On The Biblical Case for Spanking Our Kids (or, uh, Maybe Not)

Since I have written a book on someone else’s blog, I thought I should probably move it over here to mine.  For some reason, this woman’s posts really grabbed me.  Those of you who’ve known me for some years will recognize her posts, because they sound almost word-for-word like the ones I used to write.  You can read her post on Thoughts from the Word on Discipline here (mainly about spanking) and her post that I responded to is right here, titled, “Spanking: God’s Way.”  Here are some of my thoughts in response [though the second comment quoted below is under moderation, so I'm not sure if it will be allowed on the blog or not yet], complete with the usual lack-of-editing errors:

I’m someone who once wrote, practically word-for-word, your same thoughts on discipline. After really turning the Scriptures upside down, I have re-framed everything. For example, the verses that seem to be advocating using the rod on our children are actually using the Hebrew word for teenage boys, NOT little toddlers. (The main/only verses I could find about toddlers were things about dandling/cuddling them on the knees, etc).

In other words, if we want to take the Scriptures literally, we’ll use the rod verses to advocate beating our older teens, not to spank little kids.

I’m not anti-spanking, so don’t get me wrong. I just started incorporating a lot more Scripture into my childrearing philosophy, as opposed to one particular flavor of it. The way my Parent led me as a babe and as a toddler/preschooler in the faith was so utterly gentle, so utterly PATIENT, so utterly forgiving of all my many many many (many!) foibles and flaws. Yes, He has brought the rod down on me, but it has been only very rarely. Very rarely. And even in those moments, I felt so very treasured and loved.

So these parenting books today that make us think we can actually shepherd a child’s heart though the use of the rod get me really frustrated, because in the name of “taking the Bible literally,” we’re actually not taking it literally at all. lol… We’re using verses that talk about beating teenagers (in a culture where beatings were common punishment for adults) and using them to tell parents they are “commanded” to spank their kids. When that’s actually not the “literal” meaning of the proverbs at all.

Also, what’s with the typical childrearing books and their concept of spanking a child into righteousness? I totally bought into that, too, and yet never considered how antithetical it is to the Gospel. Jesus wouldn’t have had to come at all if we could have been spanked into righteousness. The Law would’ve worked just fine, you know?

Anyways, all that to say that I now strive to parent in ways that are HEAVY in the things the NT tells us to be heavy in: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control.

I found that my former authoritarian style was a lot more about ME getting MY way (obey me now) than it was me growing in patience and gentleness. Don’t get me wrong: mom’s word is still law in our house. My kids obey. But I’m a lot different in how I go about helping my kids learn that.

Before, I demanded that they obey the first time, every time, instantly—-or pay the price of a spanking. But, er, that’s not reflective at ALL of how God parented me as a young babe. Ouch. And I want to reflect Him in my parenting. He was never standing over me with a switch.

And would I function best if I knew that someone was going to swat me everytime I failed to be perfect? Who in the world could thrive in that kind of environment???

As Katie shared so eloquently above, we just can’t go wrong with gentleness and with giving a young child the benefit of the doubt (instead of always seeing rebellion in everything they do). But you CAN really go wrong when you are so blinded by “enforcing obedience” and “nipping out rebellion” that you righteously continue harming your child in the name of so-called “Biblical” parenting.

My heart, like Katie’s, breaks over some of the things I did in the name of Biblical discipline with my first kids. I truly thought I was right (I was a follower of the Pearls) and was doing the best by my kids. But now, I can’t tell you enough how much I regret, how badly I wish I could go back and redo those years. And I am SO SO SO beyond grateful that God, in His mercy, helped me walk out of my miscomprehension of Scripture.

For what it’s worth, one of the best best best books I’ve ever read on parenting Biblically is by VanVonderan, “Families Where Grace is in Place.” It’s hands-down one of the most encouraging, uplifting, strengthening things I’ve ever gotten my hands on.

I read it after coming out of the authoritarian parenting paradigm I’d had, when I began checking out a lot of “grace-based” parenting books but was mostly really turned off by them. Someone told me that I had to get Families Where Grace is in Place and I finally did…after finding it waaay cheap on Amazon’s used book section. Wow. VanVonderan’s book is very conservative, very Scripture centered, and yet possibly one of the most challenging and edifying books on family life that I’ve ever come across.

And, btw, since you mentioned not wanting to take the easy way out, I have to say that parenting-via-spanking-all-disobedience was a LOT easier and faster than the way I parent now. The way I parent now requires me to actually form relationships. Ugh. Before, when I was authoritarian, it was my way or you paid the price, the end, no discussion. It was a lot less demanding on my to parent that way than to engage with the kid (and to consider what’s going on in his head) before I take action. Walking with the fruit of the Spirit brimming off my vine towards my kids is a LOT more work.

With warmth,
Molly
Mom of Five

and then later, this,

It was Nancy Campbell of Above Rubies that first said something about Hebrew having a whole lot of words for children–18 or 20 specific words, if I remember correctly, each one meaning a different stage in development/age. She wasn’t talking about discipline there, but still, it made a little flag go up in my brain and I thought I should probably go check it out (during this time, we followed the Pearl’s methods, which advocate switching crawling babies in order to train them to obey “no-touch” areas, etc, and claiming that such techniques are thoroughly biblical).

