in us. Like the never-ending scroll that fragments our attention. Or the pace we maintain because slowing dow and stopping terrifies us.
These are not minor inefficiencies in our existing systems. They are anti-charism habits, and they deserve to be named with the same seriousness we give to the things that sustain us. Often, they are harder to see precisely because they feel normal. They have been with us long enough to pass as and be called our personality. But when we hold them up next to our charism, the distortion by them becomes visible. They cost us something - deeply. Part of forming a rule of life is naming what these things are are as we agree with God about who he made us to be.
And as we pay attention, we will notice not only isolated rhythms but patterns spanning time. Every person’s life has a rhythms and cycles: times of output and engagement, times of withdrawal and renewal, times of consolation, times of desolation. Instead of treating the low moments as failures and the high seasons as the “real us,” we begin to accept it all. It all belings. When do we tend to feel most alive? When do we drift or disconnect? What brings us back? What leads us away?
This is not about control. It is about noticing and learning the contours of our life in God. And when we understand our charism cycle, something changes.
We stop fighting ourselves and we start cooperating with the grace already at work in us.
This might be one of the more important things I’ve read in my life. Thank you.
Super helpful, Jason. Thank you. After reading I’m pondering of whether this concept of a rule of life as a charism that we tend also applies at the scale of a local church or even church tradition/movement.