Our need for separateness

By Dr John Townsend

Many Christians who are deeply attached to others find that the pages of their lives are often earmarked with a sense of being overwhelmed by the demands of life. They experience problems in “keeping up,” or of feeling controlled by the needs and crises of others. They have difficulty filtering out others’ needs from their own. Our second developmental need involves the quality of being separate, maturing our will, and setting boundaries.

WHAT ARE BOUNDARIES?

Boundaries are another way to refer to ownership, or stewardship, or responsibility. Remember the cattle brands of the Old West? Successful ranchers burned a unique marking onto the hide of each cow. It was a good system. If a fence broke, and the ani­mals from neighboring ranches mingled, the owners could easily sort out which animals were theirs and which weren’t. Without brands, the confusion over who owned what would have been overwhelming.

Boundaries are our own personal “brand.” They’re a way for us to identify ownership. They tell us what is ours, and—just as importantly—what isn’t. People with poor boundaries find themselves continually taking on problems that aren’t theirs and neglecting their own. After taking on everyone else’s problems. there’s no time for their own.

Boundaries are foundational to a sense of identity. They give us a clear sense of where “who I am” begins and ends. This is essential for us to be able to love. People who aren’t clear about their own thoughts, feelings, values, motivations, and behavior can never be sure if some sacrificial act they are performing for someone else was done freely, or out of a sense of obligation, fear, or guilt. (Those acts should be done freely, if they’re motivated out of a sense of loving God or others.) Clear boundaries are a gateway to a loving heart.

BOUNDARIES AND GOD

Much of the Bible is a portrait of the character of God, a way to put Him into word pictures that we can carry in our heads. When God describes Himself, He does so in two ways: positively—what He is; and negatively—what He isn’t. If you’ve ever been with people who “like everything.” you’ve probably had the experience of not feeling that you really knew who they were. Any restaurant, any movie, any opinion is fine with them. This trait may appear to be open-mindedness, but more often than not it’s a sign that these individuals lack a clearly defined sense of self. It’s been said that people who are too open-minded need to be careful—their brains might fall out.

This is one reason why both sides of God’s self-descriptions are presented in the Scriptures.
First, God makes positive self-statements. He describes Him­self as holy, loving, just, and compassionate, to name a few char­acter traits. These qualities cover a wide range of aspects of His personality. God’s self-description isn’t only positive, however, He also tells us what He is not, so that we can judge if someone or some­thing isn’t from Him. For example: God has no part in evil. He hates lying tongues and lovers of violence, He isn’t a man. With­out these “not” assertions, He would be the god of pantheism (or the “New Age”], which asserts that God exists as the creation as well as the creator.

These “nots” are the boundaries of God; they are His method of letting us know Him. In fact, God’s essence in the Trinity also has boundaries. In some mysterious way, He exists in the Father, Son, and Spirit, united and yet uniquely distinct—one God in three persons.
There is a great deal of comfort for us in understanding God’s boundaries. They help us trust Him, because we know where He stands on issues. Because God’s yes is yes, and His no is no. we don’t have to worry that He’ll tell us His opinions in indirect, passive-aggressive ways.

BOUNDARIES AND US

We don’t have to stop with God’s nature to see the evidence of boundaries—we simply have to observe His creation. Our own nature reflects the same principle. The Bible refers to that prin­ciple as “stewardship.” Many Christians struggle with constantly feeling “drawn and quartered” by the needs and demands of others. Some people feel as if they can’t get to their own tasks because the crises of others keep getting in the way. This reflects a conflict in stewardship. A steward is an administrator, or director, of people or prop­erty. He can be responsible for the care and maintenance of a Fortune 500 company, a garden, or a family. Stewardship is about responsibility. The buck stops with the steward.

God has made us all stewards of certain things in our lives for which no one else can take responsibility. How we conduct our lives on earth, for example, is one aspect of our stewardship. As Paul puts it, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). The message here is that all of us will answer, in some fash­ion, for how we’ve lived. Ultimately there will be no one on whom we can blame the directions our lives took, whether toward or away from love.

