Relating to Discipline

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. (Hebrews 12:11)

For me to better understand the true meaning of this verse I have to divest myself as much as possible of the context of counterfeit discipline and try to think about how this applies to God's way of discipline. For the way this verse has been taught typically was often as an excuse to justify abusive and self-centered punitive punishments which is what a lot of human discipline involves. That is not to say that humans cannot administer good discipline, I am sure much of it is effective, especially by those who are trying to serve God the best they know how, and that would have to include my own parents. But most of our attempts at discipline are tainted to some degree with the misconceptions about God that we carry in our hearts and to that same degree it corrupts our spirit and the effectiveness of our discipline.

But God's discipline is not tainted in any way and His Spirit knows exactly what our heart needs to correct its perceptions of reality. God's sole purpose in all of His discipline is to restore in us the perfection of the beauty of God that we were designed to reflect. So since that is the real purpose of good discipline then why does it feel sorrowful? And if it says here that it does not seem to be joyful why does James and Jesus tell us to count it all joy whenever we find ourselves in it?

I looked up some of the words in this verse from the Greek to get a taste of what else might be hidden under the English words. I did find some interesting variations that add more dimension. The word for joyful can also include gladness (which is not the same thing), cheerful and calm delight. Actually given my present understanding of the word joy as contrasted with these other words I think the other words might apply better in this verse. In my thinking, joy – when understood as someone being glad to be with me – would be the best antidote or resource that I could turn to whenever I find myself in the circumstances described in this verse. Remembering that I am not alone but that Jesus has promised to never, ever forsake me (13:5, 6) will greatly lessen the pain and fear I might experience in the seeming suffering of God's discipline.

But at the same time, the lack of perception of His presence is actually one of the reasons most of us are so afraid of discipline. Even the faulty type of discipline received from our earthly administrators is made much more painful when it is perceived as a rejection of our value as a person instead of a correction of our course of thinking. When we feel rejected or abandoned the fear and pain are exponential compared to understanding that a given painful experience is meant for our training and comes from someone who still cares deeply about us. In fact, that is one of the greatest faults of most human discipline is the lack of genuine caring and assurance of unconditional love while administering it.

I think it is helpful to compare the ideas of punishment verses coaching. I think it is pretty clear to most thinking people that the way our judicial system punishes all sorts of people for all sorts of infractions of the rules by dumping all of them into a common prison and treating them almost like animals is not conducive to improving their characters. That is mindless, generally vengeful-type punishment as does not usually encourage maturity and growth in the character of the person thus abused. It may produce a great deal of pain and shame but not anything approximating righteousness.

On the other hand, if you look at a sports team whose goal is to develop skill, endurance, cooperation and strength in the minds and bodies of a group of people, the coach is the most important person to coordinate that process and bring that team to victory. Much of the training may feel very painful at times both physically and even mentally, but if it is clear in the minds of the players that the coach really cares about them as a person and is pushing them only for their best good, it is much easier for them to look past the present discomfort and keep their minds focused on the “joy that is set before them” (12:2) in victory. This is really the essence of the message contained in this verse.

If we have been conditioned by our experiences with counterfeit or faulty human discipline to feel abandoned and rejected or even attacked every time we experienced correction, then it makes it much more difficult to believe that God does not treat us the same way in His process of correction and training. Most likely it will require some deep healing of beliefs and assumptions that presently poison our perceptions about authority from previous bad experiences before we will can come to trust that God will not abuse His authority in our lives like others have done to us.

But it still remains that, for whatever reasons involved, discipline and correction are going to make it seem like we are being mistreated, abandoned, rejected or whatever other feelings are triggered from past experiences or suggested by the enemy. In fact it is to flush out these faulty notions that God allows things to happen in our lives. This gives us opportunity to have our faulty thinking and feelings exposed so that we can bring them to Him for truth and healing to replace the lies about Him causing this pain. As I have increasingly seen over the past few years, most pain comes from resistance of some sort. The more we resist the truth about God or the truth about ourselves the more pain we are going to suffer. God's discipline is designed to flush out what we really believe so that it can be replaced with what He really knows and bring us into harmony with Him. The transition process in exchanging these two views of reality is where the pain or sorrow occurs.

