The value of a “fence” …

Several years ago, a few psychologists conducted a study by taking a group of children and putting them in the back yard of a home that did not have a fence. The researchers told the children they could play anywhere in the yard they wanted, and that they should run, laugh, play, and enjoy themselves fully.

The children did that with reserve. Because there wasn’t a fence outlining this back yard, the children tended to stay close to the house. The lack of a fence had a muting effect on their play.

Next, the same researchers took the same children into the back yard of a different home, but this back yard was fenced. The researchers gave the same children the same instructions, and the results were strikingly different. This time, the children ran and played with abandon! They were all over the yard. They repeated this process with multiple groups of children, with each group rendering similar results.

The conclusion, according to the researchers, was the children felt safer to have a full expression of play in the fenced back yard because the fence gave them a clear guideline within which they could express themselves fully and freely.

This simple study highlights a basic point about human behavior: our innate need for personal boundaries.

Without a clear demarcation of what constitutes appropriate behavior, we tend to express ourselves excessively, or constrain ourselves inappropriately. When there is nothing to hold us back, our human history is one that is marked by a preference to indulge ourselves even to the point of personal negligence or disregard for others.

Fortunately, our Creator understands this need and provided for it by supplying us with His Word as the marker for the exercise of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. By using the Word of God as our “fence,” we have a clear understanding of how we can express our whole selves in a way that is full, free, beneficial and “safe” for ourselves and others. Psalm 119:105 puts it this way: “Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.”

Scotty