Moving Boundaries

"Do not move and ancient boundary stone set up by your forefathers."  Proverbs 22:28
When I came across that verse this week I began to ask how to apply that today.  There are not many ancient boundary stones in our time.  Property lines are pretty well drawn here in Texas.  It is interesting what did come to my mind about this verse though.

A memory of a day in Houston with my mother as she was being treated at M D Anderson came to me.  We had gone over to a relatives home for the evening before returning to the hospital and more treatment the next day.  We discussed how it would be good for my mother to watch a funny movie to lighten the day, but what to watch?  I do not remember how we came to the conclusion to try "Oh Brother Where Art Thou."  Maybe because that movie has a rural, depression era setting and my mother was a child of the depression and rural settings.  Regardless, it wasn't long into the movie that we saw this was not a good idea.  For one, my mother did not find it funny.  For another thing, it all hit us that there were a lot of curse words in that movie; more than any of us who had seen it previously remembered.  But somehow watching a movie with your mother makes you catch words that had just slipped by before. 

It dawned on me this week as that verse from Proverbs and that movie with my mom memory collided - here was a modern application to "a boundary stone set up by your forefathers."  While I was growing up my parents often turned off a TV show if they heard cursing in it.  There wasn't a big lecture or discussion, it just went off or the TV was turned to something else.  Now we were all adults when we watched that movie in Houston but that did not matter.  It wasn't just that my mother did not want her children to hear cursing, it was that there was a stand she had taken about supporting or watching things like that.  It was not worth it to her. There were better things to do.  A boundary stone had been set in my parent's lives.   They were not letting it move.   In my adult years, it had been moved, but by whom and when?  What else had I grown accepting of and deaf toward?  How many other things had I become desensitized to without being aware of it?  Was I better off?  I have thought about those questions often this week.  The answer to the last question is clear, "No, I am not better off."  I think my parents were.  They had a clear boundary stone and they did not allow it to be moved.  There is much to be said for that.

You and I live in a day in which the ancient boundary stones in society's moral code get pushed back every day in the name of entertainment and pushing the artistic "envelope."  There are those out there who actively want those stones moved in society and labor purposely to do just that.  It is not just about cursing.  It has to do with what is right and what is wrong and trying to blur that line.  I have to ask myself, "How much have I accommodated them in my own life?"  I once heard a challenging question in a sermon, "What ideas are using you to spread themselves?"  That is something I need wisdom to carefully, prayerfully ponder.  Perhaps I am not alone.

For the journey...

Tim