(RNS) Saturday’s Gospel Choir performance turned on whether we were disciplined or diverted.

If we were disciplined, we would watch the director closely, get our dynamics just right, make our cutoffs crisply, and perform admirably. Yet by allowing ourselves to be diverted just a bit, we made glorious music.

We focused on that middle space where God resides. Like other singers in this Gospel Festival, we felt the driving beat and heard the words. The text turned to creative tension, as words on a page unleashed the deep yearning that is faith.

By allowing ourselves to be diverted, we saw other singers not as competition but as fellow pilgrims in a difficult world where, against all logic, we “lift our eyes to the hills, knowing our help is coming from God.”

We are born diverted. Watch a baby’s eyes dart eagerly as its fast-growing brain feasts on a fascinating world and you’ll see what I mean. On into childhood and adulthood, we populate our minds by taking it all in, not by focusing, as parents, teachers and employers always demand of us.

The great tragedy of modern childhood commences when a child gets a focus-demanding, discipline-rewarding instrument like a video game or television, or is forced into learning a singular skill because parents think it will improve college prospects.

There’s no room for the dreaming that feeds imagination, no room for the imagining that learns to see the other, no room for seeing the “other” that produces character, no room for the character-building that produces freedom, no room for the freedom that nurtures life.

Discipline does lead to power. The disciplined student gets better grades. The disciplined worker gets better evaluations. The disciplined political party wins elections.

Disciplined work might earn wealth, but a healthy family is shaped by kindness, sharing and joy amid suffering. Discipline might finance a wealthy and powerful nation, but a just, productive, democratic, freedom-loving society takes more than Mammon.

Look at the relentless determination of the mega-wealthy in America to seize more wealth, more land, more power, more privilege. They have become like locusts in a feeding frenzy. And yet the empty hole in their lives remains unfilled.

Look at the fear of freedom that drives right-wingers to attack freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to organize, freedom to believe and to learn. They might have the votes to imprison strikers, muzzle newspapers, abolish unions, write narrow religious doctrine into law, intimidate academics, and eliminate financial security for the middle class. But locusts leave behind a parched land that is unable to support life.

The ascendancy of discipline can be self-defeating. Corporate recruiters, for example, have begun to target highly disciplined engineering and finance students at large state universities. Wiser heads, however, worry about a loss of the creative spark and imagination that come from the liberal arts, and thus the loss of inventiveness and entrepreneurial boldness that are essential for a healthy economy.

A healthy society seems to arise when free people can earn a living and find joy and purpose in the life they earn; when going off to work is balanced by coming home to love; when diligence and daydreaming are both valued; when clothing the body and liberating the soul both matter; when community values — not the disciplined greed of the powerful — sets the course.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter (at)tomehrich.)