Boundary Lines

Where is this, the way light dwells; and where is the place of darkness? Job 38:19 (Hebrew text)

Place – The documentary extolled the work of volunteers in an orphanage in Haiti.  A teacher held up the coloring book page of a three-year-old.  “Last year when Alicia arrived, she could only color like this.”  The page represented an outline of a family.  Across the entire page were swatches of purple and yellow.  “But now, look at her progress.”  The teacher held up a second page.  The colors were neatly encased within the lines.  “This is real progress,” beamed the teacher.   She was right.  It was progress in conformity to the Greek-based view of the world.

Consider a coloring book.  On the pages, we teach children that objects are created by imaginary lines that must be filled in to give them substance.  Those lines represent boundaries between the “form” of an object and the rest of the world.  But the real world isn’t like this at all.  There are no outlines around trees or boundary lines around faces.  Objects are not preconceived empty spaces that require extra content.  Go look at a real tree.  Where is the “line” that separates the tree from the root or the leaf?  Where is the line that separates the trunk seen from this angle versus the trunk seen from another angle.  Look at a face.  Where is the border that separates eye from socket, nose from cheek, hairline from forehead?  The “boundary” isn’t a line.  It is a movement from one place to another where the boundary is part of both, just as the shore is the boundary of the sea and vise versa with both mixed together.

If this is so obvious to any observer, why do we insist on a world made up of imaginary lines of separation?  The answer is this:  Greek metaphysics is based on geometry and geometry is the mathematics of particular shapes.  When we see the world through these eyes, we impose artificial boundary shapes on reality.  When Job asks where is the place of darkness, he is not asking us to point to a line that distinguishes light from dark.  The place of darkness is already dark.  It is not a line drawn across the sky.  It is the observable reality of somewhere without light.

So you say, why does this matter?  Who cares if we add artificial lines to our view of the world?  Does it really make any difference?  Without lines, who is black and who is white?  Without lines, who is saved and who is lost?  Without lines, what is belief and what is unbelief?  Without lines, who is Israel and who isn’t?  Does this mean there aren’t any differences?  Of course not.  Anyone can see that black is not white.  But where is the line?  Ah, that’s not so easy to see, is it?  When does a man move from “lost” to “saved” if the Hebrew worldview doesn’t contain artificial lines?  Does a man cross from lost to saved when he declares he believes?  Or is it a matter of observable change seen from many angles over some period of time?  Is belief a matter of crossing a “line in the sand” or is it something that reveals itself over a lifetime of behavior?  Where is the line between trust and doubt?  Am I still a follower of the King if I trust Him today but fall victim to doubt tomorrow?  Is it a line or a process?

What happens to our neatly packaged view of reality if we erase all those artificial lines?  Would life become more like a verb – a movement, a process of becoming?  Would we act differently, talk differently, think differently if we didn’t see the world as boxes that need to be filled?  What if we saw the world as life in constant motion, always interacting?  Would we think about God differently if we looked carefully at the real world and noticed that His actions and our actions are all mixed up together in common purpose?  What would your faith be like if the “boundaries” were really messy?

Topical Index:  line, darkness, boxes, Job 38:19