Living Out of Bounds

Culturally, it seems that we are in an increasing struggle to justify a healthy balance between personal freedoms and the necessary obligations of responsibility in community and relationships.
Many individuals have cited their own need for freedom as a justification to enter the realm of license to such a degree that many individuals find themselves imbedded in patterns and actions that are both personally self-destructive and likewise a detriment to the health and well-being of others.
Whether we cite the rise in crime, the frequency of substance abuse, the instability of marriages, the entrenched apathy toward community endeavor, or the spiraling outcomes of environmental abuse…the realities of living without healthy boundaries are clearly evident.
For example, the glorification of certain physical types and the obsessive inclination to “control” in the midst of many otherwise uncontrollable factors leads some to compulsively starve themselves or to eat and purge in patterns that leave them physically debilitated and detached from the realities of their true state. Some die because they cannot find a balance between their awareness of reality and their own necessity for living in the midst of realities that require engagement in ways that are both necessary and nurturing for life.
“Cutting” is a pattern of behavior seen among some groups of youth who do so as an aggressive, though often disturbingly hidden display of self-loathing. It has been suggested that some cutters do so strictly to create a crisis by which they can gain some desperately needed attention. Terrible loneliness and physical depression are often tied to these behaviors. Death has resulted from those who go too far, who put themselves beyond the care of others, and who do not discover the help they hunger for.
Socially, such displays seem at the extreme, but nonetheless other similarly destructive patterns have become mainstream in socially shared behaviors like binge drinking…an all too frequent cause of death among young adults who simply disregard the fact that alcohol in sufficient quantities is toxic and can stop your heart, kill large quantities of brain cells, have a permanently debilitating effect on the liver, etc. Not the least influential “killing factor” lies in the coupling of alcohol with motor vehicle use resulting in threats to the lives of passengers, pedestrians, and anyone else who happens to be headed down the road at the same time.
Sadly, we endorse alcohol use as socially unacceptable for minors, and at the same time promote its use in front of every major sporting event imaginable. The double standard is what it is…ethically bankrupt and from a standard of health, poorly supportable. Most of my colleagues in ministry display a hearty tolerance for alcohol use because of the intensity of social pressure to except it as embedded culturally. Germans drink beer for breakfast they say. The Irish need whisky to sleep. A Baptist minister invented bourbon. Others suggest that the biblical record of wine production and use was a reasonable sanction for its allowance as normative. If we would agree, then we might also cite the clear realities that in the biblical context excessive alcohol use never was cited with positive results. Thus, we come full circle. Freedom without boundaries is destructive.
Many today are failing to identify positive models of relationship. The preponderance of media that subject us to pervasive models of “less than positive relational models” exacerbates the problem for many. Even within faith communities, the frequency of broken marriages is almost as frequent and in a few groupings higher than the general public. That discounts the fact that many in the larger population are choosing to omit marriage altogether. Those who choose in the name of freedom to betray the commitments of marriage or to enter social partnerships outside the protections of relationships endorsed by family, community, and legal responsibility, too often discover the weaknesses of such decisions.
Parenthood is challenging for supportive loving couples. When individuals feel pressured to go it alone, without providing positive environments for the support and well-being of children, without consideration for matters of health and work, and without the benefit of supportive family, church, and community ties in place --- it is not a matter of freedom; it is a matter of painful consequences for all. It is not accidental that the poorest of our society are single mothers with children. Living outside of boundaries may seem like a choice of freedom, but too often it is an indication of poor judgment and too frequently a predictor of negative outcomes.
Jesus suggested a new kind of freedom that is defined by a relationship of love, best understood in the context of His love for us. It was a self-giving, sacrificial, love you no matter what kind of love that called us to an awareness of our personal worth in the sight of God, our value to God, and our identity as a child of God, welcomed into the family of God. Such a relationship of significance redefines both the capacity of our lives and the opportunities of freedom, because those opportunities are bounded by the love of our Heavenly Father who extends to us forgiveness and grace, while calling us into fellowship with Him that will renew us and restore us and will redefine our future.
The range of this new freedom in Christ is the discovery of the boundless opportunities to love in the way that Jesus showed his love to us. The boundaries are the arms of God… the possibilities for blessing and goodness and joy are unlimited in His provision for us and in His presence with us.