Discipline

I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been “You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.” Maybe I’m going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important. – Mr. Rogers testifying before the US Congress

Is it ever your job to change someone else?

You are not an expert at running your own life. You have brokenness you haven’t fixed, wounds you haven’t healed.

Both self discipline and imposed discipline.

My job as a dad is to 1) provide for their physical needs (1 Tim 5:8); 2) as priest to pray, moral instruction, theology (Deut 6:4); 3) as king to bear the sword, rule so as to teem with life (Gen 1). All complicated by fact that each child are themselves kings and priests.

God is a bad father

You are sons of the Lord your God.1

Nature or nurture, God was the only father of Adam and Eve. He was the only culture around them that could have corrupted them. Everything they were born with was formed directly by his hands. Everything they were taught, they learned directly from his words. Everything around them that they could experience was spoken into existence by him. Placed in a garden he built. His was the highest and most extreme version of the protect-your-kids-from-every-harm-by-overseeing-everything-they-see-hear-or-do movement. He took Captain Fantastic farther than Vigo. And they still ate of the tree.

If being a good parent is measured by how your kids turn out, then God is a bad father, because Adam and Eve fell. If being a good parent is measured by how your kids raise their kids, then God is a bad father, because Cain was a murderer. If being a good parent is measured by how effectively you protected them from all threats foreign and domestic, then God is a bad father, because He let Satan himself into the garden. Whatever measure you use to evaluate earthly fathers should be applicable to heavenly fathers.

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

Suppose a man is righteous and does what is just and right … suppose the man has a violent son who sheds blood and does any of these [evil] things; though the father has done none of them.2

It is fallacy to measure how good a job a father did by looking that his sons. Good fathers may have evil sons, and evil fathers may have good sons.3 Wise fathers may have foolish sons.4 The text does not praise a parent for the choices of their child, nor does it excuse the choices of the child by pointing to the parent. To the contrary, one of the consistent themes of the Biblical narratives is that it should not be said that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth have been set on edge. David’s faith was a model for generations of his faithful sons, and it preserved God’s covenant through generations of his evil sons. But his faith could not cause faith or faithlessness in his sons.

Hear the tension in:

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.5

and

They would not listen to their father, since the Lord had decided to kill them.6

Spare the rod, spoil the child. No – he hates his child who spares the rod. Same word for “rod” as in thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. And same as in the scepter shall not depart from Judah. Does that change how spare the rod is understood.

Jeremiah 30. I have struck you as an enemy would, with the discipline of someone cruel, because of your enormous guilt.

Prodigal Father

Was the father of the prodigal son foolish for giving his younger son his inheritance early. Was he a bad father for failing to stop his son from throwing his life away on loose living.

The prodigal’s father was a bad father because both his sons made poor choices, except the father is supposed to be parabolically (paradoxically) the Father. Look all you want at your bad father, you will not find an excuse for you, you will not find an explanation for yourself. You chose. You acted.

Shepherding a Child’s Heart

In vain I have struck your sons; They did not accept discipline.7 They would not obey or pay attention, each one followed the stubbornness of his evil heart.8

God can’t9 change their hearts, but you can. Discipline that shepherds your child’s heart. What would you do to “shepherd your child’s heart” that God didn’t do as shepherd of his people. And they rejected him. What tools do you have that he lacked. What authority.

No child of mine would ever do X, because I would Y. That’s a big red flag. Because I would. I can control this other person so fully that I can confidently say they would never. God is a good father, and He has the wisdom to know the best Y, and the power to do Y, and yet his children whom he loves constantly do X.

You cannot shape the soul of another person. You can hardly shape your own soul. You can be a help or a hindrance to the other person. Better a millstone be tied around your neck. You can’t shape the soul of your child. You can plant and water. But only the child can till their soil. And only God causes growth.

A good father’s children like him and listen to him and respond to his instruction. Witness Jer 2:21, 2:30, 3:19, 4:22, 5:7, 32:33. Discipline must be accepted. Even God’s discipline is not measured by the change wrought in others.

