Healthy Boundaries and the Willingness to Become an Easy Target

# Healthy Boundaries and the Willingness to Become an Easy Target

One of the reasons I believe we are on this earth is to learn relational virtues: love, forgiveness, generosity, patience, humility, compassion—and healthy boundaries.

Boundaries are a virtue too.

That may sound strange. We often associate spirituality with self-sacrifice and generosity, while boundaries sound more psychological than spiritual. But healthy boundaries are really about learning to love rightly: distinguishing between generosity and exploitation, compassion and enabling, sacrifice and self-destruction.

I know this lesson personally. One of the things I have had to learn in this life is boundaries. When you have poor boundaries, you can make yourself an easy target. And when you make yourself an easy target, people sometimes use you as one.

Big surprise, right?

But there is another danger: overcorrecting. After being hurt by poor boundaries, we can become so determined never to be taken advantage of again that we stop being vulnerable. We protect our time, money, energy, comfort, and emotional well-being so completely that we never willingly carry another person’s burden.

That isn’t wisdom either.

The goal is not to become impossible to take advantage of. The goal is to learn **when it is wrong to allow ourselves to be used—and when it is right to willingly accept a cost for love.**

## Happiness Is More Than Feeling Good

Modern culture often treats happiness as maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. But both ancient philosophy and contemporary well-being research point toward something larger.

Aristotle’s *eudaimonia* was not simply feeling good; it was living well through virtue, meaningful activity, friendship, and practical wisdom. Contemporary flourishing research similarly includes happiness and life satisfaction, health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and relationships.

That matters for boundaries.

If happiness were merely comfort, the obvious strategy would be to avoid every unnecessary burden. But a meaningful life inevitably involves giving ourselves to something beyond ourselves. We need relationships, purpose, and opportunities to practice courage, generosity, forgiveness, and love.

Sometimes those virtues cost us something.

So the question isn’t simply, **”How can I avoid being burdened?”**

It is, **”Which burdens are mine to carry?”**

## The Biblical Paradox of Burdens

Paul writes, “Bear one another’s burdens,” but shortly afterward says, “Each one will have to carry his own load.”

These aren’t really contradictory. They suggest that Christian love requires both mutual responsibility and personal responsibility.

Some burdens should not be carried alone. A grieving friend may need us. A sick person may need care. A struggling neighbor may need help.

But we cannot live another person’s life for them or take responsibility for every consequence of their choices.

Christian love therefore requires discernment.

The command is not simply “give” or “sacrifice.” It is **love**—and love requires wisdom about what actually helps.

The Eastern Christian tradition has long emphasized this kind of discernment. The Desert Fathers repeatedly portrayed spiritual maturity not as mechanically following rules, but as learning when and how a particular virtue should be practiced.

Sometimes love says yes.

Sometimes it says no.

Sometimes it says not yet.

And sometimes it says, **”Yes, I know this will cost me, and I am willing to pay the price.”**

## When Becoming an Easy Target Is Actually Good

I once heard a pastor describe how he regularly did work around his church, including mowing the grass, without much assistance from the congregation.

Members would complain about how inconvenient helping was. They might drive past while he was mowing and wave, but the burden remained largely on him.

Eventually, he made peace with it. He knew he was doing work that needed to be done and believed he was doing the Lord’s work.

From one perspective, he had made himself an easy target. People knew he would do it, so some depended on that reliability.

But there is another way of seeing it:

**He had chosen his burden.**

There is an enormous difference between:

**”I am being exploited because I don’t know how to say no.”**

and

**”I know this costs me, but I have freely decided that this is a burden worth carrying.”**

Externally, they may look similar. Internally, they are completely different.

The first is bondage.

The second can be freedom.

That is part of the paradox of Christian self-giving. Jesus did not simply become a victim because He could not protect Himself. The Christian understanding is that He willingly gave Himself. “No one takes it from me,” He says in John’s Gospel; “I lay it down of my own accord.”

