Skunk cabbage discipline

All people will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. (John 13:35)

For many years, I taught a course at The King’s University called Introduction to Teaching. A major topic covered in the course textbook was “classroom discipline.”

To introduce this topic, I asked my students to call out what they understood to be synonyms for “discipline.” Suggestions included words such as spank, beat, banish, correct, ostracize, expel, self-control and strap. But, without fail, the most common response was the word “punishment.”

The root meaning of discipline, however, is not punishment but “disciple.” A disciple is a follower of a teacher who seeks to instruct him in some form of knowledge that will lead the disciple to emulate the best practices of his teacher. Thus, to discipline a student is to have her become more like her teacher in knowledge and understanding. Although punishment may be one aspect of discipleship, it is far less effective than encouragement, modeling, gentle reproof and forgiveness. Jesus exercised exemplary discipline with his disciples.

A church under discipline

I am a member of a Christian Reformed Church (CRC) that is currently “under discipline” because of its affirming stance of full inclusion of homosexual people in its fellowship. This stance is in contravention of the recent explicit inclusion by the denomination’s Synod of homosexual practice in its list of sins of unchastity. And make no mistake, “under discipline” means that my local church is being punished or at least threatened with the punishment of disaffiliation from the denomination. (Disaffiliation sounds so much nicer than harsher synonyms such as expulsion or excommunication.)

The classical (regional) church visitors who came to counsel our church’s leaders about the consequences of our heretical stance were gracious and sorry about how matters had developed, but their visit was meant to enforce the need to bring our church to repentance and into compliance with the Synodical decision.

Amending creeds

This decision is now embedded in the wording of the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the three central confessions of Reformed churches, dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These three creeds are virtually sacrosanct, having only been slightly amended a few times in their history. For example, another of the creeds, the Belgic Confession (1561), makes a number of condemnatory remarks about Anabaptist (Mennonite) Christians. When it was decided that this was an uncharitable way of referring to fellow Christians, a footnote was inserted in 1985 to express regret about this characterization. Though widely contested, the CRC Synod’s decision to declare all homosexual practice as unchaste will be inserted in all future editions of the CRC’s version of the Heidelberg Catechism, and all Christian Reformed ministers and office bearers (elders and deacons) must sign their concurrence or face “discipline.”

William Shakespeare once wrote: “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Unfortunately, equating discipline with punishment is like making a rose smell like a skunk cabbage.