The 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Be Boundaried
'Do you not fear Me?' declares the LORD 'Do you not tremble in My presence? For I have placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, An eternal decree, so it cannot cross over it. Though the waves toss, yet they cannot prevail; though they roar, yet they cannot cross over it.
Love and respect. Respect and love. These things are together often. In the Bible, in the world, in cheesy sex talks at youth groups or in weird powerpoint presentations in classrooms or with the crimson cheeks of a bold but frightened parent. These concepts are rightly contingent on each other. In a more traditional perspective, women need love and men need respect, particularly in relationship to each other. There’s even passages in the New Testament all about husbands loving wives and wives respecting their husbands.
Now that’s an entirely different can of worms I won’t explore here (but probably will later at some point. I just need an entirely different blog called Another Blog, Another Time). Yet for all the mention and reinforcement and rigidity within many circles regarding gender roles and interpersonal communication in marriage and relationships, in Scripture, there’s a greater emphasis on love than respect. In the King James version of the Bible, love is mentioned 310 times. Respect, however, is a lot more blurry.
Fearing the LORD would definitely qualify as some level of respect, and in the OT, it is one of the front and center requests of Yahweh from Israel, the nation He chose to reveal Himself to the world through. This fear has more to do with a deep reverence and understanding of the power and capacity of God and the relative cosmic insignificance of man, and less to do with actually scaring or frightening others. It isn’t about God belittling man because He’s bigger and better; it’s about God warning man that if they follow other Gods (or their own selfishness) destruction and disarray will await them because they can’t and don’t understand the implications of their false idol worship or the full fruit that comes from loving and following Him well.
Yet, the two greatest commandments, according to Jesus, are not fear the Lord God with all of who you are, and fear your neighbor as yourself. Said differently, we can respect God, respect His power and provision in our lives and the lives of others, but still not love Him. Additionally, I can respect my neighbor, his or her property, dignity, and identity, and not love them one iota. Healthy love requires respect, but healthy respect does not require love.
Love, however, requires more. It is self-serving, not self-seeking. It is self-sacrificial, not self-satisfying. It is the cornerstone of a life devoted to God. We are called to love God so as to love ourselves and to then love others. This is genuine Christianity at a glance.
But love without respect isn’t love. Saving someone without tending to the self is no salvation. Caring for the least of these, humbling yourself, and placing the needs of others ahead of your own without also loving yourself, trusting your self-worth, and filling your own needs is not what Jesus calls us to.
Abiding in the vine does not mean you look to care only for the other branches. The vine may care for the branches at times through your words, your actions, and your love. But the vine loves his branches more than any branch could ever love another branch. And the vine can only love a branch well if that branch seeks to love itself well too.
Beginning of school year 2019-2020. Before this Corona craziness. Before the sudden death of Kobe (RIP). Right after Stranger Things returned to form after an awkward second season. Right after Game of Thrones self-destructed and ruined everything that it stood for.
Brad was a peculiar case. Though his IEP (individualized education program) was a whopper of paperwork, interesting behaviors, and an overly extensive list of coping strategies to mirror and reinforce, my colleagues and I saw a normal kid, perhaps on the autism spectrum, who liked dinosaurs, playing soccer at recess, and eating pickles for a snack.
The avalanche almost came early; after day three or four of kindergarten, little Brad didn’t want to come in from recess. I get it; the summer had stopped harassing the PNW with extreme heat, and we trended toward the idyllic high 70s and occasional low 80s. I called for backup a few times from the school secretary, IE the most important person to any school building by a huge margin (anyone who claims otherwise has never worked for the school system), and she coaxed Brad back into the room with the promise of pickles and t-rexes. No biggie, just a new quirk to learn from and redirect. Or so I thought.
The storm hit. I was at my lunch, having warned Brad about what was coming next as we transitioned from music to the little ones lunch time. I thought he was good, though he definitely sported a Dennis the Menace grin which I noted I hadn’t seen before.
Yet when I walked into his classroom you’d have thought the KGB had raided the place in search of grain; desks literally flipped over everywhere, entire shelves of books tossed aside like butter, and a grinning five year old too anxious or non-communicative to express the madness he felt internally which he now expressed externally.
And this continued, every morning after drop off, for several days in a row. My colleagues and I prepped for this new kind of bombing raid in the morning, starting our various doomsday rituals like a soldier kissing a cross before exiting a trench. The things those who have never worked in the education field will never quite grasp of the chaos of the education system.
He lasted thirty seconds before “bombing” the place. My colleague and I escorted him away dodging bites, kicks, and even the occasional spit. We went into the learning center and found some dinosaurs. Anything that might bring him back down to a semblance of rational that a dysregulated five year old can get to. We left the room after a few games, a few books, and a few dinosaur battles. I coached him through what would happen next; calmly walking back to class, taking a seat at his desk, then reading a book together of his own choosing which I carried in my hand.
This was the plan anyway.
Five seconds had passed and I dodged kicks, punches, a few bites and a strangely near accurate glob of saliva. Having been tested already a bit, and feeling more irritability than I do generally under these somewhat normal circumstances, I held his arms in place as I am trained to do when such outbursts occur. But the attempts to attack me continued even as I maintained my inner and outer cool. I initiated what we call a “hold.” More or less, it is the safest way to ensure a highly escalated student does not harm him or herself and does harm the one holding. To an outsider looking in, it’s really similar to an all encompassing bear hug. Unable to move his torso or arms, he looked up at me, the normal Dennis the Menace look hiding behind intense anxiety and stunted communication. And I, surprising even myself, said to him.
