Principles

Principles


Have you heard it before, “This is where I draw the line.” Coming from a Conservative Mennonite/Amish background I have drawn not a few lines in my past. But like lines in the sand they soon disappear with the next wave that washes over our over religious landscape.

Over the years I have watched a close friend give his child all space for growth and change he wanted until they found that one thing, in his case alcohol and drugs before he finally drew that proverbial line in the sand and set some boundaries. I have watched parents who are stricter set all kinds of boundaries and rules for living within their families. I suppose these good intentioned parents feel like they can save their children from the necessary pain of learning the hard way. Most often I have observed that strict parents tend to have more difficulty getting what they want from their children than more tolerant parents.

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about rules as a young parent when my children were still strong believers in the regime set by our family. I would imagine what my children could do that would amount to the last straw. I would try to set up imaginary rules in my mind thinking about how I would feel if they were broken and how I would politely ask my children to leave our home if they were to behave in this or that way.

Fortunately as my children grew up I grew some more too. I remember sitting in a restaurant one time when the kids were being a bit loud. I looked nervously around to see if other people in the restaurant were watching this rowdy family of ours. Suddenly I looked at the kids and blurted out. “Hey kids you know that there is nothing you can do to embarrass me.” I don’t know where that came from and I don’t know if it is even the truth. It just came out in a restaurant in Middlebury. There it was; the kids had all the rope they needed to hang themselves and me too. And the principle just started working then and has worked ever since. The kids quieted down and became more aware of their surroundings, feeling the weight of the responsibility on them selves to have respect for the other people in the restaurant.

And so out of life’s experiences I kind of developed a principle of sorts to live by; a principle that I want to use to help me set boundaries and limits for the way that I treat my family and close friends. The principle goes something like this; “I will never let my principles get in the way of my relationships.” Sounds quite strange; maybe it amounts to relativism or worse yet maybe it is some of that dangerous new age thinking. I am quite sure you won’t find that in the US constitution or the Pledge of Allegiance. You would probably have to really do your home work to find it in the Bible; maybe even have to merge two verses together to make the principle Biblical. Just how does the principle work?

Take illegal immigrants for an easy example. Many of our Politians can win elections by railing against the people who have been driven into our country by poverty and unstable conditions in their society. But I can help and accept them as they are because of my principle. I don’t have to understand what kind of documentation a person possesses in order to love them; a person's past sins do not have to dictate how I respond to them right now. Another example would be the moral issues swirling around the gays and lesbians that are sometimes not so easily put to bed. Again I get out my principle to see how it can work now. I say to myself: “I will never let my principles get in the way of my relationships.” When my gay friend tells me about his life I accept him as he is. Of course I can’t participate in a same sex orgy even if I wanted to because that would certainly break the relationship I have with the woman I am married to. I don’t know why some people are created as they are and I don’t see the need for me to pretend that I do understand. I can simply be a faithful friend to my gay friend and wait for more questions to be answered down the road.