The call to discipline

Talking recently with my oldest son, a college student, about an oil painting class he had just completed, I asked him how the class had been. "Good," he replied, and yet his response was subdued. Something was left unpaid. I pressed him a bit. He said he had realized during the class, his first applied arts class at the college level, that he was "only a beginner" and that his previous artistic work had "not been very disciplined."

My son had done art work and projects throughout elementary and secondary school, much of it quite interesting and well-recognized. He may even have thought of himself as an "artist." In this class, however, he learned that he was only a beginner and that his work as an artist to this point had not been disciplined--a difficult but useful learning. He discovered that he had not yet learned or mastered basic skills and techniques essential to the art of painting.

This experience may also suggest something of the challenge of speaking of disciplines of faith in society and in the church. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a discipline is "training that is expected to produce a specified character or pattern of behavior." My hunch is there is a parallel between my son's oil painting experience and being a Christian today. Many people in our society and in our churches do not think of being Christian as a discipline, something that requires particular training, skills, or focus. Stanley Hauerwas observes that "we have underwritten a voluntaristic conception of Christian faith, which presupposes that one can become a Christian without training."(1) In part, this reflects an understanding of Christian faith as something almost exclusively individual and personal. Each person's experience and preferences become both primary source and authority in matters of faith.

To speak of "disciplines of faith" is to say there are particular skills and practices that constitute being a Christian and that acquiring these will ask at least as much of us as acquiring the skills of an art form, a craft, or an athletic endeavor. This may be a different and challenging perspective. Not only is Christian faith quite commonly thought of as individual and personal, but the church today seems reluctant or unwilling to...