On "Boundaries"



This book bothers me, but it's not book's fault. Yes, like most self-help books, it's overwritten and it restates the obvious -- you have to learn to say 'No', even if you're a Christian. This is similar to other self-help genres: You must live within your means to stay solvent, and eat less while exercising to lose weight.

It's not like these things are rocket science.

Thing is, I have boundary issues, but for a weird reason: I'm very, very selfish. For most of my life until I became a Christian, if something benefitted me or made my life easier, even if it was WRONG, I could rationalize it. This lead to me being a friendless, fat, whiny, sociopathic, self-righteous sot. Envision Comic book guy, and you'd have me, circa 14 years old:



So, as I grew up and found God, I went back the other way: Wanted to please everyone, serve everyone--do pennance for how much I'd taken from people emotionally my whole life.

Anyway, so this book....Not so much the book, the CLASS surrounding the book. It's your standard "watch a short video, then have a discussion" class. Here's where things go wrong. The authors of the book are presenters in the video series, and they ick-me-out, and they're repeating what they said in the book, almost verbatim.

Anyway, I don't like the facilitators, either. There, I said it, and I'm ashamed to say it. There are just times they peg my BS meter, and for the life of me, I don't know why. I've been praying about that, and I really don't have an answer...

Might just boil-down to personality, preference, etc. Dunno...

* * *

But anyway, "Boundaries" is a valueable book if you've forgotten how to say 'No', or you believe that a Christian can never say 'No'.

Comments

  1. Jeff Roberts9/21/2006 10:31 AM

    Sounds interesting and I've definitely had to confront that. I went through a long period of doing things that "had to be done" at church but had been dropped by people who left. I wasn't even saying "no" to myself :-) I let them drop, one by one, and I'll be danged if the world ain't still turnin'!

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