I don’t believe in boundaries. Actually that’s not strictly true — I believe in boundaries, but not in the way the term is typically used.
Boundaries, in my view, are related to self-differentiation (see Murray Bowen’s work on family systems). A person who is self-differentiated recognizes boundaries between his thoughts and feelings, and between his thoughts and feelings and the thoughts and feelings of others.
For example, if I am unhappy, that is my feeling. It is not my wife’s feeling. She may choose to empathize with my feeling of unhappiness, but if she is unable to distinguish between my unhappiness and her unhappiness, she lacks a boundary between her feelings and mine. And if I expect her to make me happy, I fail to distinguish between what is my “responsibility” and that of my wife.
Boundaries serve as lines of demarcation that allow a person to understand what he is and is not responsible for, and when he is feeling and when he is thinking. This allows free choices instead of emotion-driven responses. If I have robust boundaries I can choose to be emotionally involved with someone — and I can choose not to be so involved. People lacking such boundaries “tend to make decisions on the basis of what ‘feels right’; in short, they are trapped in an emotional world” [Skowron and Friedlander 1998].
The notion of boundaries as it is commonly used, however, really boils down to a violation of boundaries in the sense of self-differentiation. I will say to my wife, “I will set a boundary: you must act in a certain way.” Perhaps, “You may not speak in a disrespectful manner to me.” Theologically, boundaries wind up being a kind of imposition of law on the other person.
An immediate misunderstanding that must be avoided is to assume that not imposing the second kind of boundaries means “anything goes.” That is, not having “law” in a relationship means that there is no content to the relationship. This is a common mistake; Jesus addresses this when he says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). The scribes and Pharisees sought righteousness by law; Jesus says that kind of righteousness is not sufficient to bring you into the kingdom of heaven. But what does he mean?
If we look at the following example, this can become clear. Imagine a husband and wife in a relatively traditional marriage; the wife has a “boundary” that the husband come home after work, or call if he is going to be late. The husband finds himself chafing under this boundary; he might “stop off for just one drink” and wind up coming home two hours late, forgetting to call. Or he might work late and when he comes home he will excuse his lateness as being due to the importance of what he was doing.
We recognize this behavior as “passive-aggressive.” It’s not so much that the husband doesn’t want to go home; it’s rather that he doesn’t like the feeling of being controlled. But eventually the reproaches of the wife result in him not wanting to come home; her dissatisfaction with him starts to pervade their entire relationship and things start to go downhill.
We then imagine another, similar marriage relationship. The husband comes home almost every night in a timely fashion, even though the wife expresses no “boundary.”
What is the difference? In the second case the husband simply wants to come home. It’s not an imposition for him to come home immediately after work. That’s where he wants to be.
The difference is in the heart. Jesus tells us that “… from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:21-23).
The problem is that laws don’t fix the heart. And the notion of “boundaries” is simply a way for Christians to import law into the conversation of our faith in a disguised fashion. Remember that one of the words for “sin” in the Bible is “transgression,” and it specifically means to violate boundaries — in particular God’s boundaries as expressed in his “law.” But if we are not under God’s boundaries as expressed in the Law (see Romans 6:14) then how can we see imposition of our own boundaries on one another to be valid?
But remember that avoiding the notion of boundaries does not mean our relationships are content-free. Paul speaks of it as follows:
And to the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win the Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law in order to win those under the law. To those without law I became as one without law --- though not without law toward God but under the law of Christ --- in order to win those without law. -- 1 Corinthians 9:20-21
Paul is saying that he is free to assume or discard the outward trappings of Law. This includes things like dietary law and even outward observance of the Sabbath. However, this flexibility does not mean he lives in a vacuum, without law even toward God. He is “under the law of Christ.” And that law is the law of love.
Paul elsewhere puts it like this:
Owe nobody anything but to love one another. For the one who loves the other has fulfilled the law. For: "no adultery;" "no murder;" "no stealing;" "no bearing false witness;" "no coveting" --- and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this word: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love works no evil toward the neighbor; therefore love fulfills the law." -- Romans 13:8-10
But note that this is a transvaluation of the notion of law. It moves it from the outside to the inside. It becomes a matter of the heart.
So the biblical alternative to boundaries is love. Love expresses itself in good action — not only does it “work no evil” but it works goodness. Paul says in Galatians that what matters is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). In this view, neither faith nor love are the passive, content-free things that people seem to see them as; rather, they actively pursue (work) toward the good of their object. To take our examples above, the husband who loves his family expresses that love in action that works toward the good of his family.
But if boundaries are not the answer, can they not be seen as a kind of stop-gap?
Well first of all the notion that we don’t rely on boundaries does not mean we cannot express ourselves. To continue the above example, a wife might say, “I really like it when you come home right after work. I feel cherished and special.” And she can show her gratitude by her actions — the way she welcomes her husband when he does come home.
But beyond this, we must realize that because love is a matter of the heart, it cannot be demanded; it can only be evoked. To beat our example to death, a wife cannot demand that her husband love her; in fact, the one who enables that love is Christ himself. Our love springs from God’s love for us (1 John 4:19). The real “solution” for the problems of the heart is to cultivate one’s relationship with God — to walk in the Spirit and allow God to grow the fruits of the Spirit in our hearts. On that basis, we then intend love toward one another, knowing that the Spirit is growing that very love in our hearts with the intent of “shedding it abroad” (Romans 5:5, KJV, see also John 7:37-39).
Of course this means that relationships won’t really work for most people, people who are not walking in the Spirit. And that is what we see. Society is so hostile toward traditional relational forms that it is no longer possible to take them for granted. Marriage is not only no longer the norm; there are important forces actively working against it. The centrifugal forces in our society make almost all relationships problematic. And our own relationship with God is no guarantee that someone we love will have a similar relationship. But one thing we can be sure of is that if we seek God, in the end we will have him, because he is faithful.