More specifically, stewardship also means that we are respon­sible for several aspects of what goes on in our lives. Exam­ples of things that have our “brand” on them include our time, money, feelings, opinions, thoughts, actions, values, and gifts and abilities. We have been given these aspects of life to help us in surviving and to help others survive. Our task is to nurture and develop these aspects of ourselves and use them responsibly. The unwise servant’s wasting of the master’s talents is a picture of the life spent not utilizing the gifts of God. But that’s not all of stewardship. The second important aspect of this principle is that the good steward knows what is not his responsibility. He knows when a problem needs to be delegated, or isn’t a high enough priority, or is simply someone else’s. Good administrators have the ability to know what the most effective use of their time is. They know what to say no to. Poor adminis­trators say yes to too much, and end up with missed deadlines, angry coworkers, and poor track records.

It’s not easy to distinguish what’s ours and what isn’t. Dr. Howard Hendricks, a renowned speaker and seminary professor in the area of Christian leadership development, tells his classes, “For every invitation to speak that I accept, I have to turn down forty. These aren’t forty bad invitations. They’re generally places where there’s a real need, where I’d love to speak.” Clear boundaries help us decide what is ours, and what isn’t. They lead to good stewardship over our lives. Without an accurate sense of our limits, our lives will resemble a “double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).

Next to bonding deficits, the problem of unclear boundaries is probably the most serious cause of emotional and spiritual struggles experienced by Christians today. Depression, anxiety, feelings of powerlessness and helplessness, a diffused sense of identity and direction, and codependency problems are all linked to boundary deficits.

THE KNAPSACK AND THE BOULDER

Let’s look at a biblical principle of how to set responsible bounda­ries. The Apostle Paul gives us a key:

Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to him­self alone, and not in regard to another. For each one shall bear his own load, (Galatians 6:1-5)

It’s easy to be confused by this passage. Paul is discussing our responsibilities, and he seems to be saying, “Take care of each other” (verse 2) and “take care of yourself” (verse 5). I know many Christians whose lives are marked by fruitless attempts to take care of everyone in their lives as well as themselves. But that’s not what the verses say. The Greek word for burden in verse 2 means “overwhelming load.” It’s a picture of a gigantic boulder crushing the back of a hurting person. Boulders represent deep, catastrophic losses in our lives—family and marital losses, financial devastation, physi­cal illnesses, and so on. When a person has a boulder, he is ren­dered helpless, unable to pick himself up and move on. He stays in an injured state. We are to look out for each other’s boulders in the Body of Christ. When one of us is “crushed,” those of us with something to offer are to swarm around the hurt individual and love, support, and encourage her. This is being responsible to each other.

The Greek word in verse 5 for load is different— it means “knapsack.” What is a knapsack for? It carries whatever daily essentials the hiker needs to make it through the day. A knapsack is an individual affair. It’s only for the carrier. And each person is to carry his own. No one can take my knapsack for me — and I can’t take on anyone else’s. This is being responsible for ourselves.
Look back at the aspects of what we’re responsible for— our time, money, feelings, and the like. These are the “supplies” that go in the knapsack. We are to take full ownership of these things. And, just as importantly, we can’t take ownership over anyone else’s knapsack items—even if we want to. Even if we’re asked to.

Boundary conflicts happen when Hiker A tires of his knap­sack and wants a free ride. Hiker B, wanting to be caring, takes it on. After a few miles, two things happen. First, Hiker A learns it’s a lot of fun not to have to be responsible to pay his own rent, find a job, or take responsibility for his own happiness. Second, Hiker B shifts from love to resentment to bitterness as he takes on the impossible task of being responsible for another person’s life.

Many families are built on this conflict. One member of the family controls the other members by such messages as, “If you separate from me mentally or physically, I’ll become depressed, lonely, or die — and it will be your fault.” This member is making the others responsible for his or her inability to be alone, or to cultivate friendships.

Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan makes the “knapsack ­boulder” issue clear. The Samaritan helped the victimized man with his boulder: stripped and half-dead, lying by the side of the road. Yet he didn’t take him to his home—he took him to an inn, a temporary residence. The idea is that when the victim had recovered, he was again on his own. With his own knapsack.

