The thing about the Rule of Grace is that it requires discipline, which is not the most popular word these days. Although we see regularly the results of a world without discipline. We are recovering from a series of crisis of national debt and personal debt, immoral behavior, preventable disease, obesity, and just general degeneration of public discourse and life. Yet the answer to almost all of these crisis remains out of reach because we will not embrace the one thing we all know we need.
Discipline gets a bad rap because we think in terms of externally applied discipline, me applying discipline to you or someone else. But real discipline, the hope of humanity is in our internal discipline, our application of rules, boundaries, and restraints to ourselves voluntarily. We have to grow up.
Growing up is fundamentally not about freedom, though when I taught eighth graders they always thought of adulthood as freedom. Most of us probably do. Adulthood is about responsibility and living well within limits. This allows us to have freedom. But again freedom, while important, is not a value in and of itself. We have made this fundamental mistake in American culture. Freedom alone is meaningless. It exists in our governmental system as the results of a social contract that binds us, limits us.
We are not free. We grant each other freedom by living within responsible limits. The law exists to limit our freedoms as we take too much. "The law is not made for the righteous man," as a lawyer at church reminds me periodically.
What is discipline in the best sense for the follower of Jesus? We have to look at the dream of the Way of Christ. We have to see it, know it, taste it and then we can see what is required to be limited or restrained in ourselves as we strive toward it.
It is helpful to follow the rules of the Bible and our traditions. They get you started in a wise and good way. But ultimately you have to discover the actual purpose of those rules in order to live by them.
If we are to be Grace for others as God has been to us, merciful, forgiving, loving. We have to work to destroy, kill, obliterate, let go of, those things in us that make us unmerciful, unforgiving, unloving. Greed, lust, hate, pettiness, gossip head my list. These attributes clearly lead away from the dream of God for my life.
Taking just one, greed is a pernicious feature of our common life. We live in a culture of greed. Commercials, media, and just desire all lead me to want what I do not need in order to grease the wheels of the machine that we worship called the Economy. How do I combat greed? In the most surface levels I turn off TV and throw away catalogues. As I go deeper, I stop the thoughts that arise about things I might want but don't need.
Deeper still I begin to work at the more basic issues of desire and insecurity. I want to be seen as successful, strong, and capable, which may not be wrong in itself, but it leads to greed and pride. What if I cultivated humility? Insecurity is about a lack of faith that it is God who provides. If God provides, I can be grateful and rest in his providence. Cultivating gratitude and faith along with humility erodes the soil that my greed and envy grow in. So discipline means reading my Bible and prayer, thinking humbly and gratefully, practicing praise and thanksgiving. Letting go and discovering that when I do this, I can be present to people of no means and people with wealth. Not envious, not distracted by want, I can be present and loving without grasping or evading.
This is a beginning.
