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Michael explores the power of the will on its own terms, the difference between good/evil and righteousness/wickedness, the nature of divine righteousness, the location of the self, and various disorders of the will.
Since listening to this episode, I’ve been meditating on boundaries. It is easy to see how making boundaries for one’s own behavior might align with righteousness. What is harder for me to figure out is how and when making boundaries in relation to other people accords with God’s standard of righteousness. In part of the episode you were encouraging the passive to create more boundaries with reference to strong-willed, domineering people. That discussion made me think about other things I’ve read and heard that reference making boundaries, usually in the context of creating firm expectations or modes of interaction with another person to avoid getting hurt by that person. This may not really be what you were talking about, but it is a thing that I have tried to think about in a godly way without much success. On the one hand, there are biblical exhortations to turn the other cheek and forgive 70×7 and let love cover a multitude of sins. On the other hand, most people acknowledge some sort of limit to how much harm you should let a person do to you in your efforts to love and forgive. I haven’t found, either in others, or in my own thinking, a standard that would help me draw that boundary with confidence. And I think the type of relationship probably complicates the boundary drawing. For instance, if a coworker stole from me, I would likely never invite that person over for dinner; but if my child steals from me, I’ll probably still feed him. If a stranger insults me, I can probably ignore him and never speak to him again. But if my mom insults me I still have a command to honor her. I would like to know what standard you see for setting boundaries against being harmed by others. I’m especially interested in what to do about a close relationship with a pattern of harm.