GOD AS TEACHER

Earlier this week a friend of mine texted me asking about this quote “The one whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.“ She wanted to know if this was from the Bible or from somewhere else.

The quotation is from Hebrews 12:6. There are various translations in which God\“punishes” "corrects," "disciplines" and “chastises.” Not that I have thought about this verse a lot in the past, but it strikes me at first as a little bit negative. 

Some translations can sound to me as if they are defending a God whose main occupation is to inflict punishment on his children. This would be the God whom a lot of people seem to believe in: A vengeful scorekeeper who exacts punishment for every little mistake we make.

My friend's inquiry made me look deeper into this quotation. Happily, as soon as I looked at the original Greek, the verse took on a different feel. The verb that is translated “chastises” is paideuei. My Greek lexicon lists three meanings for this verb: 

> to teach 

> to discipline 

> to punish. 

So you get your choice of how to translate it. “The one he loves he punishes” seems a little harsh at best. “The one he loves he teaches” on the other hand risks missing the point. So what about the middle road? “The one he loves disciplines?”

This third one makes a lot of sense to me as someone who spent over fifty years in the classroom helping high school boys to grow into young men. Kids have to learn that there are consequences for their actions, they have to learn where the limits are, they have to be taught the proper way to act. And so a teacher uses various methods such as keeping a kid after school, or giving a punish lesson or some other unpleasant exercise so the student will improve his behavior.

Now, thanks to this Greek verb, when I read that verse from Hebrews I will think of God as a loving and caring teacher, rather than as a vengeful, ill tempered disciplinarian.

This morning I began reflecting on What would happen to a couple of Jesus‘s parables in the gospel of Luke if the Lord were trying to tell us that God is into punishing.

“Which of you having 100 sheep and losing one would not leave the ninety-nine and seek out the lost sheep. And when he finds it, he beats it terribly so that it won’t wander off again.“

Or The story of the prodigal son: “When the father saw his son returning, he ran out to meet him And began to beat him severely As he deserved because of his ungrateful behavior.”

I hope that this rewriting of Jesus‘s parables strikes you as terribly irreverent. Our Lord told us these parables precisely to show that his heavenly Father is loving and forgiving. We can’t just decide to rewrite them.

May God our loving Father continue to guide us and teach us how to walk in His ways. Amen.