The other day, a retired minister told me how his denomination had adopted “boundary training” for their ministers in the nineties. This discouraged ministers from getting too familiar with their members. This really got me thinking.
To explain, let me tell you a story. While I was at a certain church. I worked under many different ministers in the nearly 20 years that I was there. Most of them had some sort of big push towards outreach. Yet nearly every one of them hit the same wall. There was this overwhelming reluctance to do so by nearly everyone. I’m sure there were many reasons for this. But a good broad explanation is that they didn’t want to get wrapped up in the messy lives of those outside the church. I recall one person in particular asking, “Why are you so focused on people outside the church, when the people here are in need?” Yet the ministers in question never wanted to take a step back and deal with those internal obstacles first. Ultimately, that would require getting involved in the messy lives of the church members, ironically enough. Maybe it wasn’t a simple matter of not wanting to teach by example as I assumed. Instead, they had been instructed not to, due to boundaries. Perhaps that’s even part of the reason why there was this repeated push; they knew they couldn’t. Hard to say since most have moved on; I will ask if I get the chance.
While I understand the intent behind this training. But are they aware of the huge hindrance to discipleship this has become? Has it only made the church powerless, and ultimately unhelpful? Focusing more on defining and assuring people where they are already at. Not rolling up those proverbial sleeves to get them to the next level of ever-increasing glory. That church I mentioned is no more, by the way.
This may be a sign of community as a whole breaking down, because It’s not just the church being affected by this. This so-called "dating crisis" has women asking, "Why don’t men approach anymore?" Never considering that our boundary-laden culture makes it difficult to act natural anymore. So the most damaged people are the ones setting the bar to a highly sensitive level. They can be very loud and public when their boundaries get crossed too.
Think of it this way: we all have front doors, and many of us lock them. Good people wouldn’t even approach the door without reason, and wouldn’t even check if it was locked unless there was already an invite and an established relationship. Good strangers always knock first. Bad people wouldn’t care if it was locked if there was something they wanted to take from you. My point is: the laws of attraction may cause us to part our boundaries like the Red Sea for certain people, but it’s only the bad ones that will take advantage. So our use of boundaries in dating is often inconsistent and applied backwards. Leading to more boundaries to protect our new wounds.
One thing I think we tend to not understand about the symptom of so many boundaries is this. If you grow up in a toxic environment, then your social skills are not about giving and receiving love. They are more about dealing with difficult, abusive, and neglectful people. I dare say we are even getting to the point where they outnumber the securely attached. Such people don’t respond to sincere love like a cup of cold water on a hot day. They respond with caution and suspicion. While we always assume our coping mechanisms are perfectly rational, we also assume the way other people manage their wounds is out of line. When they are likely both just as unhealthy. All because we assume our good intentions are obvious. When nothing is obvious in a world full of manipulation and passive aggressiveness. It’s a messy issue that requires more than mere boundaries to deal with.
Do we as disciples care enough to look past people’s behaviour and consider the scars behind their actions? Are we patient enough to build the trust to break down these barriers? Are we courageous enough to face our own wounds and let Jesus deal with them, so we will be better equipped to deal with hurting people ourselves? Or are we just going to hide our wounds behind the boundary of a whitewashed heart? Only to teach others to adopt the same surface-level righteousness. Will you allow the institution of the church, as well as society as a whole, to fade away like a shadow as we grow further apart in our failing community? It’s something we should all think about.
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