The War On Boundaries

“Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.”

Christianity is a faith characterized by boundaries, hierarchy, and distinctions. The God of Christianity is a God who assigns roles, who segregates (day from night, land from water, sun from moon, female from male, etc.) and whose existence is the means by which all differences are defined.

Perhaps the greatest boundary in Scripture is the one known as the Creator Creature boundary. It is the boundary that the Serpent and our first parents sought to remove. Not satisfied with a creaturely role our first parents aspired to erase the Creator Creature boundary and transcend so to be as God knowing good from evil.

Since that time the temptation for fallen man has been to transcend the boundaries set by God, in order that, by their own fiat word, they themselves could dictate their own boundaries and so create a reality where they erased Gods’ boundaries and set their own, or at other times merely attempt to erase all boundaries so that “all colors bleed into one.”

We live in such a time when the sin du-jour is the war against all boundaries. Man cannot be limited by his race, his ethnicity, his gender, any transcendent ethic, or any ordained status or definition. This mindset is so ubiquitous that by my usage of the pronouns “his” in the last sentence I have already revealed how insensitive I am to the modern demand that a pronoun boundary that prefers the masculine pronoun is an example of the lack of respect for the erasure of the old boundary once characteristic of the English grammar.

According to our Brave New Egalitarian Boundary-less world man must be allowed to make himself over and over again according to his own fiat word and according to his own template. No boundaries can be allowed to stifle or limit man. Gods after all, by definition, may not be limited.

The evidence of the assault on the idea of boundaries is everywhere, but unfortunately it is getting so common that we no longer have the ability to see it given how close we are to the boundary-less state of affairs. On this subject we have arrived at the proverb, “if you want to know what the water is like don’t ask a fish.

Still the evidence is omnipresent,

1.) The US government, in collusion with the National Chamber of commerce and leftist Marxists are currently literally trying to erase the southern border with Mexico.

2.) It is all the rage among judicial tyrants, by the means of legal fiat, to erase a boundary that has been set in place for millennium in Western Civilization which insisted that marriage requires one from each sex. Judges from Indiana to Utah are telling us that the Christian and historic boundary that defined marriage is now passe.

3.) It was just announced that the Speaker of the House is taking the POTUS to court to sue him because he is not honoring the Separation of powers (Boundaries). It seems that the man who is allegedly POTUS doesn’t care for the boundaries that define his position and role. He will erase those boundaries and set his own.

4.) Recently Facebook went from the traditional two gender option (Male — Female) to a new offering of 51 choices. All previous gender boundaries erased. Man can create his own boundaries in terms of gender.

5.) New forms from the Government no longer read in such a way as to fill in names for “Father,” and “Mother,” choosing instead “Parent 1,” and “Parent 2.”

6.) Recently in Houston, Texas it was decided that public restrooms are now boundary-less.

7.) The fashion world is run by sodomites and so they give us female models who look like little boys with breasts. In such a way the boundary between desiring a woman with curves and desiring a little boy is eliminated.

8.) No ID required for voting. This is to eliminate the boundary between Citizen and non-Citizen. It has become so upside down that it is fast becoming more of an advantage to be a non-citizen than to be a citizen.

9.) Even in the Reformed Church there are those who insist that God requires the boundaries of cultures be extinguished. Such men are convinced that only in a cultural-less, boundary-less “Christian” world can God be glorified.

10.) The mantra is relentless which states that a family can be defined anyway one wants. The boundary that once defined a family as blood relation sharing a common faith has now been eliminated. We all understood that there would be exceptions at time to this truth but for generations we held that normatively, the boundary that defined family, was blood relation sharing a common faith.

11.) The next boundary under assault is between adult and child. Already organizations exist that are lobbying for the sex between adult and children.

12.) The Pulpit used to have a boundary around it by following God’s Word in allowing only Men as Elders. That boundary has largely fallen.

13.) With the rise of deconstructionism in literature the boundary between author and reader has been destroyed. The reader is now the author and the author has been eclipsed. This is the inevitable consequence to eliminating a transcendent Author of all reality. If one eliminates God eventually one must eliminate all other authors. Boundaries in literature fall readily.

14.) Sodomy is on the verge of being publicly recognized. Here is another boundary being erased. Heretofore the public understood that male parts went with female parts. That was a boundary. It is now a receding boundary. Whereas the former boundary said that men and women in marriage should work together to create life. The new boundary insists that the life found in man should be surrounded by death found in the male evacuation canal. The new boundary insists that two women should pursue sterility by rejecting men.

All of this destruction of boundaries is the consequence of Kant’s subjectivism and the subsequent rise of Kierkegaardian existentialism. Man cannot reach the noumena realm and therefore men are allowed to arrange the phenomena realm as they will. Wittgenstein reinforced all this with his language games and postmodernism has sealed the deal for the everyday man on the street.

The elimination of stable and shared boundaries can not help but lead to social order upheaval. No society can long withstand a boundary-less world in religion, morals, fashion, art, education, law, etc. Further the elimination of stable and shared boundaries means the persecution of those who do insist that transcendent boundaries exist. If Biblical Christians will not share in the Brave New Boundary-less world where the only boundaries will be the elimination of boundaries then Biblical Christians become enemies to the State God.

Anthony Esolen on this matter offers this insight on how God is a God who created a world with God given boundaries,

“When God made the world, He made things, with their characteristic boundaries. That is what the sacred author of Job insists upon. God said to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And, “Who shut up the sea within doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb,” and said, “to here shall you come, but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?”

Likewise in Genesis we see that God divides and distinguishes when He creates, not only when He divides the light from the darkness, and sets the firmament between heaven and earth, and orders the waters into one place so that the dry land may appear. He does so when He makes every living thing after its kind, a crucial phrase for understanding the whole. The kinds are so by means of boundaries: an apple tree brings forth apple blossoms after its kind; birds flock together and mate after their kinds. Man too is made after his kind, male and female; and it is characteristic of man to be made by God, for God: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

The sad thing in all of this is that when mankind tears down God’s ordained boundaries they at the same time tear down themselves. Man is not God and man cannot violate God’s order and boundaries without at the same time violating himself.

We live in a time and epoch where boundaries are being attacked. This time is not likely to end soon unless God is pleased to graciously visit us with judgment.