Chastise is a word we don’t hear very often because it has such a negative connotation to it. Yet, it merely means the same as being punished verbally and possibly physically after you have done something you shouldn’t have been doing. I remember, as a young boy, the year before I was old enough to go to school. I was the youngest in the family at that time, and my older brother and sisters were all in school. I spent my days listlessly around the yard or house passing time until they got home from school, so I could have someone to play with. This story takes place in the fall of 1939, and my dad had an old 1923–24 Essex. The car only started by cranking it and quite often my dad couldn’t get it started at all, so it remained in the yard, and dad would walk the mile or two into town to work. One day, I decided that I would get in dad’s Essex and pretend that I was driving it, even though I couldn’t see out the windshield. I sat in the drivers seat and commenced to move the steering wheel back and forth and make variable humming sounds like the car was going. I must have gotten carried away in my ‘pretend driving’ because I accidentally knocked the gear shift into neutral.
Before I knew It, the car started moving. It had been parked on a slight slope and it rolled down in front of our house through a barbed wire fence into our neighbors cow pasture. It came to a stop about 200 feet from where it started, just missing our neighbor’s cow. The ride was rough as I was bouncing up and down in that big seat barely able to hang onto the steering wheel. That was punishment enough, but I knew that was not the end of it. When dad got home that night and saw his car in the neighbors pasture with the fence broken, his greeting to his little boy was not a pleasant one. His chastisement was not verbal at first, he merely took me by the hand and led me down into the basement where there was a root cellar off the basement room. In that root cellar is where dad kept his razor strap, hung conveniently on a nail for times when it was necessary to train us. He laid me over his knees and gave me a couple of swats across my bottom. They always stung but he was never cruel. Then he chastised me verbally for a few minutes and went about correcting what I had done by moving the car back into our yard and fixing the fence. Even though, I believe, what my dad did to me was an important part of my upbringing, his training methods would be frowned on in today’s world.
Though Heavenly Father doesn’t lay us over His knees, He definitely chastises those He loves and I’m sure that being laid over His knees would probably have been a preferred option. The Doctrine and Covenants 105:6 teaches us this doctrine “And my people must needs be chastened until they learn obedience, if it must needs be, by the things which they suffer.”
His chastisement is very similar to a loving parent. If a parent let a child do whatever he was inclined to do, regardless of the damage or imposition on others, that child would never learn appropriate social behavior and likely end up being beaten or even in prison one day. “Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you whom I love, and whom I love I also chasten that their sins may be forgiven, for with the chastisement I prepare a way for their deliverance in all things out of temptation, and I have loved you—Wherefore, ye must needs be chastened and stand rebuked before my face;” (D&C 95:1–2)
Some people cannot endure chastening and instead of learning from their disobedient behavior they rebel against authority and ostracise themselves from their communities. They are often found moving from one place to another because of their rebellious nature. “For all those who will not endure chastening, but deny me, cannot be sanctified.” (D&C 101:4–5) Because I was chastised as a child for things I shouldn’t have done, I feel that I am a better person than I would have been without chastisement. Our God is a God of order and obedience to God’s, or even, societal rules is a prerequisite to order whether that be in our homes, our schools, our work places, or in our society, as a whole. Chastisement is only a necessary part of that equation because of the nature of most human beings.
God bless us to be an orderly people and that means a, sometimes, chastised people.