In this episode of A Reasonable Response, Robert Bosley responds to the teaching of Henry Cloud, author of Boundaries, and examines how modern therapeutic approaches to personal autonomy can conflict with the authority of Scripture.
Bosley argues that the central issue is ownership. Scripture teaches that we are not our own—we belong to God—and are therefore called to live according to His commands, not self-defined limits or preferences. When autonomy becomes the guiding principle, it subtly replaces obedience and undermines a biblical understanding of the Christian life.
Drawing from God’s Word, this episode calls listeners to reject self-centered thinking and instead pursue humility, unity, and sacrificial love.
Can you trust the Bible if you know it's been misused, weaponized and mistranslated throughout history? Hi, my name is Maddie Maymodel. I'm a progressive Bible scholar specializing in gender and sexuality in the New Testament. That tracks. That tracks.
Welcome to A Reasonable Response. I'm Robert Bosley, and the purpose of this podcast is to give a reasoned response to issues related to the Christian faith from a Reformed Baptist perspective. Each episode contains what we call the breakdown, where I respond to a video related to our topic at hand, which today is the topic of the concept of boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and how this is an example of how modern Christianized psychology is really ruining Christian relationships, churches, and just making Christians behave in really stupid ways. Before we get to that though, we're going to look at some more TikTok videos.
We were outside one day, youth group, and he was just trying to push my buttons and he was just, you know, kind of not taking the Lord serious. And I walked over to him and I went BAM! I punched him in the chest as hard as I- I crumpled the kid. I just crumpled him. And I said...
I leaned over and I said, Ben, when are you gonna stop playing games with God? I led that man to the Lord right there. That last part gets me every time. I don't think that's what Paul meant when he talked about laying on of hands. Thanks, Luther.
Yeah. You know what she said to me? She said. What? What is it saying, thanks, Martin Luther?
Why thanks, Martin Luther? I'm assuming by a Roman Catholic blaming Pentecostal craziness on the Reformation. There are charismatic Roman Catholics and Luther had pretty strong opinions about the what we would call the charismatics of his day. He wasn't a fan. He wasn't a fan.
Somebody needs to know that being a woman may not be easy. That we may have to pick up and move on scarred and broken and bruised, but bruised heels still crush serpent's head. And that when your spirit returns back to you, that it is a sign to hell that no other form that gets you is going to prosper. Yeah. The proto-evangelium, the Genesis 3, the serpent's head being crushed and the heel being...
That's about Jesus, not you having a bad hair day or whatever this crazy lady's talking about. Can you trust the Bible if you know it's been misused, weaponized, and mistranslated throughout history? Hi, my name is Maddie Mae Modal. I'm a progressive Bible scholar specializing in gender and sexuality in the New Testament. That tracks.
That's why queer folks, specifically non-binary folks, are confusing to people because they are actually living outside of the bounds of what society has called for them to live. The fact that they don't subscribe to the colonial gender constructions that most of us do is jarring and scary with our colonized eyes. Or maybe it's because they're in rebellion against God. You know what? I've never thought of it that way.
Probably because it's, it's not very smart. Correct. It's, it's not, it's all, There's no love in Reformed theology. Actually, it's the only one that really gives a good grounding for God's love. It's not very loving to say God loves everyone just the same, but he's perfectly content to let most of them go to hell.
I'm Tim with the New Evangelicals and I'm a Christian against Christian nationalism because I believe Jesus teaches us to subvert the empire and Christian nationalism wants to become the empire. Read a book. The fundamental premise of Christian nationalism, so called, is that Christians in government should govern like Christians. Novel concept, I know. ["The World Is A World of Christians"] Today for The Breakdown, we're going to be looking at a video on the YouTube channel of Dr.
Henry Cloud on how to set boundaries. This is one of the authors of the very popular and influential book called Boundaries. And we're wanting to look at this as a sample of what is out there among a lot of the, we'll say, Christianized pop psychology books and videos and theories that are floating around and making their way into the church and have been making their way in over the last several decades. This is a relatively short video, only about six and a half minutes long, and so it's obviously not exhaustive of all of Dr. Cloud's teachings, let alone all of the different elements of psychology that have been brought into the church.
The point of this is to examine a few of the principal ideas that he proposes and that are commonly taught among people as a Christian use of psychology and these types of ways of thinking. In particular, we're going to look at how much of this teaching, though there are bits and pieces that have some truth and can be applied in a truly Christian fashion, but overall how this is really antithetical to what the Bible teaches on how Christians ought to live and build relationships with one another, especially in the context of a local church. It's really just another manifestation of pride that you think you deserve better than what God has seen fit to give you at this moment. And as Christians, we're to reject pride. We are to live in humility, considering others, and valuing others and how we can be a blessing to them.
