This video illustrates the essence of what I’m writing:
Henry Cloud is a PhD clinical psychiatrist, what we sometimes call a “shrink,” as is John Townsend. In 1992 the two co-wrote a book, Boundaries, in which they mix Christian counseling with secular psychiatry, a dangerous synergism (a critical Christian review by Christian Discernment is found here, 48 page pdf). Cloud and Townsend tell us that “church is not a totally safe place and it does not consist of totally safe people.” Cloud and Townsend are not safe people and their book isn’t a safe book. However, many millennials especially are taking them to heart.
“Safe” is a psychobabble. Of course, the whole world isn’t completely safe, but the standard for safeness is the Bible, and especially not the book, Boundaries. Who wouldn’t disagree with the general concept of boundaries? I teach them. A principle of boundaries forms the basis of the biblical practice of separation, so there’s always going to be something to agree with Cloud and Townsend. An ironic necessary boundary should be to keep a boundary between secular psychiatry and the Bible. The following is the essence of the teaching of the Boundary teaching:
Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. If I know where my yard begins and ends, I am free to do with it what I like. Taking responsibility for my life opens up many different options. However, if I do not “own” my life, my choices and options become very limited.
As this relates to millennials and younger, I’m reading or hearing from many that the children dictate to the parents the boundaries in a relationship, very much like the above video. They are arbitrary boundaries, not akin to biblical separation. If those children set up capricious limitations, self-set and unilateral, on their own terms, for their parents, apparently those are good, no questions asked. Any questioning or challenging is a violation of this self-serving standard, literally a kind of criminal behavior to them in their endeavor for mental health. However, freedom isn’t freedom to sin.
Parents should intervene in the case of unscriptural behavior. Children should be required to give scriptural answers. True freedom isn’t an allowance or some kind of trump card for whatever behavior, unquestioned. This is a cult-like symptom on the level of Scientology or the like. It is contrary to true freedom in Christ, and is actually a kind of deceived bondage, in which someone never feels the necessary pain of confrontation over sin. Someone isn’t free if he walls himself off from every challenge. People who are unwilling to subject themselves to challenge and from God-ordained spheres of sovereignty, like parents and the church, are not truly free.
No one has liberty or freedom to disobey scripture. Every unscriptural behavior deserves questioning and challenging. Putting up a fence against confrontation, especially from parents is disobedient, ungodly, rebellious behavior. Those children who put up these humanly devised boundaries keep themselves in an artificial, deceitful world of their own making, where they are the sovereigns of their own life, actually don’t want impositions against their own lust. The boundary is lust. A parent should penetrate that boundary for the deliverance of the child. In addition to that, the Apostle Paul speaks of this in Romans 12, where he says that those who do not fit into the body, a historic one of true and authoritative doctrine and practice, think more highly of themselves than they ought to think.
Children do own their choices. They are accountable to them. That does not mean that they own their lives. Their lives are under a hiearchy designed by God, laid out in many different places in the New Testament. These same children pay taxes, for instance. Why not put up boundaries there? They submit to an employer to make money — no boundaries there. They use credit cards. They are also responsible to God and they won’t get away with dishonoring their parents and church authority.
Interesting authors you found there. I fully agree with your assessment in this article. You have to wonder where this behavior really started. Why are so many men emasculated now. Where did this behavior come from? Why is it considered normal? And why are SO MANY others seemingly indoctrinated with various strains of feminism? I have a theory that it has something to do with a group that came to power around the 1960's time period. Not very long before the same window of time that divorce lawyers (with the general approval of mass media) started making a living off of hard-working Americans. The same kinds of people that would afterward be sent to receive all kinds of counselling, therapies and so on. Anything but what they need, which is God.