In our quest of freedom and spontaneity, many of us have grown up in a generation that has underrated the place of discipline. Much of our educational system has abhorred inhibitions, stated that impulses must have free rein, and has deified doing your own thing. It forgot some very elemental facts of life. Let me mention just a few. No simple deed is performed such as preparing a meal, reading a book, or going to church without the discipline of ignoring a thousand allurements. Attention shuts out literally hundreds of distracting sights and sounds, forbids hundreds of inward promptings that would divert us from the task at hand. No significant act is done without discipline. Sporadic church attendance shows lack of discipline in many cases. To see the totally uninhibited life, where people obey their impulses without hindrance, look at some of the patients in a mental institution. This is the uninhibited life, par excellence.

God who is even smarter than John Dewey, the father of progressive education, has always known we needed discipline. Because of this, he even uses suffering to a good purpose in our lives. Saint Paul says, "The Lord disciplines him whom he loves." Saint Paul knew personally what this meant. In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians he spoke of a particularly troubling malady that he had asked God on several occasions to remove from him. Each time God answered that he could use Paul better with his weakness than with it removed. Finally, Paul accepted his malady, seeing that it drew him closer to the Lord.

"The Lord disciplines him whom he loves," is a most difficult scriptural lesson to accept. We are tempted to cry out, "Lord, please stop loving me so much." I’m sure my children often feel that way in the middle of a spanking ... Dad, don’t love me so much. God loves us so much that he can even use the painful experiences of our lives to draw us closer to him. The next time suffering visits our lives, we should not only pray God for release from it, but also to help us grow through it.