You can’t teach what they don’t choose to learn. Easy, just convince them to choose to learn what you want to teach them. I don’t like chocolate donuts, how are you going to get me to choose to eat them. Easy, you choose to eat this chocolate donut or I’ll pull another of your fingernails out with these pliers. No that’s torture – I wouldn’t be making a choice and you wouldn’t be treating me like a person. Okay, I’d make the chocolate donut irresistibly appealing. A fancy chocolate donut on a fine china plate is still a chocolate donut. And no matter how many times you eat a chocolate donut in front of me and tell me how good it is, I’m still not going to like them. Your sermon can have jokes. Your presentation can be a clever parable told by a cartoon. A creative and entertaining lesson about a topic I don’t want to learn is still just another lecture. Is talking at me until I eat this chocolate donut different than torturing me until I eat it?

Teaching school level math is easy – rote regurgitation of basic jargon in order to earn praise and avoid embarrassment. Teaching a musical instrument is harder – at least with semi consistent practice you can pick up the basics, though you won’t be playing music. You’re going to put real emotion into the next performance of that concierto or so help me. Teaching wisdom is harder still.

Your kids pick up your favorite curse words and facial expressions. And so we think they are impressionable and easily shaped. But this familial mimicry is superficial. We forget how easily we, as adults, pick up the superficial tics of our friends. Souls are deeper things. Character is built of harder material. Our surface of molding clay encloses a core of stone.

Must grow as they grow. Can’t have a philosophy that uses a 5 year old as a static model.

I built every wall I had to climb – Our attempts to fix ourselves, make sense to us, but bring more twistedness. I’m afraid so I act to protect myself or flea, now I’m still afraid

Coercion

You do not tend the flock. You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bandaged the injured, brought back the strays, or sought the lost. Instead you have ruled them with violence and cruelty.10

For what purposes may an authority rightly use force. What change can you coerce in others.

Cannot trick into being wise or beat into being kind or punish into being self-disciplined. Cannot convince to be compassionate or persuade to be persevering.

Can’t force your kids to be your friends. Can’t require that they be open with you.

There is a difference between a firing squad, life without parole, and a fine. There is a difference between a belt, a timeout, and a lecture. There is a difference between taking away a phone, taking away a dessert, and taking away a choice. But all are force. All are imposing my will over another’s. An authority can say, “I encourage you to do X, but even if you choose not to I will support your decision.” Advice is given without use of force. But anytime an authority says “You must”, it is followed by a, perhaps implicit, “and if you don’t then” force.

God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change. Only love affects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure. Love is not love unless it is totally free. Grace is not grace unless it is totally free.11

Go out into the highways and compel them to come in. What coercion are you permitted to use to save someone from hell. Are you allowed to use more force to accomplish lesser ends – (not allowed to put someone in a time out until they confess Christ as lord, but can put them in timeout until they are ready to apologize to their sibling).

Are there tools to provoke, encourage, or increase the likelihood of desired change in another person. Are those other tools simply disguised force. Are those other tools moral to use on another person. Are those other tools right use limited to being employed by parents or can anyone use them against another.

Anyone can invite anyone else to change – model, persuade, encourage. One in authority may use the sword, or threat of sword, to compel change from subordinates – timeouts, lectures, getting fired from a job, facing a firing squad. Authorities ought to be clear when they are speaking with a sword behind their words – don’t phrase a command as though it’s an invitation. An offer that cannot be refused is not an offer. If either party can’t say f you and walk away, then it’s not a negotiation. A sword that only sometimes swings makes defiance a game of chance.

The Shadow of the Sword

The authorities do not bear the sword for nothing.

When an authority speaks as the authority, they who listen do so under the shadow of the sword. Crucial to distinguish between advise and command.

You can’t fix stupid

Paternalism – protecting them from their own stupidity. And restaurants shouldn’t serve fat people. Not yet their own persons?

Don’t always catch them when they fall. Falling is important. You learn to walk by falling over and over again.

Blind leading the blind

I’ll do all I can  To be a better man  Oh I’ll clean up this act  And be worse than we started – Derek Webb, Mockingbird.

Luke 4:23 – Physician heal thyself. If you can fix your kid’s souls, why is yours broken.

You can’t run your own life. You aren’t wise. So why is your wisdom needed for this kid. How many therapists need therapy

You don’t know your own soul, you don’t have direct access much less direct control. How much less the soul of your child.

Jesuit Maxim: Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.

Romans 2:17-21 – You … boast in God, know His will, and approve the things that are superior, being instructed from the law, and … you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light to those in darkness, an instructor of the ignorant, a teacher of the immature, having the full expression of knowledge and truth in the law— you then, who teach another, don’t you teach yourself? You who preach, “You must not steal”—do you steal? You who say, “You must not commit adultery”—do you commit adultery? You who detest idols, do you rob their temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For, as it is written: The name of God is blasphemed among [your children] because of you. 1 Cor 4:8 You are already full! You are already rich! You have begun to reign as kings without us. Romans 15:14 you are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able to instruct.