“What are you going to do?”
He looked at me a little longer and stopped. He tilted his head down, slightly ashamed or at least aware of the severity of his actions. With a gentle tone, I followed up.
“Are you ready to be safe?”
He said yes.
And I let him go and on we went.
In my line of work, for very obvious reasons, holds are very rarely initiated. There’s all sorts of red tape tied up with them, for the protection of not only the kids being “held” but also the educators “holding.” I don’t like performing them, and I can count on one hand, thankfully, the amount of times I’ve had to bust one out in the five plus years I’ve been in this line of work.
Even then, there’s been something oddly powerful about the dynamic between myself and the student I’ve had to initiate this sort of maneuver with after the fact. It is hard, it is harsh, it is the farthest thing from fun and games. And both parties feel an odd sort of strain after the fact.
But respect is gained in the process. With it, trust as well.
Really quick before I continue: to clarify, this is ABSOLUTELY a last resort. All paraeducators know this, all teachers know this, all admins know this. I mention this story to illustrate a point, NOT because I adhere to some weird kind of corporate punishment or consequence. Children are precious, and so need precious care. As a male educator I take extra care and precaution to understand and demonstrate this well.
Anyway, the bond between an educator and student, parent and child, boss and employee, and God to us is deepened by moments of displayed respect, not weakened. To be clear, yet again, this is a far cry from any teacher who might berate a student physically or emotionally, a parent who might berate their child physically or emotionally, etc etc. In those cases, there’s not a display of respect but a succumbing to abusive antics. But a distinction of degree, a separation, both emotionally and physically, between two people who care for each other actually emboldens the care for one another.
Put simply, boundaried love is the best love. It’s the only love, in fact. Because unboundaried love is no love at all.
Jesus offered dignity to all He met in his path, along with love. He reminded people to revere God with fear and trembling, along with also claiming He and the Father were one. Jesus raged against the Temple for their lack of regard to the poor, claiming they turned His Father’s house into a den of thieves. He also claimed that if that Temple was torn down, it would come back again in three days.
Jesus commands love from His followers. But we must not forget that with that love also comes a command for respect.
Growing up, I internalized that to be like Christ was to be Christ. Said another way, I thought I needed to save people like Jesus saved people. That to pick up my cross and die to self was to pick up my cross of “the self” and die to be reborn with a selfless, all-encompassing love toward others.
I strived for altruistic care of others, particularly the least of these, without giving myself that same sort of love. The sort of love that demands respect. The sort of love that actually does help Christ heal others.
Too often we blur the lines between others-centered love and self-seeking codependency. Others-centered love is just that; centered on others. It does not seek for reciprocity, but receives it when it does come with joy and delight. Self-seeking codependency infers a belief in a deep lack of not only self love but of self respect. It seeks to merge into the identity of the other, to lose oneself and to gain the entirety of the other. It is unhealthy, unattractive, and unfulfilling. There’s only one relationship in our lives where we merge with another, lose our self (or rather, lose our false self), and gain the entirety of the other. Or, at least, the entirety of the Other that we can grasp.
It is only on God that we are fully dependent. Even in this insane corona phase of human history, it is by and through and for God that we live, we breathe, we eat, and we love (and eventually overcome it). His is the only essence capable of being fully dependent on. This is why Paul says in Colossians that in Him all things hold together.
With and through and in God we find ultimate meaning. We find ultimate purpose. We find ultimate value. No one else, not the ideal romantic partner, not the greatest friendship, not the most hopeless of hopeless cases in which you offer hope can you fill the God shaped hole in your heart. I say this not from abstract research; I say this from twenty-eight years of doing this the wrong way and working to do it the right way.
Godly boundaries promote dignity. Godly boundaries ensure that some spaces, some secrets, some tender spots in your heart are reserved solely and only for Him. Through the attentiveness of God, the literal embodiment of attentiveness, we are heard, we are affirmed, we are loved through a divine love a human love could never, ever compare to.
Godly boundaries also promote respect. We understand that God Himself has a cherished and hidden relationship with whoever we interact with and cross paths with. We grasp that, maybe, just maybe, the love we might bestow on another person will always, (key word, always) pale when compared to His love for them. Just like He was present at our mother’s womb, so was He present at theirs. We dare not contend that we can love someone better than the Author of Love Himself.
Lastly, Godly boundaries promote love. Within God lies all love. Love is a name attributed to Him by the disciple whom He loved. If we find our rootedness, our groundedness, our very essence in the dearly Beloved embrace of God our Father, it is so much easier to love in an others-centered way, not in a self-seeking codependent way. No longer needing to prove ourselves valuable by the way we love others, we cherish, deeply, the love Our Father has already shown to us in the Beloved and so easily bless others with a glimpse of that very same love. We don’t need to give to get; we give because we have already gotten so much and therefore have so much left to spare.
Put simply, boundaried love is holding the three tenets of the two greatest commandments in right relationship with each other. If we deeply trust our place in the Beloved embrace of God in His three persons, we can therefore learn to love ourselves well. And after having received God’s love and used it to love ourselves, we are given ample opportunity to selflessly give to others the love we have both from ourselves but more importantly from God.
A bit of a paradox, and wildly difficult to enact daily, but with Godly boundaries so too can we be patient with ourselves in our paths to love well. Love takes time, takes mistakes, takes effort, and thankfully, covers a multitude of sins as the apostle Peter would say.
So then, love with respect and boundaries. And, by so doing, love better than you ever could without respect and without boundaries.