The Holy Combination of Discipline and Grace
It is a fairly common realization, I think for most, that an apt word used to describe today's society would be ‘unhappy.’ Perhaps restless would also be a good word, as would awash or indifferent. Regardless of the word that you would pick, I do not believe that people today are evil or malicious. At least in the United states, I believe that many of us were sold a beautiful, enticing picture of all the things that would make them happy, if only we would undertake the actions necessary to achieve those things. This turned out to be quite contrary to reality, and it is certainly true that if something sounds too good to be true, it likely is.
Incessant complaining about the state of our culture is a topic that has been beaten to death. I do not intend to add another voice to that chorus. I also don't claim to be able to address all the pressing concerns that people have, like money, housing, drug use, or political differences. What I would like to do, however, is plant two seeds that may possibly allow you to view the world through a different lens. These seeds, I hope, will provide a framework through which the cacophony of problems may be quieted.
The devil is often depicted as a horrid creature with red skin, horns, a tail, and a pitchfork, but this is not what the devil looks like at all. This depiction of Satan comes from Early medieval artists, who wanted to associate Satan with false Pagan gods like Satyr and Pan. It has been greatly exaggerated in the modern era to the point where the depiction of Satan is almost comical. When looking at these depictions, one might be forgiven for thinking that the devil is not serious or is otherwise childish. As CS Lewis said, “the greatest trick that the devil has ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn't exist.” In reality, the devil is never physically described in the Bible, either in a negative or positive way.
In second Corinthians 11:14, Paul tells us that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness.” Notably, Paul doesn’t say that Satan is an angel of light, but rather that he appears as one. It should make every Christian wary that the most heinous of evils can be disguised as the most Godliest of beings. As author Tucker Max has stated, the devil doesn't come dressed in a pointy red cap - he comes dressed as everything you have ever wanted.
I think it is reasonable to say that many anxieties begin as blessings. They tell you to go to college and pay tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree that will pay itself off in the long run. Today, student loan debt is nearly $2 trillion. They tell you that you can have casual sex with whoever you want, and yet we have seen an unprecedented rise in anxiety, depression, and body image issues. They tell you to chase your career at the expense of a family, and yet we see record suicides in young adults. They tell you that you can have everything you want as long as you follow your heart, but your heart often wants things that end up hurting you. How can this be? The reality of the human experience, of the condition of your soul, is that evil lurks where you least expect it. Anyone who tells you that you can have everything you want with no downsides is, most assuredly, your adversary (Satan).
To be clear, life is not a depressing, nihilistic experience. It is very easy, I would argue perhaps even the norm, to live a good life for most people in most periods in history. The way to do this is to balance two priorities: grace and discipline.
We begin with discipline for the simple reason that it is actually the easier of the two to understand. Discipline opens doors where excess leads one astray.
In Neil Ferguson's book Empire, in which he chronicles the rise of the British Empire, he takes special care to describe how England went from one of the poorer European countries, that had no colonies, to the world's largest empire. Perhaps one of the most significant adaptations that England made was to copy the Dutch system of banking. The Dutch had already established numerous colonies across the world and had become economically decadent because of it. Instead of resigning themselves to last place, or starting a war with the Dutch, the English copied the way that the Dutch handled complex arrangements such as credit, private-public partnerships, interest, and contractual obligations. While these may seem obvious to us today, they actually require a great deal of economic and mathematical understanding. Needless to say, these are not topics for the faint of heart. Many societies, even still today, actively resist adopting these institutions. There is a clear discrepancy in wealth and standard of living between the nations who engage in these practices regularly and those who do not. Despite being crucially important for societal development, few people genuinely want to be part of these institutions. Credit and interest are unglamorous, to say the last. However, nations which genuinely want to grow and advance gladly undertake the burden that is adopting institutions like trade, credit, banking, and more. They do this because the end result is more important than the immediate pain felt in the action. Long-term gains in spite of short-term pain is the core of discipline.
It is quantifiably proven that discipline leads people to happier, more fulfilling lives. Those who are married are significantly happier than people who stay single. Every study that has been conducted on this subject concludes that married people are much happier in the long run than people who engage in casual sex or persistent singleness. Being married requires much more discipline than being single, and may appear more difficult on the surface. Likewise, people who take care of their body report significantly higher levels of life satisfaction over people who do not. I knew a man in college who would lift weights for four hours every single day. He eventually became a competitive bodybuilder and was admired for his dedication in our community. I asked him once what he enjoyed most about lifting weights. His reply was surprising: “I actually hate lifting weights,” he told me. “The process is awful. But I enjoy the end result.”
This is not the say that all processes are difficult all the time. Many people quite enjoy marriage, or reading books, or learning new skills, or generally bettering themselves. But to do so with the repetition that makes greatness requires great discipline. The role of discipline in the happiness of our society is this: if something sounds too good to be true, it generally is. When one tells us that we can have everything we want with no downsides, we must have the discipline to know that this is not true. True happiness comes in repetition of things that are difficult in the moment but produce long lasting benefits.
