Apple-Nailing

I’m often asked how we handle discipline here at Paideia.  Parents, rightfully so, want to know how we respond to the poor choices students will invariably make during the ebb and flow of a typical school year.  If we dig a little deeper and go beyond the surface of this question, we find a great truth in the gospel of Luke that has a direct impact upon our daily rhythms in and out of the classrooms.  While it’s not your typical passage associated with discipline, it cuts right to the heart of the matter and offers a powerful insight into the ethos of our school.  It represents the “why” behind our discipline approach.  

In Luke 6, Jesus uses an analogy from the surrounding terrain when he connects a tree and the fruit it bears with our choices in life.  “No good tree bears bad fruit…Each tree is recognized for its own fruit.”  This simple, yet profound analogy, hammers the point home that just like we would never expect to find apples on a fig tree, so too, we would never expect to find good things flowing from a heart where evil resides.  The words we choose, and the actions we live out, grow from within our root system.  They are found in our heart.  If we are going to talk about discipline, we need to talk about the heart.    

Paul Tripp, a pastor and professor, relates a story about an apple tree in his backyard that highlights this important truth.  In his story he imagines what would happen if this particular tree produced horrible apples year after year.  After a brief conversation with his wife about what can be done to fix their apple tree, he decides to fix it using a tall ladder, some branch cutters, a nail gun and three bushels of red delicious apples.  He quickly cuts off the old apples and begins to nail the delicious red apples all over the tree.  From a distance, 50 feet away, the apple tree now looks like a good one, but we all know it isn’t.  In fact, we all know what will happen to those apples.  They will rot.  This will happen because they are not connected to the life-giving source of the tree.  In the end, his solution of nailing apples onto the tree does not address the real issue.  

So it is with discipline, if we only focus on the outward behavior, we will miss the greater opportunity to shape and mold a child’s heart.  Discipline is about discipleship.  Its goal is heart-obedience rather than mere rule-following, good manners and self-control.  We recognize that our student’s choices have more to do with what is happening inside of them rather than what is happening outside of them.  Therefore, we spend a great deal of time modeling, teaching and cultivating godly virtues with an eye for nourishing each student’s heart.       

Jesus was clear.  The real battle is the heart.  When we are apple-nailing, we miss the heart and the underlying root system for real-life change.