A helpful alternative to this way of thinking is found in a book by a man named Ed Welch titled When People Are Big and God is Small. And it helpfully and I think correctly locates a lot of these problems that modern psychology is trying to help and alleviate instead of located in yourself and your own needs rather the problem is you already evaluate yourself and other people too highly. What you really need is a lower view of man and a greater view of God. After all, the scriptures tell us that wisdom is found in the fear of the Lord. We need a higher view of God, a greater vision of who God is, and that will help us to rightly consider ourselves and how we are to interact with other people.
And with that, as our introduction, let's look at clip one. Here's the deal. Remember how I defined a boundary? Because you get confused. What's a boundary?
You think about setting limits, or you think about doing an intervention, or you think it's a million different things, having a conversation differently. But basically, that's not the definition of a boundary. A boundary is, what did I say? Early on, it is a property line. So this seems to be a bit of an equivocation to me.
He's saying that a boundary is not setting limits, it's more like a property line. But what is a property line? It's the limit of your property. So there's already right out of the gate a bit of a fuzzy misuse of language or at least some unclear, not consistent use of terms and that seems to happen a lot with what he says, and that's kind of a general pattern we see with this whole movement of taking psychology and things like this and applying it and trying to basically baptize it and bring it into the church is a lot of equivocation, a lot of misuse of words, and just sloppy language. So this is a bad start and it doesn't get much better.
If your neighbor is a good neighbor and they're responsible, They're taking care of their trees, for example. But what if they're irresponsible? What if they're addicted? What if they don't care about how the neighbor feels about the noise or whatever it is? What if they just let their trees grow, and this big limb comes over, and it falls over, and it crashes in your property?
See, now we have something called, it's really interesting, you know, in the world of faith, you know what the Bible called, forgive us our what? Trespasses, as we forgive others. See, now, something they're doing is trespassing. It's coming over into your property without permission and you are experiencing the consequences of somebody else not taking responsibility for their behavior. So this is a good example of what I was just talking about, the equivocation on the use of the word trespass here.
And this is consistent in the book that he has as well as just this whole genre of literature of Christianized psychology. When the Bible talks about forgiving others their trespasses, that word trespass or sometimes translated transgression or simply sins, It's talking about violating a moral standard, specifically in Matthew 6, violating God's law. We're to forgive others when they trespass or transgress God's law as it pertains to us, which would be basically the second table of the Ten Commandments, and we are to be, we will be forgiven by God when we transgress His law. To equate that to this imagery, now Grant I understand he's using an illustration of a tree falling on someone's property, using that to illustrate someone's hang-ups or problems causing burdens in our life. That is an absolute misuse of Scripture.
That's not what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 6. Yes, in a sense what he's saying, there's some truth to it that we ought to have these personal boundaries. We don't need to have everyone in our home or in our circle all the time. We need to admonish and instruct people when they are doing things that are foolish or sinful and we can perhaps sometimes put some distance between us when that's affecting us or a danger to us or our families. But that's not the main thrust of Scripture or the ethical instruction found in the Bible.
Instead of separating from people, we're to come alongside, help them to bear their burdens and encourage them on to holiness and godliness and repentance and faith. Not cutting them off and saying, no, you're not a good influence. I'm going to remove you from my life. This is really an abuse of scripture and turning the Bible's instructions on its head. Maybe they're a rageaholic and they're not saying, gosh, you have a problem with anger.
I need to call the anger, you know, garden person. I have no idea what an anger garden person is or even meant to be. I think he confused himself with his analogy, which to be fair is understandable. It's convoluted. Now remember something else about boundaries.
This is not a wall. These are permeable. Okay? So you have, how do I draw this? You have a gate and you can close the gate Or you can open the gate your neighbor walks over you love your dad.
They're so great. They're so nice What do you do you open up the boundary and you say come on over? Let's have relationship because they're bringing some good stuff like, like, you know, they made you a cherry pie or they want to give you some love or help or just hanging out in a good way. Note what he said. You invite these people over onto your property so-called because they're bringing you good stuff in the analogy of cherry pie or in reality what he's talking about love his whole premise here it's not a wall there's a gate but you only can let people in if it's beneficial to you.
In other words, your relationships, your fellowship, all this is entirely conditional on what you get out of it. That's narcissism. That's not Christian fellowship. That's not how Christians are to behave. So often we are called to lay down our lives, to give up our own prerogatives for the good of others.
