Discipline has gotten a really bad rap lately. That is because discipline impedes my ability to be “free”, to do whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want, to whomever I want. We admire the results of discipline in our sports teams, but then we revel in their undisciplined lifestyles off the field. Unless, of course they break one of the politically correct “sins of the month” like drinking and driving, and they happen to hurt someone.
Discipline has fallen the furthest when it comes to parenting, where discipline is the most important element in the job of a parent. Discipline is both positive and negative, it rewards and it punishes. But because our culture has so denigrated dads in particular and parents as a whole, we as parents feel we don’t have the right to train our children. We let the school do that.
If we love our children we will discipline them. Maybe we should call it training instead of discipline. Training is about present action that results in a future action. Athletes run through drills to get the bodies ready for their future action on the field. They run through plays with each other to get ready for the game with their opponents.
Training children is no different. We make our children do certain things now in order to get them ready to do the correct things in the future, in real life. We train them because we love them. If we didn’t love them, we wouldn’t train them. We would just let them do whatever they wanted to do. Unfortunately, there is an increasing number of households with only one parent in this country. That leaves the team with only half its coaching staff. It is hard enough to be successful with a full father and mother coaching team.
Of course discipline must start with us. We can’t expect our children to be disciplined individuals if we ourselves are not in training for life ourselves. One of the roles of government is to put restraints on bad behavior through punishment, and rewards on good behavior through other means. This is one of the reasons married people have gotten a better tax rate. Marriage of a man and a woman has positive social values, proven over thousands of years. Single parenting is extremely difficult.
The LORD disciplines those He loves, those who enter His Spring Training Camp. Have you signed up? Are you in active training for eternal life?
The Arnold Journey 