We must also remember that untempered discipline may lead directly to arrogance. We must balance this virtue with grace. It is often said that mercy is when God does not give us that which we deserve, and grace is when God gives us good things that we do not deserve. When we apply grace to others, we must keep this in mind: that to be gracious is to recognize the flaws in others and the flaws in ourselves and to hold neither one against its owner. Grace is the ability to recognize a blemish and to be able to call it a blemish, and yet still have no personal disdain against the person, be it another or ourselves, that owns that flaw.
Whether you are religious or secular, I encourage you to read this passage through either lens as I believe it applies to both. I have once had it described to me that Jesus Christ’s perfection is a ten on a scale between one and ten, and that you or I are perhaps a three on a good day. The gap between our three and Jesus’s ten would normally bring condemnation upon us, but Christ’s sacrifice on the cross filled that gap with grace and covered our sins (i.e., the gap) with love. This is how we ought to view ourselves and how we ought to view others. Nobody is perfect, but when we look upon others or ourselves with condemnation, we will begin to see them and ourselves as evil, incompetent, and unworthy. Viewing ourselves and others in the way that Jesus views us, with compassion and empathy for the gap between perfection and reality, has revolutionized the world.
As pastor Tim Keller once stated, “forgiveness is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost upon yourself.” In practice, We have likely seen common examples of this. The bully at school usually has a tough home life. The person committing violence on the street likely grew up without a dad. The girl who said that nasty thing to us in middle school likely had the same thing said to her once. When we view these actions through the lens of grace, it takes the edge of hatred away and replaces it with empathy.
Just as untempered discipline leads to arrogance, so too does untempered grace lead to complacency. The sweet spot of life is to combine the two so as not to become arrogant and not to allow yourself to be taken advantage of. In practice, this looks like forgiveness for those who have wronged you and the discipline to ensure that it never happens again. While Millennials may have disdain for the Baby Boom generation for say, the current housing market, we must also acknowledge that they did the best they could with the information that they had at the time. It was never their intent to saddle the next generation with unrealistic housing costs, despite the fact that this is exactly what happened. It is now the current generation’s burden to bear, in the form of discipline, to undo the wrongs of the previous generation.
Another application of this thought process may be in modern cultural and political discourse. Nobody does evil knowing that it is evil. The path to hell is paved in gold, and it looks beautiful. In reality, the most heinous of evils is always done in the name of good. Pick the most common political opponent you have - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. Every single one of them believed that what they were doing was for the benefit of their people, but in doing so, created the most hellacious atrocities to ever exist on our planet. In this way, we may view others who have competing ideologies to ours not as evil, but as misguided (often catastrophically) attempts to enact good.
Today, we miss this mentality in almost all of our debates. Liberals may be reminded that conservatives do not hate the LGBT community, nor immigrants, nor any other minority demographic. Instead, the conservative approach to these issues is one of love in that enacting policies which may seem tough or callous on the outside are in reality just a form of discipline that will lead to greater prosperity and life satisfaction for all. Conservatives may be reminded that the progressive pursuit of single-payer healthcare isn’t done out of a desire to bankrupt the nation, but to save lives and ease suffering.
We must also be aware of this paradigm in the small moments in each and every one of our own lives. It is a reoccurring theme for those who engage in consistent drug use or casual sex to feel self loathing and hatred. We must resist this temptation as much as we resist these activities themselves. After all, drugs and sex are, by strict definition, very fun. For this we must have grace; avoiding these sins is extremely difficult. Unfortunately, consistently engaging in these practices will destroy us in the long run, and we must practice discipline to ensure that we do not get snared in their trap. While these are obvious examples, the black hole of destructive behaviors happens all over our lives. Some people chase money, others chase status and social clout. Some like to argue for the sake of arguing, and some like being mean because they enjoy the feeling of superiority. We must acknowledge that we are all tempted by these sins, but we must also admit that this is not away that life ought to be lived and must resist it with every fiber of our being.
This resistance can be extremely difficult. After all, the things that end up destroying us are, in some capacity, good things worth having in moderation. Food is good, but eating as much as you want whenever you want will ruin your life. Having a network and wealth is good when it provides stability and safety, but when overdone it becomes an idol and a grave sin, for it will be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
After 40 days of fasting in the desert, Satan tempted Jesus with bread. Not women, not money, not revenge on his enemies. Simply bread to a starving man. This is how our adversary stalks us; he finds your weak spot and tells you that you can have it without any consequences; that having it will be beautiful and will be everything you've ever wanted. But if Hollywood has taught us anything, it's that this is a lie. Those who have everything, including money, status, fame, and power often end up paranoid, drug addicted, and have tragic ends.
Dennis Kinlaw once said this: “Satan disguises submission to himself under the rules of personal autonomy. He never asks us to become his servants. Never once did the serpent say to Eve, “I want to be your master.” The shift in commitment is never from Christ to evil, it is always from Christ to self. Instead of his will, self-interest now rules and what I want reigns. And that is the essence of sin.”
Evil never looks like evil. Instead, it looks beautiful and, as CS Lewis reminds us, the reader is advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Do not be caught adhering to the phrase “follow your heart.” Do not believe the lies that excess and gluttony will have no consequence for you. If something sounds too good to be true, it is. Only by finding the sweet spot between discipline and grace can we shed the heavy burden of malice and also strengthen ourselves to resist evil and temptation.
