c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a pastor, writer and software developer living in Winston-Salem, N.C.)

UNDATED _ My neighbor’s new fence suddenly appeared last week. It’s a nice fence. It defines our backyard, as well as his, and probably will add to our enjoyment of this piece of urban land. City people live too close to each other to do without fences.

This fence, however, does make me realize how many boundaries define my life. I have my morning writing time, my family-to-school time, my work time and its unique cast of characters whom no one else in my family knows, my home time, my evening at-home work time.

I have other boundaries, as well: an automobile that I mostly drive in alone, a specific parking garage, some favorite stores with special cards, a Web site, two computers at work that I have adapted to my needs, a well-automated office at home, and a host of passwords and identity cards.

My faith has boundaries, too. On Sundays I go to church and sit on the right side, close to the front, unless a sour-looking pair who scowl at my son happen to be nearby. On Wednesday I go to ensemble rehearsal. I pray each morning and write meditations.

These boundaries are permeable. Lately, I find myself erupting in prayer at the oddest times. But after too many years of having religion dominate my every waking moment, I need boundaries.

The hymn, of course, invites Jesus to be”my all in all.”Scripture describes a total commitment of life to God, even unto suffering and death. Jesus warned that there would be no safe places, no boundaries, for his followers. They would be disrupted at home, as family members were repelled by their faith. They would lose jobs and names. The boundary-believing folks who maintain tradition would haul them before angry judges. Mobs would tear down every fence. For the privilege of knowing Jesus, they would live totally in the open, exposed to humanity’s full brutality.

The early Christians embraced such vulnerability. They took it as their”opportunity to witness”to Messiah. Rather than be frightened into silence, they stood up in public places with even greater boldness. When they gathered in secret places, it was to rekindle their faith and to draw strength for public ministry, not to separate themselves from the dangerous or unworthy, or to preserve tradition.

Then the walls went up. Christianity became acceptable, then powerful. Doctrine and conformity replaced discovery. Inward-looking sanctuaries replaced marketplaces as religion’s venue. Rules for belonging arose, as did norms for behavior and rigid hierarchies of power.

Testifying was assigned to properly trained clergy; people became audience. Instead of speaking in the common tongue, as Jesus did, the church erected a barrier of language. Instead of the open discernment which Jesus encouraged, the church punished divergent opinion. Children were pushed to the side, as were women.

Barrier piled upon barrier, until finally a dynamic faith marked by danger and excitement became a self-preserving, ethnically-delimited, haughty and rigid institution, which today rents large convention centers to argue about sex and right opinion, and then sallies forth in search of lunch.

Every now and then, a denomination will go on a moralizing spree and tell the world what it ought to do. Words of chastisement are spoken in safe arenas where everyone applauds, and then published as a press release.

It would be difficult to overstate the distance we have put between ourselves and the faith-experience that Jesus described. We modern American Christians are far more like those who rejected Jesus than we are like the one whom they rejected.

I don’t say that as one who is about to abandon his boundaries and testify in dangerous places. Having recently reclaimed my privacy from the intrusive, I don’t have immediate plans to lose it, except on my terms. But I cannot help but note the distance between my tidy world and the wild and dangerous existence that Jesus both lived and invited his followers to embrace.

I note it, I wonder about it, and I suspect that, as long as boundaries matter, faith will remain a pallid affair marked by scheduled activities and by the need for constant”renewal,”like a battery that cannot hold a charge.

DEA END EHRICH