Boundaries

I have to confess something:  I've broken my own rule.

I'm reading a theologically-driven book written by a non-Lutheran.

Actually, not even close to Lutheran.

 

Most people don't really care what theological background the author of a "Christian" book is writing from, but I have a strong conviction in sticking to people who hold to the same confession as I do.  After all, I'm confident that I've found the truth, and false doctrine is not always obvious, especially when it's coming from other Christians whose sometimes-subtle errors can fly under the radar and inject their infection under the skin while you're unaware.

It's not really so much like "eating the fish and spitting out the bones", but more like eating a brownie that's laced with feces.

 

Anyway, what could ever have driven me to such lengths, to where I'm willing to slog through a sewer of out-of-context verse fragments used as proof-texts trying to sell a self-help book as being somehow "biblical"?

A need for better understanding human relationships, and more specifically, "boundaries" - what they are, how to have them, where to place them, etc.

 

In my search for guidance on this topic, I found unfortunately little, except for a book that kept being recommended.  It's entitled - appropriately enough - "Boundaries".  

And, man oh man...I'm only into chapter 2, but pretty much every paragraph has at least one mangled verse being hacked, bent, and desecrated trying to make it prop up the pop-psychology they're peddling, as though it were somehow drawn from the text of Scripture.  It's...painful.

At this point, as soon as they start referencing the Bible, I skip ahead a few sentences; it's just not worth it.

BUT.  Maybe some of what they say will be helpful...?

 

I've realized something, though: Some of this stuff might ACTUALLY be biblical...just not in the way they try to make it seem.

Rather, where they talk about "boundaries", what they're often times getting at is pretty adjacent to what we Lutherans in the know call, "The Doctrine of Vocation." 

 

God has granted me certain jobs.  I'm a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a parishioner, etc.  Each of those jobs - those vocations - has things that pertain to it.  As a wife, I have specific responsibilities to my husband, things that it would be very inappropriate for anyone else to do for him.  As a mother, I care for my children in a way that I wouldn't care for, say, the neighbor down the street.  

Our vocations give shape to our love.  They guide us how to show love to the people God has placed in our lives, in ways that are in accord with the 10 Commandments.  And they exist in a sort of hierarchy: My love for God must come first.  After that my husband should be next.  Then my children, then my parents, my siblings, and so on down the line.  If I find that I am consistently giving more time and attention to serving a friend than I am to serving my husband for example, then something is off, and some boundaries need to be erected to protect my primary relationship.  Or if I'm giving more affection to my dentist than I am to my children, there's a problem and it needs to be fixed.

 

Chesterton famously liked boundaries - or at least thought they might be important.   

 

 

Boundaries serve to protect things.  They divide.  Like doctrine does.  Like truth does.  Lines must be drawn to keep error out, to distinguish right and wrong, to keep what is good safe - like the lives of our children within the walls of our house.

Not all division is bad.  We're not Gnostics who think separateness is evil, and the goal of life is to escape from the physical world where we're all individual entities, and unite with the Pleroma.  Unity is good, but we're still separate.  

So, if I draw a line - if I create a "boundary" to keep my vocations in their proper order - this can actually be a very good thing (provided it's done according to God's Word.)  Ideally these fences would be erected before the chaos of "dogs and cats living together".  But in the event we've already reached "mass hysteria", sometimes creating a boundary after the fact might be more like a sharp and bleeding cut with a knife than putting up a cute picket fence.  (Or, if you're a bungler like me, like cutting off a limb with a rusty hack saw, rather than the care and precision of a surgeon using anesthesia.)

 

 Well, I'm bad at this.  Clearly.

 

And, will I finish the book?  Perhaps, but it's unlikely; truly it's rather painful.  

But, maybe I'll go back and look at Vocation more closely, and spend more time considering things from that angle.

Maybe my problem truly is more one of "inordinate affection" (ah, the KJV).  I don't think that's a very good translation of the word in that particular verse in Colossians, but the idea nevertheless of having wrongly-ordered affections does make sense. 

May God help me order them rightly, and protect that proper order with whatever "boundaries" are appropriate.  And where I've enacted them with uncaring vigor, may He help me to staunch the bleeding.

 

-M

 

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