Earlier this month, Hannah and I started teaching some regular classes in at the school at Happy Home. We taught “Our Values” to class 2,3, and 4, and decided to teach math to class 1. The schedule was very flexible, so we would get lunch break anytime from between 12-2pm.
Class 1 has been affectionately named “the Octagon” (some sort of free-for-all wrestling ring) by the men on our team, so you can guess what it’s like in there. Just like the little kids Bible Lessons, all is chaos, as the kids chatter to themselves and stand on chairs. On a particular rowdy day, Hannah and I decided that it could go on no longer and it was time to take matters into our own hands.
First we drew three circles on the board. Each circle represented a strike. If they were rowdy and struck out three times, we wouldn’t play games at the end of class, we told them. The class struck out in 15 minutes. We decided to switch gears and make the class copy out class rules three times each. This turned out to be an extremely hard task for some of the kids. You must finish copying out the rules before leaving class for lunch, we said. But lunch was delayed and everyone was done…so we changed it to a five minute silent detention when lunch was ready. Lunch turned out not to be ready for 45 minutes, so we assigned silent reading. Still the kids did not pay attention, so we gave extra detention minutes to individuals. It wasn’t until we made the kids stay indoors, as all the other classes ran out for lunch, that they really got it. There were five minutes of heavy, meek, complete silence before we let the kids go out.
At first I was hit with a wave of remorse. They were just little kids, and 45 minutes is a long time for them. Most of the kids even fell innocently asleep. Pushpa, one of our best students, said she was scared and we were like policemen. Had we done wrong?
The next time we entered the classroom, we held our breaths. What would await us? To our pleasant surprise, as soon as we entered class, the kids’ chatter died down and they took their seats. Even the worst behaved kid was paying attention. In fact, he was shouting “auntie, auntie!” and all the class wanted us to come back to teach. It was amazing.
As we were walking away from the classroom that first day of discipline, something Hannah said really hit me. “I just want these kids to do well,” she exclaimed. “They have so little, I just want them to have the best that they can.” That’s right – strict as we are, it’s all because we love them, so that they can grow. And maybe the kids can sense that, that we don’t discipline to create fear as the other teachers do, but we lay out rules and follow through with them, firmly but gently, out of love for them.
This reminded me of something our team read recently about God in Hosea 2. Hosea is a book in the Bible about how God views his relationship with us, his created people, just as a husband to a wife. The wife was not a good wife; she was adulterous and turned to other lovers and lusts, believing that they gave her love, satisfaction, and security, just as we turn away from God and seek our satisfaction in the instant gratifications, pleasures, and idols of the world. So God disciplines her. He takes away her “wool and linen”, “grain and new wine and oil”, the things she thought her lovers gave her but in fact, He gave her. He blocks her path so that she experiences His absence and the futility of her adultery. Just like we disciplined the kids and caused them discomfort for two hours so they could pay better attention for a lifetime, so the Lord disciplined us (his “wife”) to turn us back to Him, our Lover, the source of our joy and satisfaction, the one we were created for.
“The Lord disciplines those He loves”, it says in the Bible. But even more, in Isaiah the LORD says that “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you.” (Is 54:7-8). I have learned through this experience that kids need discipline, and if they sense that the motive behind it is love, they will respond to and be thankful for it. But also, we need discipline. We are born into a world that operates in sin. The Lord lovingly rebukes us, harsh though it may seem sometimes, so that for a moment’s pain we can enjoy what is good for us forever.
