You can’t have friends without rules. – 22 Words.

Excellent quotation by Tim Keller.  But it also opens up thoughts about how the principle gets abused.

If it is impossible to have a community without rules, then you can predict the end of a community–one that used to function–upon certain conditions.

For example, if it becomes widely recognized that the enforcement of the rules is done by unaccountable people for selfish reasons, the community will soon end.

If it becomes widely realized that accusations about breaking the rules can be made by some people without any truth to their claims.

Or when it becomes widely realized that “following the rules,” while used as a slogan, is in fact of no consequence compared to arriving at pre-ordained conclusions that are dogmatically asserted to follow from the rules when they actually don’t follow at all.

In these and many other ways, the sloganeering for the rules by community leadership can and often does cover rule-breaking that hollows out community until it implodes.