Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back. – Deuteronomy 30:4

Today’s Scripture Reading (September 29, 2012): Deuteronomy 30

We do not really practice church discipline anymore. It makes us very uncomfortable and we feel judgmental, things that we are characterized as being but actually resist. But the biblical injunction against judging is not as total as maybe we would like it. The problem is that we usually judge the wrong people. The ones that the church tends to judge are those outside of the church – and those are precisely the ones that we are commanded not to judge. I have a few Islamic acquaintances. Not surprisingly they do not shape their lives according to the Bible. Instead, they shape their lives according to their understanding of the teachings of the Qur’an. What we do not always understand is that they should do precisely that – they should order their lives according to their religious beliefs, even when those beliefs differ from mine. And the Bible actually says that I should not judge them, that God will. I am not sure what criteria he will use, but then there is no reason why I should. That is his department.

But I am to judge those that say they are with me in my faith. The idea is not that we will become legalistic, but rather that we will keep each other grounded in the faith. It is what traditionally has been called church discipline. Church discipline covers a wide variety of activities, from teaching and education to the removal of some privileges or even removal from the faith group. But the goal is always the same – to bring them back as productive members of the faith. The goal of church discipline should always be to strengthen, and never to weaken or humiliate or defeat the person in question.

And that is God’s reason for disciplining us. There is a little foreshadowing in these words spoken to a fledgling nation. The day would come when their disbelief and sin - their disinterest in the things of God and the prophecies of God and their unwillingness to submit to the discipline of God – when all of this would force God’s hand to finally banish the nation from the land that he was at this moment giving to them. The day would come when a nation would wake up in a strange land beside an unknown river. But even there God would be with them – and God would bring them back.

No matter how far you roam, or where church discipline may take you, God is always in the business of bringing people back.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 31