By T. Scott Burgess
I am not a parent, but I hope to marry and have children sometime in the next ten years. However, as an uncle and a teacher, I deal with children nearly every day. I cannot imagine my life without children in it. I cringe inside when I hear people say that they cannot stand children. We all were little once, and we needed someone to have patience with us and show us how to mature into the adults we are today. The reality also remains that we are still someone’s child. Even though I am now thirty-one, my mom and my dad still sometimes see me as their “little” (over six feet tall) boy.
Nonetheless, there is one particular aspect of dealing with children that is very difficult: discipline. As a teacher, I instruct some students who have less than stellar behavior and need to be disciplined at times; although I have taught for over ten years, I still do not look forward to disciplining. There is never a time when I say to myself, “Hooray, I get to discipline this student; I can hardly wait!” That just doesn’t happen.
I have two nieces, who I love with all of my heart. The younger one is almost a year old, and the other is four years old. There are no words that can express my gladness that they are a part of my life. But guess what? There are times when they need to be corrected – even if it does break my heart a little bit to do so. The challenge is showing them at a young age that, even though they may be in trouble (especially the older one), they are loved.
This is the flip side of that coin: without discipline, we really would be much worse off. I can think of many times growing up when I thought my parents just did not understand, and it was not fair. While there may be elements of truth in that thought, the thing I failed to realize is that my parents loved me more than I could possibly imagine and they wanted the best for me. We often think of discipline as something that people in authority do to us to torture us (and I still think some of those authority types probably do). However, when disciplining is done with love, we are able to see the value and lesson behind it.
I often think about God, who is our Heavenly Father, and how he sees us as his children. I am sure there are times he does not like what we do, but he loves us without condition. I do not believe everything bad that happens in our lives is a punishment from God. However, I do believe that some of the consequences we face are a direct result of choices that we make. Thus, there are times that God does discipline us (Hebrews 5-11). It is neither because we are “bad” nor because he wants to “give us what we deserve.” It is not even because he wants to torture us. Instead, it is because he loves us and has better things for us that we will probably miss out on if we do our own thing instead of listening to him. Like all children, sometimes we only learn things the hard way; it is up to our parent to show us the error of our ways, otherwise we are bound to repeat them.
T. Scott Burgess is Youth and Young Adult Leader at Hope Christian Fellowship in Canastota.