Our relationships, our fellowship with others, they're not meant to be founded on, what do I get out of it? It's rather, how can I be a blessing? How can I be a servant to God's people, to those who are in need? This is the fundamental problem here. These ideas, these boundaries and other books we could throw in things like the five love languages, all of these things are built around the idea that your life is all centered around you.
It's really a way to justify and systematize your own narcissism, which is not a godly way to live. We have to reject it. But then what happens If somebody wants to come in and you know, last 46 times you were with them, they were hurtful, you go, no, I'm gonna close the door, I can't do that, sorry, last time didn't work out well, last 46 times didn't work out well. And the boundary is taking care of your own heart, mind, and soul. In response to this, suffice it to read what is written in the Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew 18, beginning of verse 21, then Peter came to him, him being Jesus, and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? And Peter thought he was being gracious because Jewish tradition said after the second or third time, cut people out of your life. Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. Again, there may come a time where if someone's literally a danger to you and your family, you have to put distance.
But if someone's simply offended or made life a little bit difficult for you or said something unpleasant to you that you didn't like, you let love cover a multitude of sins. Not just one time, but up to 70 times 7. Of course, Jesus isn't saying you count to 490. His point is you don't keep a record of wrongs. Again, this is a rejection of Christian morality, Christian ethics.
It's not how God's people are to behave. You don't have control of them. You can't make them work out their issues. What you can do is say, I just want you to keep, if you're going to continue to use heroin, then you can go somewhere else. But if you're going to treatment and get sober, I would love for you to come in because I want to help you with that.
But they have to take responsibility. Of course, he's using these extreme examples, someone addicted to heroin and cutting them out in their out of your life if they're not getting help. The problem is the application of this is obviously not limited to just the extremes. He's using the extremes to set a rule that then gets enforced down to any, really any infraction that makes me feel unpleasant is really how this is put into practice. It creates a very narcissistic, me-centered, self-centered culture in a home or in your own heart when you imbibe this kind of teaching.
And again, he's flatly wrong when he says that the point of these boundaries is you're keeping people out, you're not trying to rebuke them or correct them because you don't have control over their life. Well it's true you don't have control, but the Bible actually does tell us to rebuke and correct one another. If you see a brother in sin, you're to go to him and tell him his fault and to win your brother back. We're told that, for instance in Titus, that the older women are to instruct the younger women, the older men are to be examples to younger men. The Bible is full of this idea of The church Christians are to be examples to one another, instructing one another, admonishing each other, helping one another along in how we can love God, love our neighbors, and do good works.
And this might be why if you go to especially larger churches or more contemporary evangelical churches that are influenced by a lot of this pop psychology, we'll say, even if it's a massive church it can still feel very individualistic because the people are cutting themselves off from one another because they don't want to be offended or they question how they can be served by other people because they're basically being instructed to be self-centered and excluding others when the Bible says, no, we ought to be in community, we ought to be in family together, a fellowship bearing one another's burdens, and if you're bearing one another's burdens you have to be willing to be offended. And if you're going to be willing to be offended, you have to also be willing to forgive and to love one another. Because you see that other person who's perhaps not lived up to your standards and recognizing, well that's still a precious soul that Christ died for. And therefore if he can love them so can I? This is you.
Own your own life and develop your yard. Come on. Your talents, your gifts, your dreams, your abilities. What do you want to do? How do you want to feel?
It's depressing today. I want to get some help with kind of some mood lighting in here, right? And I want to get better. I want to get healthy. That's your life.
That's your yard. And you are 100% entitled to taking care of your own heart, mind, and soul and thriving. That's the perfect summary of the pop psychology view that's been brought in and smuggled into the Christian church. And again, it's antithetical to Christ. This idea that you are perfectly right to 100% control your own mind, thoughts, all of these things, you are the one in control, flies in the face of scripture.
For example, 1 Corinthians 6, 19, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's. You don't belong to yourself. You belong to God and therefore you ought to live how God says you ought to live and how God says you ought to live is very different from how these guys say you ought to live. In conclusion, I think there's nothing more fitting than simply to read what the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, Philippians chapter two.
Therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others." Well, that's all the time we have for today. If you'd like to connect with me personally, I'm on X at R. Bosley 1689, and if you'd like more information about church and family life, you can do so at churchandfamilylife.com.
And don't forget we have our national conference coming up at the beginning of May in Ridgecrest, North Carolina on biblical manhood and womanhood. Thanks. See you next time.