Boundaries

Girl-Gone-Wild: Leaves Herself Susceptible
Girl-Gone-Wise: Safeguards Herself

Girl-Gone-Wild: “… in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of nght and darkness.” Proverbs 7:9

Girl-Gone-Wise: She forsees danger and takes precautions. Proverbs 23:3*

The woman came out of her house to meet the young man “in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness.” The author implies that she shouldn’t have been out at that time of night. It was inappropriate. In being out that late, her behavior crossed the boundary from appropriate to inappropriate conduct. You couldn’t exactly call it sinful conduct-there are no “Thou shall not go out after midnight” directives in the Bible. But it was definitely unwise. It opened the door to sin. If she would have had a policy about not going out late, and would have abided by that policy-she would not have continued down the track of compromise.

After she crossed the first boundary of going out late at night, and the second boundary of secretly meeting the young man alone, she crossed the boundary of appropriate touch-by kissing him. She crossed another boundary when she engaged in inappropriate flattery and flirtation, and another when she invited him over to her place. Before she knew it, she had violated all the boundaries she should have observed.

A Girl-Gone-Wild disregards boundaries and leaves herself susceptible to the danger of sexual sin. Her counterpart, the Girl-Gone-Wise, safeguards herself. Her hedges are appropriate, clear, definitive, and strong.

Hedging Your Purity

When you hear the word hedge, you might imagine a row of shrubs that form a boundary around a yard. Hedges marked off several boundaries of the yard of my childhood home. They lessened the risk of us six kids wandering out, and of big dogs wandering in. In a figurative sense, the word hedge refers a protective method that lessons the risk of something negative happening. In the financial world, a hedge is a strategy to minimize exposure to an unwanted business risk. It defends against loss. And that’s exactly what a clear boundary for sexual purity does. It protects against sexual injury and loss.

For our purposes, a hedge is a personal rule that minimizes a woman’s exposure to an unwanted sexual risk. It’s a boundary that helps her protect her own sexual purity as well as the sexual purity of the men around her. It’s a strategy whereby she lessens the opportunity for sin.

The Sage Father instructed his son that a sensible person “sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” (Proverbs 22:3) He repeats the exact same warning in Proverbs 27:12. “Danger” is literally the threat of evil. It’s anything that could be a potential source of injury or harm. “Hides himself” means that the person takes action to guard from danger, or to escape or avoid it. This foresight is contrasted with the stupidity of those who ignore potential dangers, and who end up getting themselves in trouble because of their lack of caution.

The father voices a similar sentiment in Proverbs 14:16: “One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless.” To be cautious is to be “careful,” “alert,” “on guard.” It means to be apprehensive about the potential for sin. A wise person takes precautions to avoid being entrapped by sin. A fool doesn’t take precautions. This person is reckless and careless. The Hebrew word has connotations of arrogance, overconfidence, and throwing off restraint. The Latin translation uses the image of a person who overconfidently neglects and “leaps over” restrictions, thinking they won’t get hurt.

A Girl-Gone-Wild crosses boundaries and plunges ahead with reckless confidence. She scoffs at the danger, believing that she’s in control of the situation. A Girl-Gone-Wild doesn’t believe that she’s vulnerable to falling (“It won’t happen to me!”) or that the danger is substantial (It can’t hurt!). So she doesn’t put up hedges and precautions to safeguard her sexual purity.

Types of Hedges

How can a woman keep her way pure? By “guarding” (hedging) it according to God’s word. (Psalm 119:9) Practically, this means that we identify the common pitfalls of sexual sin, and guard ourselves from stepping into those traps. We save ourselves “like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler.” (Proverbs 6:5) We stay far away from the “thorns and snares” that entangle sinners. (Proverbs 22:5) The Proverbs 7 woman did not do this. She did not establish hedges to protect herself from sexual sin. She overstepped 10 boundaries that any woman who wishes to keep her way pure ought to hedge.

1. Location Hedges: unhealthy versus healthy environments

A Girl-Gone-Wise avoids unhealthy environments.

It always amazes me that women think they can expose themselves to immoral ideas, go to immoral environments, and constantly hang out with immoral people and suffer no ill consequence. The Sage Father asks, “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?” (Proverbs 6:27-28) A wise woman is not deceived. She recognizes that “Bad company ruins good morals.” (1 Corinthians 15:33) She resolves that she will not go to places that will potentially harm her. She puts up hedges such as this:

• I will not go to bars, lounges, or clubs.
• I will not go to strip shows or lewd bachelorette parties.
• I will not go to any parties that involve drinking, drugs, or sex.
• I will not go to X-rated movies.
• I will not go to restaurants that encourage servers to dress and act provocatively.
• I will not go to comedy clubs that feature foul language and crude sexual humor.
• If I find myself in an unhealthy environment, I will quickly leave.

