One of the main reasons I love living in the South is our culture. Southern culture is expressed in so many wonderful ways, including the food we enjoy (crawfish boils), the sports we follow (and the tailgating that accompanies games), the freedoms we cherish (especially in spirited political discussion), the families we love (and gather together with at reunions), and the Christian values and worship we prioritize.
“Culture is religion externalized,” minister and professor Henry Van Til once said, and I think that sums it up quite well. Culture is the articulation and adorning of our faith and values in the meaningful areas of life. It expresses deep and profound realities in simple, time-tested statements, whether heard in the Cracker Barrel rocking chair section or at the local coffee shop as the resident old-timers solve the world’s problems before 10 a.m.
Post-COVID, we find ourselves in a world where time-tested ideas are rising in value. While our grandparents may not have been AI savvy, we’re realizing that they understood how to build something that lasts, has roots, and that is deeply satisfying to the whole man – body, soul and spirit.
“Good fences make good neighbors” is one of those time-tested statements I heard growing up. The upheaval of the last few years has caused that old saying to come back to me with particular clarity and power. Growing up in a farming community, the immediate application was as plain as the nose on my face: You can’t have a farm or get along with your neighbors unless you know what land is yours and what land is not yours.
Since Covid, it is increasingly clear that our fathers understood so much more in this simple statement. Yes, they believed in property rights. But as this simple statement suggests, they also had an entire way of understanding the world, a way that made America a shining city on a hill for all the world to admire.
All of life is defined by boundaries that must be enforced. Fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, employers, employees, elected officials, police – you name it, and we all exist in defined roles capable of blessing each other and building a nation. The limits or boundaries of these roles help us focus our efforts on “our part of the pasture,” so it can thrive.
Because of this, fathers and mothers should raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. Wives should honor and submit to their husbands. Employees should give a fair, high-quality day of labor. Employers should give a fair wage and a high-quality work environment.
Parents know they should not abuse their children. Husbands and wives know they should not mistreat each other. Employees know they shouldn’t steal from their employers, and employers know they shouldn’t demand employees to surrender God-given freedoms just to make a living.
Defining boundaries makes flourishing possible. Enforcing them makes liberty a reality.
But the one who has the ultimate fence is God, and we draw the “little fences” of our lives, roles, freedoms, and responsibilities because they exist within the big fence of Almighty God – infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. If we don’t enforce those “little fences,” we are encouraging a stampede of evil, encouraging evildoers to rape, pillage and plunder because they aren’t constrained to God-ordained boundaries. We are allowing and even encouraging them to sin against their neighbors. And we are committing a sacrilegious act of idolatry by functionally assigning to them the “ultimate big fence” that belongs to Jesus Christ alone.
The old-timers were more right than I realized, for good fences do indeed make good neighbors. And who is my neighbor? The Good Samaritan still shows us the answer.
We are living in a time that requires courage to not only speak these boundaries out loud, but to enforce them. Let’s have the courage to obey God by honoring the plat map He has drawn. Only then can we fulfill the great promise that I believe will be Alabama’s future – a city set on a hill, calling America back to true greatness.
State Rep. Ernie Yarbrough serves in Alabama's Seventh District.
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