There is a current argument against boundaries, driven by a sad scandal. Scott expanded this by discussing where the term boundaries came from: the 12-step movement. The idea was that this is as far as I will go and as far as I will tolerate. As Scott says. what is needed for the broken, and may be therapeutic, does not generalize into other realms. Indeed, therapy has boundaries because it is a professional and artificial relationship: marriage should not be so.
So let’s look at what a Church father said about marriage.
Paul has precisely described for husband and wife what is fitting behavior for each: she should reverence him as the head and he should love her as his body. But how is this behavior achieved? That it must be is clear; now I will tell you how. It will be achieved if we are detached from money, if we strive above everything for virtue, if we keep the fear of God before our eyes. What Paul says to servants in the next chapter applies to us as well, …knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same again from the Lord (Eph. 6:8). Love her not so much for her own sake, but for Christ’s sake. That is why he says, be subject…as to the Lord. Do everything for the Lord’s sake, in a spirit of obedience to Him. These words should be enough to convince us to avoid quarrels and disagreements. No husband should believe any accusation he hears from a third party about his wife, and vice versa; nor should a wife unreasonably monitor her huband’s comings and going, provided that he has always shown himself to be above suspicion. And what if you devote the day to your work and your friends, and the evening to your wife; but she is still not satisfied, but is jealous for more of your time? Don’t be annoyed by her complaints; she loves you, she is not behaving absurdly–her complaints come from her fervent affection for you, and from fear. Yes, she is afraid that her marriage bed will be stolen, that someone will deprive her of her greatest blessing, that someone will take from her him who is her head.
A wife should never nag her husband: “You lazy coward, you have no ambition! Look at our relatives and neighbors; they have plenty of money. Their wives have far more than I do.” Let no wife say any such thing; she is her husband’s body, and it is not for her to dictate to her head, but to submit and obey. “But why should she endure poverty?” some will ask. If she is poor, let her console herself by thinking of those who are much poorer still. If she really loved her husband, she would never speak to him like that, but would value having him close to her more than all the gold in the world….Furnish your house neatly and soberly. If the bridegroom shows his wife that he takes no pleasure in worldly excess, and will not stand for it, their marriage will remain free from the evil influences that are so popular these days. Let them shun the immodest music and dancing that are currently so fashionable.
I am aware that many people think me ridiculous for giving such advice; but if you listen to me, you will understand the advantages of a sober lifestyle more and more as time goes on. You will no longer laugh at me, but will laugh instead at the way people live now like silly children or drunken men. What is our duty, then? Remove from your lives shameful, immodest, and Satanic music, and don’t associate with people who enjoy such profligate entertainment. When your bride sees your manner of life, she will say to herself, “Wonderful! What a wise man my husband is! He regards this passing life as nothing; he bas married me to be a good mother for his children and a prudent manager of his household.” Will this sort of life be distasteful for a young bride? Only perhaps for the shortest time, and soon she will discover how delightful it is to live this way. She will retain her modesty if you retain yours. Don’t engage in idle conversations; it never profits anyone to talk too much. Whenever you give your wife advice, always begin by telling her how much you love her. Nothing will persuade her so well to admit the wisdom of your words as her assurance that you are speaking to her with sincere affection. Tell her that you are convinced that money is not important, that only thieves thirst for it constantly, that you love her more than gold; and indeed an intelligent, discreet and pious young woman is worth more than all the money in the world. Show her that you value her company, and prefer being at home to being out. Esteem her in the presence of your friends and children. Pray together at home and go to Church; when you come back home, let each ask the other the meaning of the readings and the prayers. If you are overtaken by poverty, remember Peter and Paul, who were more honored than kings or rich men, though they spent their lives in hunger and thirst. Remind one another that nothing in life is to be feared, except offending God. If your marriage is like this, your perfection will rival the holiest of monks.
I do not see boundaries. I see instead a need to care for the emotions of the wife, to cherish her, to understand her frailties and to give direction, without limit. As Christ was prepared to die for the church, so we should be prepared to die for our wives, for the sake of Christ. And in the same way, a wife has to sacrifice freedoms and accept a change of circumstances (even if you are well off when first wed, kids make you fairly poor) as she obeys her husband in all things for the sake of Christ.
And note that the Church fathers considered marriage holy. A means for perfection. We should too.
The point about Chrysostom which is interesting is that he does not look on the obligations, quite rightly, as dependent. That is the obligation of the husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the Church — that is independent of her submission to him. And her obligation to submit is likewise independent of his love/leadership for her. They are independent obligations, not dependent on each other — which is very contrary to what humans normally think of obligations — even under contract law, if one person fails to perform in a material way, the other party can suspend their performance as well — this matches the typical human understanding of what is fair.
The trouble is that too often the contemporary church teaches, even if indirectly (but often enough directly as well), that the wife’s obligation to submit is conditioned on the husband’s loving leadership, whereas his obligation to lovingly lead is unconditional, regardless of her submission or rebellion. That’s not what Chrysostom was saying, and it’s the source of much of the imbalanced clap-trap that we hear from Christians about these kinds of issues today.
In this world, marriage is a contract. I do this if she does that: it is about reciprocation and revenge: what the Maori call utu. In Christ this is not the case. It is about doing our duty to each other for Christ. And the most intimate thing we can do is not sexual. It praying for each other, with each other.
Too moderns, this is unthinkable, crunchy, countercultural. But then, most modern things are bad for us.
Yes, you don’t need to set boundaries with perfectly healthy people. In practice, the other 99.9+% of women need them very badly. A few will respect the boundaries set in the Bible. The rest need them set in the home by their husband.
I don’t see any evidence that God wants 99.9% marriages to fail due to husbands abdicating their responsibility in obedience to your interpretation of Scripture. According to Him, He wants us to lead, and the people He wants us to lead are our real wives who actually exist.
If God tells you to make a grilled cheese sandwich, He’s not telling you to make up an excuse to char the thing and blame it on the bread. He’s telling you to take real bread, real cheese, and real butter, and make a good sandwich. And that means paying attention to the actual properties of the ingredients you’ve got (PS He created them the way they are), not the ideal ingredients you wish you had.
YOU are at the end of the day responsible for making the best possible marriage with the actual woman you married. YOU, the leader. If she’s far from ideal, that’s no excuse to go limp and blame it on her. You are commanded to be an active, engaged participant, in a *leadership role*. Leadership doesn’t mean sitting around mute and passive, waiting for people to do what some third party said they ought to. It means picking a course and getting everybody moving as a team in that direction.
It’s a poor workman who blames his tools. Jesus isn’t your magic boyfriend who makes your dreams come true.
Of course, our culture systematically demonizes all the interpersonal tools men must use (and have always used) to do this job with the actual women God created for us, and tells him to use a completely different set that don’t work at all. And some folks think it’s forbidden to pick up the tools that *do* work, because some of the people who understand them are misusing them.
What would Jesus say to somebody who came to Him with pedantic quibbles about etymology as excuses not to do as he was commanded? He would see through it in an instant and cut through the nonsense.
How often does Jesus cut through the nonsense? I don’t see how anybody can read the Gospels and conclude that Jesus commanded us to worry more about etymology than about the substance of things themselves. If nuances of etymology are so critical, how can His words be understood properly other than by a contemporary native speaker of Aramaic?