Kindness and Severity

Behold the blessing and the curse. The curse is that you cannot fix your child’s soul. The blessing is that you cannot break your child’s soul.

Notes

No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the fruit of peace and righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed instead.12

Discipline is not aimed primarily at moral behavior, but at healing. To heal what is broken, to build up the supporting muscles, so that walking rightly is possible, even in rough terrain. What can an authority, one who bears the sword, do to heal the soul of another.

Going beyond your authority is injustice.

Truth, Authority (Lordship), Love. Truth, not psychology – A person is who God says they are, regardless of what others may say of them. To overstep one’s authority is to commit injustice. Psychology can inform on the margins, after truth has established the principles that guide action.

We may want many things for our kids. We may want them to never suffer pain or loss. We may want mature wisdom and diligence. We may want for them to be content and prosperous. We may want grand kids. Some wants may only be prayed for in secret. Some wants may be taught, encouraged, modeled; but not coerced. Some wants you are required to make a reality through exercise of your authority.

Only God can take care, for it is he who rules the world. Since we cannot take care, since we are so completely powerless, we ought not do it either. If we do we are dethroning God and presuming to rule the world ourselves. – Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p 179.

I cannot and should not try to “fix” someone else, including my kids. No man can tell another who he is. Jesus is the cure-giver, I am the care-giver.

He can deal gently with the ignorant and misguided because he himself is clothed in weakness; and because of it is obligated to offer sacrifices for sins for himself as well as for the people. Heb 5:2-3. Physician heal thyself.

God redeems our errors, so what is discipline? Not punishment or justice. Correction. Training. Equipping to walk freely.

But difference between discipline and conformity. No man can tell another who he is. I know the Truth of who you are and who God is and how you are supposed to live. So I use my authority to coerce you to do what I know is best and then call your conformity “growth”.

They must admit that in no circumstances do they possess any rights or powers over others, and that they have no direct access to them. The only way to reach others is through him in whose hands they are themselves like all other men. – Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p 187.

Endoctrinating, brainwashing, into religion versus inviting to faith. Summer camp euphoria. Instruction isn’t made less effrctive by being explained.

Laiang book where his patients step deeper into dysfunction but where each step seems (at least to them) like a rational response to their present circumstances and desires. We do not fix our own brokenness. Most of the time we are oblivious to the many places we are broken, the many lies we believe. But even when we see, or think we see, and try to respond to that brokenness in healthy ways, we perpetuate the bent places. We bend and break other parts of our souls convinced that we have straightened the parts we can see. Like the blind leading the blind. Your use of force against the brokenness in your child doesn’t fix them, anymore than you can fix yourself. Even if it were possible for you to reach into their soul and straighten what you see is bent, you would inevitably bend and break unseen parts worse than what you thought you were fixing. And you would not stand in judgment for their brokenness – it is theirs. But you would stand in judgment for your having exceeded your authority and assignment.

It is not right to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs. You have different authority over and different assignments towards different people. It is wrong to treat each person the same.

Contrast between teaching someone to play an instrument, and teaching them to play music – you can’t play music without a discipline that instills the skills to play the instrument, but playing music is not just another skill, you don’t cross a line in skill at playing to where now it’s music.

If I don’t model His love and submission to His lordship, how will my kids know His love for them or know how to follow Him. This is backwards. We know what a good father is because He is a good father. We love because He first loved us. The quality of our marriage is not a demonstration to the world of God’s covenant relationship with us. God’s covenant keeping is the model we follow. God’s invisible attributes, everything that can be known about God, is made manifest to all in spite of us, not because we “image” Him so well. They are not trained so as to be able to see Him by watching us live rightly. They already know Him. Hopefully they see us walking rightly and are and to see enough of we have they already know of Him reflected in us to see that we are His.

What are the consequences when they don’t listen to instruction, or when they choose to act against peace.

Coaching. Teaching. vs controlling, shaping, molding.

