by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
'Live life without boundaries' is a line from a current TV commercial promoting, of all organizations, a bank.
We all need to live life to the full, to grasp every opportunity that life presents, to enjoy life wherever we can, to delight in the world around us, but living life without boundaries leads, not to freedom, but to anarchy and to being enslaved by the spirit of the day. If we all would live our lives without boundaries our actions would impact severely on one another and no one would have any freedom and a decent life.
This anarchy is already, basically, prevailing most of our daily life by people, nowadays, thinking that they can basically do as they like when they like and where they like because they feel like it. And, I hasten to add, it is not just some young people, the so-called YOBs. This attitude also exists with their parents already and even older people have taken up this attitude of life without boundaries.
Human experience, as well as the Christian faith, shows that freedom comes from commitment and the acceptance of boundaries that enable us to grow. Freedom does not come from no boundaries and no rules. And it is not just the Christian faith that gives us valuable guidelines of how to live. Others equally do so and the philosophies of some of harming no living thing is not a bad one either.
Even the beliefs of the Native Americans and similar groups have moral structures for living as they have all discovered that life without boundaries is nothing but anarchy and in tribal societies this just would and could not work. Neither can it is our modern society.
I am no Christian and not a minister of any faith, really, but I even without such structure I know that “life without boundaries” does not work and we see what the boundary-less upbringing of children has given us. Nothing but grief and kids that run riot.
Homes, schools and government are not prepared to set boundaries as they believe that children and young people must be able to express themselves freely. But on whose expense. On that of the rest of society and many of those children and young people who were raised in this false spirit of freedom will be unable to function in society and incapable of contributing to it in any beneficial manner.
Infringement of people's human rights is being quoted each and every time some boundaries are set, especially for youngsters. But what about the human rights of the rest of society upon whose rights the acts of those others impact. We are all in this together an d only by a mutual and decent give and take can society work without having someone use the power of the gun to protect his enjoyment of life and that of his family against those that believe that they have the right to live “life without boundaries” and that is the very reason why there are rules in society, many of which are based upon great writings of the various faiths.
The more committed we are to a person or cause beyond ourselves, the freer and more creative we, and others, become. The majority of people, it would appear, today, no longer have any commitment to anything beyond themselves and this “me, me, me” attitude, together with the lack of discipline already as children, leads us to this anarchy that is being touted as real freedom.
By committing ourselves to a relationship, provided it is mutually healthy for the wellbeing of both and provided it is based on love and not fear, we can be freer in the way we relate to others. This relationship may just be a friendship or indeed a marriage or commitment to a group.
If we commit ourselves to a good cause which seeks to enable others to grow and develop as human beings, then we ourselves grow and develop and the more committed we are and the more accepting of the boundaries that come with that, the freer we become and the more we grow.
This cause can be many things, from a religious and missionary one, whether Christian or other, or one to benefit humanity or the environment. In the main all of such commitments bring with them demands on us and also ground rules. The most important rules to accept first, for all of us, though, are the boundaries that are set for our societal living, originally, and only by accepting them can we grown and by growing become free.
© 2011
