Bishop Robert Barron explained in his most recent Sunday sermon about the Letter to the Hebrews explains how limiting freedom brings one closer to God.
On Sunday, the second reading of the Mass was from the Letter to the Hebrews. It read,
Brothers and sisters, You have forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as children: "My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges." Endure your trials as "discipline"; God treats you as sons. For what "son" is there whom his father does not discipline? At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.
So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed.
While discussing this passage Bishop Barron explained, “That word’s interesting ‘disciplina.’ It’s from the Latin word discere. Disciple comes from the same word because it means to learn. Huh, discipline, no arbitrary, cruel imposition. No, no. discipline properly understood is a learning process. In Greek, there’s that lovely play, Mathein and Pathein. Mathein, think mathematic. Mathein means like to learn. Pathein is to suffer. Very often, our learning comes from our suffering. Bring them together, God disciplines those he loves. And, again, love is to will the good of the other. God wants to teach, he wants to love someone who’s deep in sin that will look like and feel like punishment.”
“Again, parents, you know what I’m talking about, or anyone that remembers their childhood, coming of age,” he continued. “Let’s begin with a toddler, who’s having a tantrum. A tantrum means that he’s not getting his way. His will is just completely set against what’s best for him and for those around him. So the parent will say, ‘It’s a timeout for you.’ I’ve watched parents do it. It’s kind of interesting to me how the kids will cooperate with it. Timeout and they put the kid in the corner and you got to be there for 5 minutes or whatever it is.”
“Well, what are they doing there? They’re stopping the resistance of the kid’s will. They’re compelling him to stop this destructive behavior, destructive to himself and to to others. They’re disciplining the child,” he explained. “Now, parents that never do that, ‘Oh! Everything my kid does is great. I’m never going to have a timeout.’ Yeah, well, welcome to complete dysfunction in that child.”
Next, he used Jonah as an example, “Think now in the Bible, Jonah is told what to do by God, ‘Go east by land.’ And Jonah went west by sea. He was throwing a tantrum if you want. What does God do? The great fish swallows him up. That’s a disciplining of his will. It’s a kind of timeout. It’s stopping Jonah in his rebellion and then limiting his freedom to bring him back to where God wants him to be.”
He then rhetorically asked, “Friends, fellow sinners here, listen to me, can we sometimes understand the suffering we’re going through as a kind of divine restriction of our freedom so as to bring us back where we need to be?”
The discipline isn't harsh - neither is the limiting.
One must ask, which is better? My way? Or God's way? Who has the better plan?
Surrender becomes easy.