2. Pairing Hedges: dual versus group interaction

A Girl-Gone-Wise avoids inappropriately pairing herself with men

The Wild Thing of Proverbs 7 was a married woman. She shouldn’t have socially paired up with the young man. It was inappropriate for her to hang out with a man who wasn’t her husband. If either individual in a male-female combination is married, then it is unwise for them to interact on a “paired-up” basis. It’s also unwise for unmarried individuals to unreservedly pair off with each other. Scripture warns us, “The righteous should choose his friends carefully, For the way of the wicked leads them astray.” (Proverbs 12:26 nkjv) Group interaction, involving 3 or more people, is a hedge that protects a pair from sexual temptation. Here are some suggested pairing hedges:

• I will interact with men in group rather than one-on-one situations.
• I will not meet up, dine, or travel alone with a man if one of us is married.
• I will try to avoid being paired up with men in work projects, school assignments, or volunteer work. If pairing up is unavoidable, I will strengthen and emphasize other hedges to compensate for this.
• As an unmarried woman, I will not pair off with an unmarried man (one-on-one) until I have had ample opportunity to get to know him in a group context.

3. Seclusion Hedges: private versus public venues

A Girl-Gone-Wise avoids being in private, secluded places with men

The Wild Thing of Proverbs 7 had no business inviting the young man into her home while no one else was there. It’s inappropriate for a man and woman who are not married to one another to be together in a private, secluded place. That privilege belongs to married individuals. Men and women who desire to guard their sexual purity interact in places that are open to the view of others. Here are some suggested hedges that protect a woman from the sexual temptation and dangers of seclusion:

• I will not be alone with a man in a bedroom, apartment, house, hotel room, cabin or any other place that is cut-off from public view.
• I will interact with men in places where other people in the vicinity can potentially observe our interaction.
• If I am meeting alone with a man in a business context, I will ensure to keep the door of the room open, or to meet in a room with glass walls or windows.
• If I am meeting with a man by webcam, (e.g. skype) I will observe these same precautions.

I’m not going to review all the types of hedges. There are 7 more types listed in the Girls Gone Wise book.

When you establish a hedge, you choose, ahead of time, to live by that protective policy. You choose to exercise discretion. Knowing what your hedges are will help guide you when you encounter a potentially compromising situation. For example, if a male colleague asks me to lunch, I might say, “Can Susan join us? I have a policy that I don’t do lunch alone with men.” The hedge gives me the freedom to relate to the colleague within appropriate boundaries. It helps keep the relationship pure. It honors my marriage and my colleague’s too. It keeps the relationship on track and prevents it from taking a wrong turn.

I’ve suggested numerous ideas for ways you can hedge your sexual purity. If you have a few years of womanhood under your belt, you’ve probably already figured out that you need to have hedges. If you’re like me, you figured it out by bumping your nose against situations where someone misunderstood your intent, or where you naively left yourself in an exposed position by not having a clear hedge. It took me quite a while, as a newlywed, to figure out that I couldn’t hang out and be friends with guys in the same way I did before I was married. Other than the general encouragement to remain a virgin until marriage, and not to cheat on my husband after marriage, no one ever sat me down and challenged me to think through and establish clear protective hedges in my relationships with men.

So now that I’ve figured some things out, that’s what I am challenging you to do. Far too many women are careless and overconfident, and foolishly leap over restrictions. I think of the untold pain and heartache that women I’ve ministered to would have saved themselves if only they would have exercised discretion and guarded their sexual purity. So I challenge you to come up with a list of personal hedges. Write them down. Have a friend hold you accountable.

I’ll borrow the words that the Sage Father spoke to his son, and speak them as though I were a sage mother: “My daughters, do not lose sight of these- keep sound wisdom and discretion.” (Proverbs 3:21) “Discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil.” (Proverbs 2:11-12) Hedge your sexual purity. Be a Girl-Gone-Wise.

© Mary A. Kassian

This is a pre-publication excerpt from “Girls Gone Wise in a World gone Wild,” © Mary A. Kassian to be published by Moody Publishers in 2010. All rights reserved. You are welcome to link to this post, but please do not copy and/or reproduce this copyrighted material without express written permission of Moody Publishing.