Thankful for Discipline?!?
By GCCA Upper School Teacher, Mr. Glenn Hoshauer
As another Thanksgiving Day approaches, and as I reflect on my second year here at Grace Classical Christian Academy, I realize just how thankful I am for the discipline here at the school. Now I realize that this might sound a little odd – and even more so in our modern culture. Part of the reason that this might not sit right with our modern ears is that we tend to think of discipline in purely negative, or corrective, terms. Discipline is when someone gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar and gets “whacked.” While this is surely an important part of discipline, it is a truncated, emaciated, and one-sided understanding of it. Part of discipline is correcting mistakes – whether that is people sinning, or just a football player making a repeated error. However, before, under and around such corrective discipline is discipline as positive, as teaching, modeling and upholding the standard (whether that is righteousness or learning a new defensive play). So when I say I am thankful for discipline – I mean it in both aspects, but especially the latter, often overlooked aspect.
Why am I thankful for discipline? One reason would be that we live in a time and in a culture which is becoming more and more hostile to discipline, and less and less able to sustain healthy discipline. True discipline makes distinctions – it upholds and observes them – between what is right and what is wrong, between what is good and bad, and between what is wise and what is unwise. In the name of equality, our culture is less and less able to abide such distinctions, and thus, less and less able to conduct discipline, or even to be willing to abide discipline. So I am grateful that this is one of the ways our school is counter-cultural.
A second reason is connected with, and flows from the first. Let’s be honest, as a teacher here at Grace, I am thankful that our school actually engages in discipline (and to be clear, this is only possible because our community – our families – believe in discipline). Discipline is about structure, which means it is about order. Behind (and in addition to) every philosophical and theological problem in modern secular education stands colossal problems arising from the lack of discipline. When the inmates run the prisons, and the animals control the zoo, there are inevitable problems. I got into teaching to teach, and I am thankful (both as a teacher and as a parent) that our school makes such teaching possible by providing the discipline that enables order. Indeed, the Apostle Paul said that our God is not a God of confusion but of peace, and therefore wants things done in a way that is orderly (I Cor. 14:33, 40). True education thrives in the soil of order, but cannot grow in the craggy rocks of chaos!
I am thankful for discipline even in the face of recognizing that there are pitfalls and dangers in doing discipline. Everything worth doing can be done imperfectly (and will be when sinners are doing it), but that doesn’t diminish the need for them. As a parent, and as a faculty member, I am well aware of the possible dangers with discipline – especially those of excessiveness, and of formalism. The Bible warns us that discipline can be excessive – leading to the recipient being overwhelmed by excessive sorrow (II Cor. 2:7), or being provoked to anger (Eph. 6:4), or being discouraged (Col. 3:21), but it makes these warnings in the context of the importance of, and need for, godly discipline. Our goal is always to disciple, not to deject. Also, as both a parent and a teacher, I am always worried that discipline can lead people to just “play along”, to appear to follow or receive the discipline by way of eye-service or as people pleasers (Eph. 6:6; Col. 3:22). This danger does not argue against the need for discipline, but for doing it rightly and wisely – aiming at principles, not playing along, at the motives not the motions of conformity. However, even when Jesus challenged the Pharisees about their mere externalism in religion, he did not deny the need for following the rules – as when he told them they should have obeyed the weightier matters of the law as well as tithed (Mt. 23:23). However, the truth is we lack the power to ensure that discipline goes to the heart, we can only aim for the heart and leave the actual heart transformation to the sovereign work of God’s Holy Spirit.
I end where I began, by saying that I am thankful for discipline here at GCCA - the discipline that corrects sin and folly, as well as the constructive teaching and training. I am grateful for the order that allows the teaching we do to grow in fertile soil. I thank God that Grace is a place where discipline happens, because it means that it is a place that discipleship can happen – because that is what discipleship means…to be under the discipline of another. We disciple because we are discipled. We are discipled because we are disciples. The indicative (what is – our status as disciples) is the basis for the imperative (what ought to be – our work of discipleship). While it is not always pleasant, discipline does bear eventual fruit (Heb. 12:11). So I am thankful for discipline, for the fruit that it brings – and specifically for the fruit that I see it bearing day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year. Sin is corrected – thank God. Faithfulness is encouraged – praise God. Wisdom is fostered – to God be the glory.
So, yeah, I know it’s a little weird, but this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the discipline here at Grace, and I invite you to give thanks with me. Being a little weird is a little like misery…they both love company!