To love without discrimination is to love generously. To love without boundaries lacks wisdom and discernment; it is not in the best interest of the giver or the recipient. To love generously, with healthy boundaries is to love wisely and to love well, in the best interest of everyone. Even Jesus exemplified love with boundaries, driving some out of the temple, when they perverted His Father’s house. It was not the same ‘presentation’ of love He offered the 10 lepers. Both were love.

In situations of molestation in religious settings I see, repeatedly, this lack of discernment at play. Parents and leaders of victims extend forgiveness most lavishly–as though it is somehow theirs to give–and then open the doors wide for the offender to remain part of their lives. This is done without boundaries or accountability, subjecting victims to unnecessary trauma, and other family and church members to huge risk. Sometimes even resulting in repeated victimizations.

This behaviour reveals the ignorance surrounding sexual violence. Few crimes with the potential to forever alter the mind, identity and life of the victim, could be committed where those responsible for protecting and caring for that victim would knowingly subject their children to risk of re-victimization.

When someone murders or attempts to murder a family member, the murderer is not invited to come and go freely and unsupervised. Oddly, with a crime that has the potential to make the mind go mad from trauma, the same discernment is often not applied, and victims are forced to face their offenders with no regard to either risk or trauma.

And the same individuals who will cry out against alcohol, after a loved one is hit by a drunk driver and in a coma, or worse–dead–speak with casual distance when a victim of molestation lives in emotional, psychological or spiritual coma. And unlike the grief displayed for the crash victim, where prayers are offered and all steps are taken to give that individual the best care possible, the victim of molestation is told to snap out of it, get over it and move on. Or maybe “it was so long ago…” All this to “love” the offender and extend grace.

It is necessary in the life of the believer to love generously. But love cannot be defined by ‘equal rights’ for offenders as fo victims; for criminals as for children. To neatly fold love and pack it in a well-labelled and narrow box, is not love. It is an agenda.

To love well, is to love in the best interest of all, particularly those whom God has placed in our direct care. Not selfishly, but graciously. And that love includes drawing a line in the sand, when it comes to protecting the innocent ones, and setting up firm boundaries that come with cost and consequence to the offender(s) and criminal(s), not to the victims.

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Yes, love acts in the best interest of all. And if boundaries prevent the offender(s) from re-victimizing former victims, or finding new ones, then those boundaries are love, and that love is a gift we should not withhold.

Love,
~ T ~