“I will walk about in freedom,
for I have sought out your precepts” (Ps 119:45).
In the beginning God builds
into human personality the capacity for free-will choices on the one hand, and
self-discipline on the other, intentionally creating dialogue partners who
voluntarily express their freedom within the blessing of his will and purpose.
Because God’s purpose for creation
is larger than any single person or group, he seeks to educate people from their
earliest years that their freedom is accountable to him and their
personal fulfillment contingent upon the degree to which they cooperate with
him.
God does this through the constant interplay of free will and
discipline that intersects every person’s social existence, starting with
parental rules and boundaries that nonetheless leave room for childhood expression
and exploration, moving into school systems with their behavioral codes, and
evolving into an adult lifestyle that must take into account the well-being of
others and civil law, alongside one’s freedom to pursue life, liberty, and
happiness.
In this ongoing human enterprise, God desires individuals
and communities to develop a holy self-regulation akin to that of the Trinity,
who live together with individual identities that interpenetrate one another in
self-transcending love, expressing the freedom of creative expression and the
discipline of guarding one another’s well-being.
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| Christian Trinity |
The Trinity's Plan for A Developmental Rhythm of Freedom
and Discipline
Infants, with their parent’s help, experience rudimentary forms of a
rhythm between freedom and discipline. They begin a lifelong growth path in
regulating inner states, like calming themselves down as they go off to sleep.
The parent ensures they are fed, changed, free of pain, well hugged and talked
with, yet allows the infant freedom to find their particular way of shifting
into a sleep state, a process that initially may include some crying, but
develops into the self-disciplined awareness of how to go to sleep peacefully.
When an infant begins to grasp and eat their favorite cereal, the parent offers
the freedom to explore other foods, within limits of safety and parental
sanity. The parent respects the infant’s freedom to stop eating when their internal
regulator signals “full,” yet removes food if it keeps getting thrown on the
floor, an opportunity for infants to absorb the discipline of social rules for
eating.
Toddlers are busy declaring their freedom to become the individuals they
are discovering themselves to be. They frequently do this by testing boundaries;
yet they need and want limits set for them, clearly and without much ado, so
that in spite of verbal or physical protests to the contrary, it is often a
relief for toddlers when parents step in and let them know who is in charge.
The freedom they experience feels overwhelming at times and needs the
counter-balance of fair limits set by parents. Toddlers slowly internalize this
external discipline, making it their own, as they learn the initial social
rules of interpersonal engagement.
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| Toddlers learning social rules |
Preschoolers like to challenge boundaries verbally and can be very
creative in doing so. “Why” questions and well-formed counter-arguments can
amaze and bemuse parents, distracting them from the underlying reality that
their child is controlling the situation yet again. Because the specter of
power struggles looms large, preschoolers respond well to a few essential
limits applied as consistently as possible. Then they feel the security of
exercising certain freedoms within the overarching safety of wise discipline.
Their social consciousness now includes a sense of guilt when they have done
something wrong, a sign that they are internalizing the discipline involved in
becoming an interpersonal self.
School age children are concerned with fairness. They respond to reason
and like being included on discussions of rules and the reasons for them. When
given responsibility for tasks that slightly exceed their capability and praise
for a job well done, a cooperative dynamic results in which they exercise their
freedom by complying with decisions that affect them, a process that in turn
develops increased accountability and self-discipline.
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| School Age Children Showing Fairness |
Adolescents experiment with newfound freedoms. Like toddlers, they push
boundaries: geographically, in terms of distances they travel away from home;
psychologically, in terms of less dependence upon parents; socially, in terms
of friends they make and groups they join; behaviorally, in terms of new ways
to define themselves as persons. This exploration can create conflict not only
with their parents but also within their developing conscience, an inner force
for restraint and ethical assessment of their actual behavior.
Because they are
now capable of abstract thought, adolescents can better stand outside behavior that is
troubling them and observe it more impartially. And more easily compare it, for
example, to how Christ might behave in a similar situation. They are intrigued by and like to discuss the
possible meaning of scriptures like, “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa
55:9). This kind of assessment process is part of the spiritual discipline
actualized in many adolescents, evident as potential in others.
Adults are more capable of integrating the rhythm of freedom and
discipline without the need to overly emphasize either extreme.
Sometimes young adults, after a fairly freewheeling adolescence, will
find a deeper relationship with Christ; yet at the same time overemphasize the
discipline side of this rhythm at the expense of freedom. This works fine for a
season, since the human psyche needs to assimilate truths of Christian faith
and doctrine to the point where the personality and human nature become more
spontaneously trustworthy.
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| Free Will and Discipline in Christ |
But once the principles are internalized and the
laws of God inscribed upon the heart, then persons can relax and trust the flow
of the Holy Spirit through their being, expressing greater behavioral freedom,
not in ways that are self-defeating, but in ways that are creative and
intriguing as they expand the meaning of God-with-us. They take in the beauty
of Paul’s insight: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1).
Even in the crises of illness, divorce, unemployment, empty-nest
syndrome, and advancing age, God wants people to combine the freedom of
ever-deepening trust in him with the discipline required to make it through a
crisis. He wants to enhance their disciplined choices with divine blessing,
strengthening their interpersonal selfhood, while simultaneously intensifying
their unity with the Trinity, for “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
freedom” (2 Cor 3:17).
Fro more, read:
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| Christian Personality Theory |
