PUNISHMENT AND DISCIPLINE

2 Samuel 14:1-15:22; John 18:1-24; Psalm 119:97-112; Proverbs 16:8-9

“You have convicted yourself in making this decision, because you have refused to bring home your own banished son. All of us must die eventually. Our lives are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God does not just sweep life away; instead, he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him.”

“Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.”

“We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.”

David did not lose his kingdom because of any sin against God. His reign even survived the Bathsheba affair. What it could not survive was David’s own pride. His all-too-human desire just to “teach Absalom a lesson” (even after forgiving him and longing for his return) became David’s undoing. In part, this was because the lesson Absalom learned from his father was not the message his father intended to teach. David doubtless wanted to teach loyalty and humility. By merely banishing his son from his presence, though, he actually taught volumes on personal insecurity and bitterness. He meant to convey royal strength and justice. Instead, he exemplified weak pettiness and spite. The minute David took the easy way out by substituting mere punishment for loving instruction and direction, he unwittingly exposed a fatal flaw on which his son eventually capitalized. David could not effectively discipline those he loved. Rather than struggle through a relationship with his son while trying to correct him (discipline), David chose instead to merely punish and humiliate in an effort to “fix” his boy (punishment). The lesson for us is that there is a world of difference between punishment and discipline, and woe to the parent who does not understand or appreciate it. That parent one day may awake to find an enemy in the house.

Still, I appreciate and understand David’s issue. I have seen many men spend too much time one notch up the ladder of judgment from their kids, rather than in relationship with them. This assures the men can always look down on the children, but it does not a happy house make. The temptation to condemn rather than lovingly discipline can and will get the best of us. But it’s stupid; plain stupid, to let it happen! Parents, we must think we still have something to prove if we make punishment our first response. Perhaps we do. We need to prove we can love and direct our children without fundamentally hurting them. If we stick with a performance-based appreciation for what they do, though, rather than unconditionally accept who they are, we are lost before we begin. Parenting should never be an us-vs.-them competition. When it devolves to that state, there simply are no winners. A parent’s personal ego or security should never be a child’s prize. Descending to a bare knuckle level of machismo one upmanship is no way to win over one’s offspring.

Here today’s Scripture clearly: God does not sweep life aside when there is sin or shortcoming. He devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from Him. That’s the difference between punishment and discipline. We can do no better as parents ourselves than to follow the Father’s example. When such a thing is beyond us, we need to lean on Christ and trust Him to accomplish it. We may need to plan and push a bit ourselves, but we always need to leave it to the Holy Spirit to direct our specific steps, actions and the direction we actually travel. Kids crave relationship, like all people. When we give them our backs – or worse, the back of our hands - instead, we teach only the indelible lesson that there is no such thing as mercy, and our children remember.