Discipline Brings Freedom – Sunday, August 05, 1984
Whether it is accomplished early or late in life, eventually we all must learn to discipline ourselves and our desires. Many lives have been ruined by uncontrolled appetites, and they often run rampant in summer, with its relaxed and laid-back pace. There seems to be an increased desire for more thrills, more indulgence, more possession of material things.
The irony to discipline is that it often carries a negative connotation. We believe disciplining ourselves is done at the expense of limiting our freedom. We think that more of one means less of the other. If we step back for an objective view, it becomes obvious that freedom and discipline are not trade-offs. There can, in fact, be high freedom coupled with a great amount of discipline. It occurs when we voluntarily impose self-discipline, when we set our own goals, when we impose order on ourselves.
Self-discipline is essential for self-renewal, and summer is a good time to renew ourselves mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Most of us go through life only partially aware of our abilities, because getting to know ourselves is the most difficult thing we can do—and the most inconvenient, too. We always employ an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from ourselves.
John Gardner once said, “More often than not we don’t want to know ourselves, don’t want to depend on ourselves, don’t want to live with ourselves. (And) by middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.”1
In the Bible, praise is given, not to the strong man who “Taketh a city,” but to the stronger man who “Ruleth his own spirit.” The stronger man is he, who, by discipline, exercises a constant control over his thoughts, his speech and his acts. Without discipline, there is no order in our lives. The most self-reliant, self-governing man or woman is always under discipline, and the more perfect the discipline, the higher will be his or her moral condition.
So, before another summer comes to a close, hopefully we will take some time for personal reflection and realize that self-mastery—the ability to govern ourselves properly through self-discipline—is the only road to true and lasting freedom.
1 John W Gardner, “Self-Renewal,” Self-Renewal, Harper and Row 1964 p. 15
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August 05, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,868