There’s an ambiguity in the idea of “teaching”. On the one hand it can mean offering an opportunity to learn. On the other hand it can mean getting them to have learned. There are limits to what can be required to learn. Force can only “teach” so much. Must have eyes to see and ears to hear. Though Tim would say that all that is necessary to get someone to learn is enough creativity on the part of the teacher. The student must choose to learn. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. The learner has to do internal work, work they can be invited to do, work they can be given material for, but work that only they can do in themselves, by themselves and for themselves.

With the guys, when I see a potential problem, I wait and pray. Sometimes I can encourage or model. If they invite it, I can hold accountable, which is really just more consistent and direct encouragement. But there’s no discipline, no admonishment, no “this is how you should act/change/be” and “when I see you not doing it that way, these are the consequences I will impose”. I don’t decide who they should be and then impose my will upon them. But I do with my kids. Should I?

Durrett: I am the tide. Consistency of correction.

There is a common critique of spanking that goes something like this: Little Johnny hits his friend and you walk up to him and slap his butt and say “don’t hit”. The problem with this critique is that it fails to account for the difference between authorities and peers. Authorities have the right to do things that peers do not. What an authority does to discipline you is not an example for how you should treat peers. Authorities aren’t examples. They are authorities. You are not supposed to discipline your peers the way you are disciplined by your authorities.

Bobby hears that Carol wants a cookie, and he runs in the other room and eats the last cookie from the communal first come first serve cookie jar. Alan sees all of this happen. How ought Alan respond if: B and C are A’s 35 year old coworkers; B and C are A’s 16 year old children; B and C are A’s 6 year old children. A could ignore, make more cookies, preempt the expected fit from C, permit the fit by C and then address that with C (as B won the first come first serve), address the selfishness of B with lecture, demand apology from B (and what if B says “no”.).

Reconnnect with intro: God is not a clear example of a good father (or a good husband). See Adam/Eve/Cain – did he leave them untaught, unprepared, unequipped; was his instruction ineffective. Say the same thing about God that you’d say about their parent’s if they had one – if God had done his job well with Adam and Eve, then they wouldn’t have eaten from the tree. Husban’s duty is to protect/provide/lead – and look at what a good job God is doing of that for his bride – a persecuted church whose shepherds abuse children (Catholic priests), and women (SBC).

Proverbs 13:1 CSB — A wise son responds to his father’s discipline, but a mocker doesn’t listen to rebuke. Not the son is made wise by discipline, but the son who is already wise responds to discipline. Proverbs invites, asks, begs the son to pursue wisdom and respond to discipline – it’s the son’s choice to respond to discipline or reject it, to be a fool, a sluggard, a violent man. – Compare prov 22:15 to 27:22 – Can you or can’t you beat the foolishness out of a fool.

Make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed. Hebrews 12:13. Connect to col 3 - rules have the appearance of wisdom but are of no value. And Rom 7 - sin used the law to provoke me to sin. I didn’t need exposure to sin to learn how to. Sin was already in me and twists even the good and holy law.

Is 53:5. The discipline (musar) for our shalom was laid upon him. Same discipline as prov 22:15.

There are fences that imprison and fences that free. A fence that protects you from mistakes without unduly restraining freedom. Fewer options can be a blessing. Fewer ways to hurt yourself. Chesterton’s protection from the cliff’s edge. Connected to restricting access to a phone or social media.

2 Peter 2:19 - they promise them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption, since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them. Connect to Colossians 3 - man-made rules with the appearance of wisdom. But also connect to authority over kids - by what a person is made lower than, made inferior to, forced to yield to, to that he is enslaved. To lead, to serve, to rule, without enslaving.

What should a parent teach? What disciplines? A child was raised well if they have been taught how to do X, even if they choose not to, they are free to choose X because they have been equipped. What are the X’s?

A discipline is an activity in our power that we do to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort.13

  1. Deuteronomy 14:1↩︎

  2. Ezekiel 18:5-13↩︎

  3. Ezekiel 18, 1 and 2 Kings↩︎

  4. Ecclesiastes 2:19↩︎

  5. Proverbs 22:6↩︎

  6. 1 Samuel 2:25↩︎

  7. Jeremiah 2:30↩︎

  8. Jeremiah 11:8↩︎

  9. or perhaps does not. And if he does not, on what grounds do you attempt it.↩︎

  10. Ezekiel 34:3-4↩︎

  11. Richard Rohr in Breathing Under Water (London: SPCK, 2016), 44.↩︎

  12. Hebrews 12:11-13↩︎

  13. Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1998) 200.↩︎