Blurred Boundaries
The need for healthy boundaries often goes unrecognized until the lack of a boundary presents a problem. It’s easier to go with the flow and avoid offending people in order to fit in. In the beginning it may be considered virtuous to be the “bigger person” and overlook a comment or excuse someone’s bad behavior, but when is enough enough?
I have witnessed firsthand the traps that are often laid like emotional land mines around these sensitive issues of where to draw the line. If you say something, you risk retaliation. If you don’t make a stand, you risk being abused and taken advantage of. What do you do? It often feels like a lose-lose situation.
Maybe you can relate. The very fact that you are even having these discussions in your head or with trusted friends is proof that your boundaries are blurred. As a husband, father, and pastor, the proper placement of boundaries is a consistent part of my life experience. While these “hard conversations” are difficult and there is a certain amount of skill involved, failure to address the real issue only makes things worse.
Clear boundaries protect healthy relationships and expose unhealthy ones. Mature people appreciate knowing where the lines are. Mutual respect and personal responsibility are the bedrock of successful partnerships. Clarity enriches the quality of communication and makes the time and space you share meaningful and enjoyable.
Blurred boundaries, on the other hand, leave room for uncertainty and frustration. Consider Samson. He was called to deliver Israel from the Philistines but repeatedly got sidetracked by falling in love with Philistine girls. His boundaries were blurred, and Delilah used this inconsistency against him. He ended up blind and chained in slavery. Once you compromise with an enemy, you will never be able to defeat it.
Reading Hebrews 11 through the lens of drawing a line and making a stand will help you see that all the heroes of the faith set examples of unwavering conviction. They were champions and defenders of doing what is right in the face of adversity and opposition. Their boundaries cost them, but we love them for taking that stand and winning the battle. Their clarity and conviction still speaks to us today!
And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:32–38)