Confusing God’s Borders with Our Own

pondering

pondering

When confronted with the Ten Commandments, many children will describe them as simply a set of rules, a  list of what not to do. The first question then becomes if this perspective is something we should encourage or discourage.  The second question follows on a larger scale.  That question asks if we often confuse God’s borders with our own.

Is God About Nots or What?

I think that it is fair to say that much of our difficulty in approaching God is our stubborn conscious or subconscious habit of wrapping His love in our restrictive garb.  Too often, we  assume that effectiveness demands total clarity, which in turn demands precision in what is and is not acceptable.

Our world increasingly throws a blurred morality at us and we either simmer in that blur until we accept it or instinctively reject it in favor of what we perceive as a clearer and more courageous moral code. The world tells us to accept people as they are in the name of tolerance, yet we can realize that such a view, left wide open, would dilute moral codes into oblivion.

Jesus, after all, did not tell the adulterous woman to “think about what you have done” but rather to “sin no more”.

While it is fair to seek greater precision in our morality, we must be careful not to fall into the error of the Pharisees who wrapped their morality in so much red tape as to strangle its humanity, mercy, and compassion.  One might say that they fell into the error of settling for a false safety of a judgmental morality, which became so clinical as to lose all notion of love and ended up steeped in hypocrisy.

A suggestion to overcome this human pattern of false security, then, might be to begin from a place of love and see such things as The Ten Commandments not as a list of what not to do, but rather, expressions of what to do to show love of God and others.

A simple example of this would be to see respecting one’s parents as an opportunity to love them rather than a way of avoiding hassles or punishments.  From this perspective God is about how to love rather than about what not to do.

God’s Borders vs. Man Made Ones

In the interest of transparency, I will confide that I have been frustrated in my efforts to become a deacon in my diocese because the training is only held on Saturdays and I must work on that day. I have been told repeatedly that if I am unable to free my Saturdays in order to become a deacon, then that must be a sign that God does not want me to become a deacon.  However, I sought such training in the diocese next to mine where the training is held in the weekdays and was told that I cannot enter that training because I do not live or worship in that diocese.

In those cases, I have been told that if God wants me to become a deacon or if I want to become a deacon badly enough, I will move to that diocese or God will help me to do that.

According to the above situation cGod’s Will is defined by days of the week and accidents of residency more than by whether or not I have the spiritual, moral, and practical disposition to become a deacon.  I will leave the ultimate judgment to the reader as to whether or not such borders belong to  God or man.

If we think about it, sin is nothing more than a selfish refusal to free oneself from the borders of man and release oneself to the borders of God. God’s Will is not one thing in Texas and another in Florida. If He wants someone to become a religion teacher, for example, He will not then will that such a person become an accountant in another state.

In the same way, God’s laws should not be subject to modern interpretations and rationalizations. His call that we value life, for example, is not to be interpreted according to our measure of wisdom.

This world will tell us that God gave us ten suggestions open to our personal views. It will define God by our personal notions of what God should be.

Eventually, we will come to define God so closely by our standards that, in effect, we will become our own god.

God’s will does not depend on the weather, the day of the week, or where we live.  It is not draped in twenty conditions of our making. His rules are founded in a love we are too-frequently incapable of perceiving as anything more than restriction.

Letting God set the borders of our lives demands that we trust Him so completely that we truly give Him the opportunity to move us in His desired direction. To the extent that such movement is restricted by our own perceptions of what God’s will should be or where that will is found, we are interfering with God’s plan.

The next time we face what we perceive as a border, restriction, or limitation on what we want to do or seek, let us ask ourselves if that wall is truly made by God or our own making.

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7 thoughts on “Confusing God’s Borders with Our Own”

  1. A deacon serves the bishop (or archbishop or cardinal) of the diocese or archdiocese. If you become a deacon you get assigned to where you are needed most (just like a priest), within the diocese or archdiocese. As you’ve discovered each diocese does the training in a manner that works best for the diocese. Ergo, it does stand to reason that you can’t receive the required training in a diocese other than the one you reside in. Yes, this is man-made border, but there are legitimate reasons for it. You probably
    know all this. Why you do not mention it and instead imply that you are being prevented from becoming a deacon by “man-made borders” the Church you wish to serve (assuming this is truly the case) has erected is not really being fair to the Church.

    At the risk of coming off as ‘holier than thou’ (or even just sounding like a smarty pants) I might suggest that since you are a highly educated individual (an attorney no less) that you should be able to figure out a way to fulfill this calling if you truly are being called. A one year leave of absence from the job that requires you to work Saturdays maybe? We all have to feed our families, but if the calling to the diaconate is sincere and that strong, you should be able to figure out a way to answer the call.

    1. I appreciate your response, but it does not explain why one cannot train to become a deacon in a neighboring diocese and serve there ( certainly a greater sacrifice for the deacon than the diocese) or why different dioceses cannot work together ( this is about serving God’s people not about diocese convenience). As for the one year leave of absence, it would be a five year leave of absence since that is how long the program is. I always try to avoid judging other people’s work and family financial situations, especially from a distance and without knowing the particulars of each person’s situation. God knows one’s heart and intentions, and the rest of us should take a step back in such cases.

    2. You are a lawyer so you know about things like jurisdiction and local laws and regulations. Church governance at the diocesan level is left up to the bishops. It’s been this way for 2,000 years. Yet you are saying ‘bend the rules’ (or make new ones) so I can do what I feel I am called to do. I tend to think the scenario you would like has already been found not to work.

      Also I only mentioned a 1 year’s leave of absence because in most dioceses the
      classroom portion of the training goes for 1 year. The remaining 4 years are ‘on the job’
      formation. As I said we all have to feed our families. I was not judging your work and family financial situation. I was trying to encourage some out of the box thinking. I think God wouldn’t be calling you to the diaconate if it was something that is unobtainable.

    3. I appreciate your efforts and thank you for your suggestions. I am not advocating bending rules but only adjusting rules to new realities. Long ago it would be impossible to attend college from home, so many people who wanted and needed to go either did not go or had to make drastic changes that may not always have been the best for them. Today we have online education allowing many to study who may not have been able to do so before. I am not advocating online deacon training but rather, simply suggesting that a diocese either offer two training schedules in case of conflicts or at least be flexible to working with a neighboring diocese to allow greater vocational opportunities to evolve. It does not matter in the end since we are talking about the needs of just a few in contrast to the convenience of so many in positions of power and influence. God’s Will ultimately be done.

    1. Did you mean by abortion? Certainly there have been clergy guilty of abusing children, but how do those numbers compare to the millions of abortions allowed by this society. The same society that bashes the church on clerical child abuse seems ok with millions of murders of the innocent unborn. Let us stop the greater abuses before we move on to the ones which cater to this society’s penchant for bashing the church.

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