It is very helpful to realize that all of God's discipline is for training and never involves punitive punishments. If we ever think that God is punishing us for something we have done wrong by inflicting pain in our lives we are still living under the influence of Satan's lies about God. This is very difficult to accept theologically for many but is something we all need to learn. The Bible makes it very clear that it is sin that pays out wages involving death, not God. Jesus stated unequivocally that He came to give us life and that more abundantly, not condemnation. God's discipline never involves condemnation, and if we think it does we have some serious underlying perceptions about God that need to be exchanged for the glorious truth that He wants us to know. We are still in need of more training and discipline to free us from those ideas.

But all of us are tainted to a great extent with the misconceptions about God that pervade all of humanity. Even those who were closest to God on this earth did not yet have a full appreciation for His goodness enough to make it safe for them to be exposed to His full glory. God had to warn Moses that it was still not safe for him to see God's face. That was because Moses, as much as He knew and loved God, still had fatal flaws in his perceptions about God that would have caused him to self-destruct if exposed to the full glory of God's perfect beauty and passionate love. This is the whole reason for the plan of salvation, to bring as many as possible back into a safe condition so that they can enjoy the unveiled presence of God without any fear or taint of corruption in their minds and hearts.

But in our condition of doubts about God's love for us or good intentions toward us, we are still going to have feelings of apprehension at best, but more like abandonment or rejection whenever we experience discipline. God does not miraculously change our brain to suddenly think differently about Him, that would be a violation of our freedom and God never will do that. He respects us so much that He will only work to attract and prompt us to change our minds and hearts about Him through any means possible other than to use force against our will. So the reality is, we are most likely going to feel some false emotions about our discipline – that is why this verse uses the word seems. And as long as it seems like we are being hurt by God we can know that there are still embedded lies in our hearts that still need to be exposed and healed with truth from our Savior.

I also see in this verse that there is a contrast between the seeming of sorrowfulness and the peaceful fruit of righteousness. That means that quite likely these may be opposites, or at the least the later replaces the former in our hearts. Another insight that I saw when looking at the original words was the meanings for sorrowful. It included not only sadness but the idea of grudgingness and heaviness. I find that very interesting. That means that it may not be so much sorrow that I may sometimes experience but more along the line of a grudging spirit that resists cooperating with God's desire to transform my way of thinking away from what I am used to. That exposes the element of resistance as I was saying before, and resistance when met with increasing pressure always produces heat. And heat when it becomes intense enough produces pain. But that also means that the sooner I choose to release my resistance to whatever God is desiring to do in my heart the less pain I will experience and the sooner I can enjoy the benefits of this training for maturity.

There is a great deal that can be unpacked from this simple phrase, the peaceful fruit of righteousness. I have looked many times at this much-abused word righteousness and still have a lot to learn about it. But I do like the added description given here in the words peaceful and fruit. Both of these words are generally opposite of much of the world's typical religious thinking about what constitutes righteousness but they are very descriptive of God's view of real righteousness. True righteousness is not only produced from a context of peace in the heart that comes from increasing unity with God's heart but is also something that springs up very naturally like a plant that produces fruit without a lot of work on our part.

Along this line I think it is very helpful to remember one of Jesus' story-clips to share the truth about this with us. And He was saying, "The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows – how, he himself does not know. "The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. "But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:26-29)

This kind of righteousness is clearly both peaceful and fruitful but is also very natural. The person himself does not know how the seeds grow, all he can do is observe the growth after the fact and wait for it to mature before trying to work with it. We would do very well to learn this lesson both in the lives of those we work with as well as in our own life. We must trust God to accomplish the miracle of producing righteousness in our lives. And one of the means He uses to do that is His perfect way of discipline, His discipling process.

Again, discipline is best understood when associated with the word disciple. I do not know of any Christians who would not volunteer if given the opportunity to live in the time of Christ and be one of His personal disciples. But really not much has changed. We still have the opportunity to be a disciple of Jesus and interact with Him much like the original disciples did. If we will invite Him to mentor us and then submit to the discipling process we can be just as much disciples as were Peter, John, Philip or any of the others. God is ready to mentor everyone personally if they are willing to allow Him access to their heart so that He can begin His work of rewiring, repair and restoration. That is what this whole business of discipline is all about. It is the plan of salvation being implemented in our lives and hearts.

(next in series)