Taking responsibility for other people’s feelings never works, because it deprives them of learning from the consequences of their behavior. Consequences are our teacher—they show us that driving too fast brings tickets, and that waiting too long to finish a project brings failure. It’s what the writer of Hebrews refers to as “practice”: “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14).

The more we practice, make mistakes, and fail, the more we learn from the mistakes. But the irresponsible person who is chronically spared the consequences of his behavior by the “loving” friend is denied the gift of learning, and never matures. I know a woman whose alcoholic husband had been a prob­lem drinker for twenty years. She couldn’t understand why her continuous nagging hadn’t brought him to repentance. It wasn’t until she realized that she was taking responsibility for him that she herself began repenting, and he began recovering. How had she been taking responsibility? She was budgeting for his liquor in the weekly grocery list!

She realized she was training him to put up with the nagging and hold on until she brought the groceries home. But when she began saying “no” to his use of family money for drinking, and began setting more limits on his irresponsibility, he came out of his denial and began getting help.

BOUNDARY DEFICITS

People with healthy boundaries can say yes to the good and no to the bad. They are just as free to say no to someone they love as they are to say yes. That’s because love is impossible without freedom. The person who is saying yes to someone else’s demands because of a fear of hurting their feelings, or a fear of emotional withdrawal, cannot be loving.

Love and fear cannot coexist, because fear removes the freedom not to love. That is, you can’t love someone if you don’t feel free not to love them. Love entails free choice, not forced compliance. That’s why John says that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). Saying yes to someone else because of fear is compliance, or people-pleasing, but it’s not love.

Jesus makes the same comparison between love and compli­ance. Quoting Hosea 6:6, He says. “I desire compassion and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13). God’s not interested in external acts performed because we are afraid. He wants an authentic, grateful, abiding love from us, because we know we are loved. People who have been injured in their ability to set clear boundaries tend to fail into two categories:

(1) those who take on others’ knapsacks and ignore their own:
(2) those who need others to take their knapsacks.

The first type tends to be giving, caring, over-responsible, and always behind schedule with their over-commitments. The sec­ond type presents either a needy, dependent style or a seductive style. And, strangely enough, these types are strongly drawn to each other!

Many marriages are typical of this boundary confusion. Why does this occur? Primarily because each type is looking for some­one to help repair the boundary injury. Over-responsible people find someone like their needy, dependent parents so that per­haps this time, “If I’m caring enough, my needs will be noticed.” Under-responsible people seek out a caretaker with the deep wish that the caretaker will put some limits on them and help them mature.

As long as these reasons aren’t understood, we don’t have opportunity to take responsibility for them. This is the primary reason most marriages get “stuck.” Whatever we aren’t aware of, we can’t repair. Boundary deficits can be deeply disabling to anyone, includ­ing Christians. People with unclear boundaries can find them­selves making commitments under pressure that they would never make with a clear head. They find themselves “caving in” to others. They have trouble speaking their mind. They are afraid to be honest and tell the truth. They often can’t protect themselves in injurious situations, such as being wrongly criticized. They are unable to stand firm and separate with their values, as Joshua did when he declared, “as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (24: 15).

Unclear boundaries can also lead to a lack of direction in life. Boundaries are the conveyors of our personal power. People whose boundaries are underdeveloped find themselves floating along in their careers or relationships with no sense of initiative or goals. The psychological fruits of these boundary problems can be devastating. Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disor­ders, panic attacks, and identity disorders are a few of the results of boundary conflicts.

HOW TO REPAIR SEPARATENESS DEFICITS

If you can identify a problem in separateness, or in having clear boundaries—being a good steward of your knapsack—you are not alone. No one has perfect boundaries. At times we all take on what’s not ours, or don’t take on what is ours. God has provided help in repairing and developing our broken boundary-setting abilities. His resources involve skill-building. Just as we need to exercise and work with an atrophied leg after it comes out of its cast, setting appropriate boundaries is an ability we must learn. Here are some ways to develop boundaries:

1. Ask God to help you become a truth-teller, even of negative truth. Proverbs 10:18 tells us that “He who conceals hatred has lying lips.” Often, people with shaky boundaries may feel resentful about the supposed power of others over them, not realizing that they have given their power to those others. If they begin to feel they don’t have choices they will also feel angry and resentful. Often, the first step to reclaiming their “brand” is to admit the anger to themselves, God, and others.

