From my own personal experience, I have not seen guilt achieve a lot in the pursuit of growth. By guilt, I do not mean guilt for sin, but guilt that one should be a good and mature believer. I was preaching a sermon this morning on John 15:5 this morning and spoke on how trying to achieve good things out of our own effort only leads to burnout. Instead, I said that we needed service to come from an overflow of the heart. However, in some classes and books, I am hearing about the need to use discipline and guilt for helping others grow, especially in the early phases. Children will not go to church unless we force them, so why would we let them make the decision on their own? People need to take their faith seriously, but will not do so until they have an external reason like guilt to do so.
Let me list out some of my reasons against guilt in growth, but I'd like to hear your thoughts and see where we end up.
In the world of management, we are told to avoid carrots on a stick to motivate behavior. It is actually possible to make someone stop liking a hobby by giving them incentives to do the hobby. A tangible example of this demotivation comes from the sports world: professional athletes come to dislike the games they play since the game has transformed from meaning relaxation and pleasure to meaning money and fame. Similarly, when we change the motivation for doing good works and growing from participating in the joy of God to filling a hole in one's life, one starts to look away from the prize (God) and look toward fixing their sense of guilt as the ultimate objective.
In the discipleship setting and in the Bible, I have seen that growth and service happen as overflow of the heart. People do nice things for others because they want to. This is my ideal. When we allow people the freedom to avoid costly discipleship because they don't have the desire, we also give them the freedom and space to act out freely if they do want to grow.
Lastly, when we serve out of a sense of guilt, we turn others into objects of ministry. We stop seeing people and we start seeing keys to our guilt problem. We use others to fill a need. Thus, those who serve to fulfill their guilt are no better than those who want to feel good about themselves and care nothing for those who are being served.
On the other hand, I see that there are times that I DON'T want to do spiritual disciplines. In the past, I have been able to practice disciplines until I enjoyed doing them. In these times, I'm not quite sure what to think. Joy can't be forced, yet the disciplines need to be done, right? In this situation, is it better to abandon the discipline or force it because it will create growth long term (especially if one is a kid or a new believer). Is discipline the foundation for freedom? Is freedom the foundation for discipline? Is discipline needed at all? Please share and comment below.
