Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so must you do also- Colossians 3:12b-13 NASB

Earlier this week as I was scrolling my social media feed I came across a post on boundaries. I know about boundaries. I read the book on boundaries.  I have even taught a couple of classes on boundaries.  I routinely advise folks I work with in ministry settings to set boundaries. I’m not unaware of what boundaries are, nor am I against setting them. Please don’t send me an email explaining boundaries to me. It will just make me feel misunderstood. 

That out of the way, I do feel compelled to share an experience I had with the Holy Spirit this week. I will warn readers ahead of time, this post might be challenging (offensive) to some. 

Okay, so.

I was reading through the post on boundaries and not really thinking too deeply about what I was reading. I certainly wasn’t bothered or offended by what I read. The author did not say anything I hadn’t heard before. Then (out of nowhere) a verse popped into my head. It was word-for-word perfect in the ESV translation:

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you- Ephesians 4:32

 I have been a Christian for a long time.  I know enough about how the Holy Spirit works to know that when a random verse pops into my head as I’m mindlessly reading an article it means something. At the very least, it means I’m supposed to go a little (lot) deeper and figure what God is trying to say (Hebrews 12:25). 

So, I dug deeper.

The word the Holy Spirit impressed on my heart was tenderhearted. So, I whipped out my handy-dandy Greek dictionary and looked it up. The Greek word for “tenderhearted” means to take pity on someone or to show mercy. Then I looked up “kind” in Greek. It means to be gentle, gracious and good natured toward others. At that point, I decided I might as well look up “forgiving” as well. It means not to exact punishment.  I concluded that Ephesians 4:32 could be translated:

Be good natured and gracious toward others. Take pity on people who don’t know better or don’t do better even when they know better.  Do not exact punishment on people because they annoy or hurt you.

I will not lie. I experienced some conviction. 

It occurred to me that people, even church people (me included) talk a lot about empathy, kindness, mercy and compassion. Nonetheless, it’s fair to say we have lost our way when it comes to living out the biblical commands to be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving in our day-to-day lives (Luke 6:35, Romans 13:8, Colossians 3:12). Truth-be-told, many believers (me included sometimes) are taking their cues about how to treat people from the world rather than Jesus. The social media post I mentioned earlier serves as a relevant example. The writer (who I do not know) is a professing Christian who basically made a case for boundaries being the ultimate conflict resolution tool. They suggest that if anyone hurts you or even just annoys you, the best solution is to go “no” or “low contact”.  Conflict solved. The poster openly defined boundaries as cutting difficult people out of one’s life (1stJohn 4:1). 

What? 

Here’s the thing: cutting a person out of one’s life is not setting a boundary (John 13:35, John 15:12, 1stCorinthians 13).  God does not call His people to build thick walls to keep annoying people out of their lives (Romans 12:10). Anyone who believes ending a relationship without a really compelling reason (like genuine abuse) is God’s will or a good example of a biblical boundary is just plain wrong. Boundaries are meant to be like fences with gates that swing open on both sides, not walls that block contact with the outside world. God wants us to figure out ways to maintain and heal relationships not obliterate them (Romans 12:16, 2nd Timothy 2:23-25). Boundaries ARE about setting limits concerning what you will or will not do. Boundaries are not meant to punishing people for past sins (Romans 2:1).  Unless a person is currently doing something truly egregious and stubbornly unrepentant (being annoying, rude or stupid is not egregious) Christians don’t cut people out of their lives.   Furthermore, cutting contact or even limiting contact with someone is not conflict resolution. Ending the relationship will halt the conflict, but it will never resolve anything. 

Moreover, what if Jesus started treating us the way we treat annoying people? We would be in all kinds of trouble. Every single one of us is annoying in some truly profound way. We are slow to learn, slow to obey and super stupid sometimes, especially if perfection is our standard.  We need Jesus to take pity on us daily and not punish us for our sin and stupidity. 

God commands His people to be a light to the world (Matthew 5:14-16). One way to do that is to take pity on others for their lack of consideration, wisdom and social grace. No where in Scripture are we told to view frustrating, rude or even mean people as impediments to our peace or as problems to be eliminated. Oftentimes God uses those very people (warts and all) to grow us and mature us into the image of Jesus.  We must never forget that God the commands to love others in spite of their deficiencies and irritating behaviors (John 15:12, Romans 12:10, Romans 13:8, 2nd Corinthians 13:11, Ephesians 4:2). 

Just like He does with us.