2. Find people who celebrate your separateness. “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). Separateness helps relationships. It isn’t possible to learn to develop boundaries in isolation with unsupportive people. When we try. we repeat our original boundary injury. That is, we find ourselves in a controlling relationship with an unsupportive person and attempt to set a limit on the relation­ship. The person rejects it, and we find ourselves alone.

Most of us would choose being in a bad relationship rather than no relationship. We need to find maturing, caring people who will love our boundaries just as much as they love our attachment.
Here is an important litmus test for the quality of your rela­tionships. Ask yourself, “Do the people closest to me love my no as much as they love my yes?” If those closest to you affirm your compliance, but withdraw, throw tantrums, or attack when you set limits or have an opinion, there’s a problem. Your yes is being loved, but your no is not. If your no isn’t loved, then you aren’t, either.

Even God loves our no. He knows that without it, what wor­ship He’d get from us would be simply robotic compliance. He wants all to repent and be saved, but allows people to refuse Him: “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). His love for our boundaries is a model for our finding people who will have boundaries with others.

3. Practice disagreement. Truth telling always involves dif­fering opinions. You can’t find out who you really are without first knowing who you aren’t. A sign that you’re beginning to set boundaries is that you will rock some boats. There’s most likely a problem if no one ever reacts negatively to you.

Jesus said, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). It’s a disconcerting thought that for us to recover spiritually, some people will probably get upset with us! Yet these are usually people who have a difficult time relating to adults with boundaries of their own.

4. Take responsibility for your mistakes. People with boundary problems sometimes see themselves as out of control of their lives. They feel helpless to change their own problems and others’ treat­ment of them. This can lead to a blaming or rationalizing attitude. “If I can’t control my life, then my problems aren’t my fault,” might go the thinking. Taking stewardship over your life means learning to admit when your problems are the result of your irresponsibility rather than finding excuses. People who “own” their problems tend to mature much faster than those who excuse or transfer blame. The excuser has nothing to fix.

5. Learn to respect others’ separateness. One indication of a boundary deficit is an inability to live with the no of another. I once worked with a couple who experienced this problem. Every time the wife disagreed with the husband, he would head toward the door exclaiming. “That’s it! — the marriage isn’t going to work out.” Panicked, she would chase after him and apologize for the “sin” of having an opinion. After some work, she was able to sit quietly in the living room when he made his dramatic exit statements. And he never made it to the car before he returned to resume the discussion.

When we learn to accept another’s boundaries, we are say­ing, in effect, “If you don’t give me what I want, God and I will find another way to get my need met.” It keeps the other person out of a position of indispensability, which is actually a form of idolatry. If our needs to be understood, listened to, or loved can’t or won’t be met by the person we’d like, we are to find someone else to help meet that need. That’s why there is a multiplicity of believers in the Body of Christ: when one friend is busy, we are to call another. This allows us to support the boundary-setting freedom of others in the way we’d like to. If we want others to accept our freedom, we must respect theirs.

Learning separateness, and when it’s appropriate to set lim­its, begins early in childhood, but comes to full bloom in adoles­cence. People who have learned the lessons of this chapter regard­ing truth-telling, our separate identities, taking responsibility for mistakes, handling legitimate disagreement, and respecting the separateness of others, should take the time to develop these skills in their children as well. It will make the more difficult times of parenting later more fruitful, although not necessarily less painful.

Our ability to bond deeply with God and others, and our abil­ity to take biblical responsibility for ourselves, determines much of the quality and meaningfulness of our adult lives. These two needs for attachment and separateness can become important pathways to growth. But along the way, as we’ll see in chapter 6, a third developmental need emerges for the ability to accept the presence of good and bad in the world and in our lives. This is an important step toward understanding ourselves and others.