Christian freedom therefore sometimes means saying, **”You do not have permission to do this to me.”**

And sometimes it means, **”You could take advantage of me here, but I am freely choosing to give.”**

The difference is agency.

## Jesus Had Boundaries Too

Jesus was not universally available.

He withdrew to pray. He left crowds behind. He refused to perform signs merely because people demanded them. He confronted people and allowed some to walk away. He did not heal every sick person in the world or allow other people’s expectations to determine His mission.

Yet He also allowed Himself to be mocked, rejected, betrayed, and crucified.

Jesus therefore gives us neither unlimited self-protection nor indiscriminate self-sacrifice.

He gives us something harder:

**discernment about when to protect and when to surrender.**

Eastern Christianity adds another dimension. Salvation is not merely about being legally acquitted; it is about transformation and participation in the life of God. The goal is not to become less human, but more fully human—and therefore more capable of love.

## The Desert Fathers and Discernment

The Desert Fathers understood that human beings need both connection and interior freedom.

The desert was not simply an escape from people. It was a place where Christians sought freedom from the compulsions of the ego so they could love without being controlled by approval, fear, or the need to be needed.

This is why discernment appears so often in the desert tradition.

Fasting is good. Prayer is good. Solitude is good. Generosity is good. Service is good.

But a good thing pursued without discernment can become destructive.

John Cassian, who transmitted much of the Egyptian monastic tradition, emphasized discretion in describing the formation of the desert monks.

Boundaries can therefore be spiritually mature.

A boundary says:

**”I am responsible for what God has entrusted to me.”**

My time, money, body, attention, relationships, and energy are entrusted to me. Stewardship means I cannot simply throw them away.

But stewardship also means I cannot worship them.

If God calls me to spend them, I must be willing to spend them.

Christian life therefore exists between two temptations:

**selfishness and self-erasure.**

Healthy boundaries resist the first without surrendering to the second.

## NDEs and What Really Matters

This tension becomes especially interesting when viewed through near-death experiences.

Whatever one ultimately believes NDEs are, there is an empirical question that can be studied: **What happens to people’s values afterward?**

Research has associated reported NDEs with changes such as greater spirituality, reduced fear of death, greater appreciation for life, compassion, empathy, and interest in meaning.

This does not scientifically prove that consciousness survives death or settle the theological meaning of NDEs.

But the reported transformation is still significant.

Again and again, people describe coming away with less concern for status and material things and more concern for love, relationships, compassion, meaning, and purpose.

That is remarkably compatible with the ancient Christian intuition that we can spend our lives pursuing things that ultimately do not deserve the importance we give them.

Perhaps we do not need to nearly die to discover that love matters more than convenience, that generosity matters more than accumulation, or that relationships matter more than status.

Perhaps these are among the lessons we are here to learn.

## Love Does Not Mean Becoming Someone’s Possession

Christian love does not mean becoming psychologically or materially available to everyone who wants something from us.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” contains an important assumption: **you are supposed to love your neighbor as yourself—not instead of yourself.**

If I have no boundaries, I can eventually become less capable of love because resentment replaces generosity.

I say yes when I mean no. I give when I shouldn’t. I allow behavior I should confront. Eventually I become angry at the people I supposedly love.

Healthy boundaries can protect love from becoming resentment.

They allow generosity to remain genuinely generous because the giver has actually chosen it.

## Merton and the Difference Between Love and Need

Thomas Merton is particularly helpful here. Much of his work explored solitude, identity, contemplation, and the difference between genuine love and the compulsions of the false self—the part of us that seeks validation, control, security, and recognition.

Sometimes what we call generosity is actually a disguised need.

We need to be needed.

We need to feel indispensable.

We need someone to approve of us.

We need to rescue people.

We need to avoid disappointing them.

Because we haven’t examined these motives, we call the resulting behavior “love.”

But love becomes freer as our need for approval decreases.

