Be the boundary

     I own a lot of individual books, but very few series from one author, only two in fact: the Personality Plus books by Florence and Marita Littauer and the Boundaries series by Cloud and Townsend. (Marita, I recently discovered, was actually another ally of mine in politics and I never put it together that she was the daughter of Florence until afterwards—a small world our God has!)

     From the Personality Plus series our family developed a new relational language and the ability to recognize and appreciate the spectrum of personality types that the Lord has made humans. As a result, we are much more patient in dealing with others who are unlike us and also able to recognize our own sins. When one of our “cholerics” gets upset with one of our “sanguines” we can remind ourselves that God has not chosen the “choleric” personality-type as the divine one!!

    From the Boundaries books, I learned how to “be the boundary.” We will have people in our lives, be it our kids, spouses, neighbors, friends or colleagues that will sin against us. Are we to reject them, as they’ve possibly been rejected in their childhood? Are we to get angry with them, which is a form of revenge? No, we are to exhibit healthy relations—healthy love—for them. Parents sometimes talk about kids being “good” or “bad.” But as I've seen for years, all kids are good—some are just a bit more challenging! God has made a few wild horses and sometimes gives them to us to raise! So, it is often important to learn “boundaries” towards our kids. We serve them, but we also never become their suckers and let them run us over or make us their slaves. We have to model for them what good relational living is all about.

     In our recent Truro God is Love class, I was discussing the importance of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy and a question came up considering the idea that we might just be fostering bad behavior if we “love the sinner, own the sin?” And I told her that we have to “be the boundary.” We have to model for them what love looks like; we aren’t supposed to let ourselves get drawn into codependent relationships (see Love is a Choice).

     In all relationships there will be appropriate and inappropriate behavior towards us, but by the Holy Spirit we can express healthy love with boundaries. For instance in marriage, “fifteen minute fights” is a good limit. Grievances should be able to be adequately expressed within that time period. Beyond that amount of time, however, a lifestyle of long angry fights can get turn into an emotionally abusive relationship. Physical abuse must also be restrained, of course, and those in such relationships possibly need to be physically separated from living together. But we can’t reject others or rage at them.

     Likewise in terms of dealing with others who express towards us the sin of lust, as Tory and Elizabeth have been discussing in the ToB Forum the last two weeks, we have to learn how to appropriately deal with others who express this sin towards us. We usually shouldn’t either reject them or sin against them in some way in return. The Lord wants us to learn how to see them with God’s eyes and express “kingdom love,” the love seen in Christ’s kingship, towards them. The apostle Paul said, “Imitate me” (1 Cor 4:16, 11:1; Phil 3:17). We can look to those in Christ who model healthy love around us and also, in turn, model healthy love towards those we are in relationship with. Most importantly, we can see in Jesus Christ the way to healthy love in the Scriptures and in our own relationship with Him. In this way, we can truly be a friend to all.