We can ask:

**Am I helping because I genuinely love this person?**

Or:

**Am I helping because I cannot tolerate their disappointment with me?**

The behaviors may look identical. Spiritually, they are very different.

## The Difference Between Being Used and Being Given

Perhaps this is the heart of the issue.

There is a profound difference between **being used** and **giving oneself**.

If someone takes something from me without my consent, I have been used.

If I knowingly and freely give something because I believe it is worthwhile, I have given.

The external sacrifice may look identical. The inner reality is not.

This does not mean we should seek abuse or assume every painful situation is spiritually valuable. Sometimes suffering is simply unnecessary suffering. Sometimes it results from poor boundaries. Sometimes injustice should be resisted.

And sometimes suffering is the unavoidable cost of doing something loving.

Wisdom is learning the difference.

## Sometimes Make Yourself an Easy Target

Perhaps the goal shouldn’t be:

**”Never make yourself an easy target.”**

That is impossible anyway.

The more dependable you are, the more people will sometimes depend upon you. The more generous you are, the more people may ask. The more willing you are to serve, the more opportunities you will have to serve.

The goal might instead be:

**Do not accidentally become an easy target. Become one deliberately when the burden is worth carrying.**

A person sitting with a dying parent may be an example.

A volunteer helping someone who cannot afford a bicycle may be an example.

A Christian patiently forgiving an offense may be an example.

A person quietly doing the unpleasant work everyone else avoids may be an example.

These actions aren’t automatically virtuous merely because they are sacrificial. But sacrifice can become an expression of love when it is freely chosen, discerning, proportionate, and directed toward something genuinely good.

The question is not merely:

**”Will someone take advantage of me?”**

Sometimes they will.

The better question is:

**”If they do, will I still believe this sacrifice was worth making?”**

If the answer is yes, perhaps the sacrifice isn’t exploitation at all.

Perhaps it is an offering.

## A Mature Spirituality of Boundaries

Mature spirituality requires holding several truths together:

I should love people, but I should not allow people to abuse me.

I should forgive, but forgiveness does not necessarily mean restoring trust or removing consequences.

I should be generous, but generosity does not mean giving everything away.

I should serve, but not every request is my responsibility.

I should protect myself, but self-protection does not mean refusing sacrifice.

I should have boundaries, but boundaries do not mean refusing every burden.

I should be willing to suffer for love, but suffering does not mean every painful situation is God’s will.

And ultimately, I should seek God’s will rather than either my own comfort or my own image as a generous person.

This is where prayer becomes essential.

There will be situations where no psychological rule can tell us exactly what to do.

Should I say yes or no? Give or hold back? Confront or walk away? Forgive or maintain distance?

Sometimes we need wisdom that cannot be reduced to a formula.

## Perhaps This Is Part of Why We Are Here

Maybe one of the great purposes of earthly life is this education in relationship.

We learn generosity by having opportunities to give.

We learn forgiveness by being hurt.

We learn patience through difficult people.

We learn humility by discovering we aren’t always right.

We learn compassion through suffering.

And perhaps we learn boundaries by discovering that love without wisdom can become destructive.

Eventually we may learn something deeper:

**Love and boundaries are not opposites.**

The boundary says, “This is where I end and you begin.”

Love says, “Your existence matters to me.”

Wisdom holds the two together.

Sometimes love says, **”You cannot treat me this way.”**

And sometimes it says, **”I know this will cost me, but I am willing.”**

The wisdom is knowing which sentence belongs to which moment.

Perhaps that is one of the great lessons of this life: not simply learning how to love, and not simply learning how to protect ourselves, but learning **how to love without losing ourselves, and how to give ourselves without being afraid of the cost.**

Healthy boundaries teach us that our lives have value.

Generosity teaches us that our lives are not merely for ourselves.

And the deepest Christian wisdom may be learning when each truth should take the lead.

For sometimes we need to refuse to be an easy target.

And sometimes, freely and consciously, we need to become one.

Not because we are weak.

Not because we don’t know better.

But because we have found something worth giving ourselves for.