As for tools, it doesn’t take anything special: a Strong’s concordance will do just fine, for starters. I would later purchase a book by a conservative homeschool leader, Clay Clarkson, called, “Heartfelt Discipline” where he did a big study on the rod in Scripture and completely changed his former “spank, it’s God’s way!” position because of what he found there. So that is a great resource if you want someone else to do a lot of the work for you, because he wrote a lot of what I slowly found on my own. *grins*

For example, Proverbs 23: “Withhold not correction from the child: for [if] thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”

We often use that verse “literally” to teach that God wants us to spank our children. (And some people use that verse to teach that spankings will cause our children to be righteous, which goes completely against the Gospel. If spankings caused righteousness, Jesus wouldn’t have had to come—God could have just spanked us all).

But in using this verse “literally” to teach that God wants us to spank our kids, we are actually NOT using it literally at ALL. Using a simple Strong’s Concordance, you can look up the word “child” there and see that it’s na’ar, which isn’t a young child at all, but was used by the Jews to describe a young man, a teen-age boy. One dictionary said that the word was used to emphasize a lion’s roar, that a na’ar is meant to describe a boy who is beginning to grow his lion’s mane. In other words, the scruffy beard of a boy turning into a man.

This is, like, talking about 16-20 year olds, in other words! And it’s not talking about “spanking” them with a paddle or something, but beating them with an actual rod. It makes sense: in this culture, a wayward youth is in for being beaten by the city officials. It will probably be a lot more beneficial for the kid if his father gets ahold of him first and beats him, hoping to save him from future pain. In OT culture, this was wise advice. Is it wise advice to follow this proverb literally NOW? Are the proverbs intended to be taken literally as in point-blank hard-fact promises, or are they wise sayings?

When the proverb tells us that the righteous man WILL be a wealthy man, is that always true and a 100% promise from God that we can hold on to, or is that *generally* true (because it’s generally true that righteous people will work hard and do a good job, therefore increasing wealth). When righteous men die in poverty and famine, is God’s word a lie? No–because the proverbs are wisdom statements—they are telling us general truths, wise sayings.

They are not intended to be taken as if they are literal steps in a Toyota instruction manual. They are words to chew on, ponder, and apply to our own unique circumstances. In other words, I’m not going to take Proverbs 23 literally and beat my teenage son with a huge walking stick. But I can learn from that Proverb, that parental guidance sometimes needs to take the form of tough love—that it’s a good idea for me to let my teenagers face the consequences of poor decisions NOW, rather than to face them as full emancipated adults when the consequences will be that much more worse.

I’m not actually opposed to spanking—though I spank pretty rarely now compared to my previous days when I thought that spanking was the #1 tool God wanted me to use in discipline—I’m just opposed to using the Bible to teach spanking (because the sort of spanking we do in America is a cultural parenting thing, NOT a Biblical thing. There is nothing of the sort in the Bible—when you hear or read someone giving all the steps to spanking a kid, it’s NOT in the bible. They are making it up—it’s extra-Biblical. (I don’t care if someone does that, what I care about is when they claim they are being Biblical).

And when you hear someone tell you that the Biblical rod is meant to be a switch or a paddle or something like that, that’s not actually Biblical. Again, they are being extra-Biblical. And when you hear someone tell you that the Biblical way to discipline toddlers is to spank them, that’s just plain NOT in the Bible.

The literal Biblical rod is a huge thick rod much like a walking stick, the same sort used for beating thieves and fools (and yes, it can kill you—I believe it’s Leviticus that talks about what to do when a master has killed his servant by beating him with the rod).

[So I went to look at the Jews themselves---when I was very much a pro-spanking person---in order to prove that the Jews did practice physicial discipline on their children, but...didn't find anything that supported my hypotheses at all!].  The Jews, when I did a big search into OT culture, didn’t practice spanking their children. They actually seemed to be the opposite—I found a lot of gentleness, cuddling—a very fond nurturing environment for children with very very very [well, none, actually, that I could find, though I looked hard!] little emphasis on beating/spanking kids at all.

You will, however, find stuff like:
‘The Good Shepherd “gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them in His bosom.”‘ Isaiah 40:11.
‘The Good shepherd “gently leads” His sheep and lambs.’ Isaiah 41.10.

And the rod of the shepherd wasn’t meant for the sheep (only rarely was it for them). It was to beat off the wolves!

I think that we’ve misapplied and misinterpreted the Scriptures on the rod because it’s how we are raised to think of them. It’s very easy to do. But after searching and studying my way through it all, I’ve become a really passionate defender of what the Bible does and does not say about spanking, and so much of what we think it *does* say about the topic, well, it doesn’t actually say at all.

Discipline is good and holy, but all it means is to train, to guide. We discipline our bodies when we take them out for a jog. We aren’t beating them—we’re training them. We discipline our kids when we make them do their chores even when they don’t want to. Discipline doesn’t have to involve spanking very often, in other words. It is guiding, training, leading. And, if it’s done right, we should guide, lead, and train just the same way the Father guides and trains us. Which, if you are like me, is rarely done by bringing down a rod on me.

Most of the time, we are to discipline with gentleness, with patience, “understanding their frame” just as our Father understands ours. God does not require “first-time obedience” with us. God lets us ask questions. God lets us be frustrated with Him. Even Jesus struggled with obedience—the garden of Gethsemene, He made it clear that obeying was hard (so hard He sweated blood). So these books that teach that first-time obedience is Biblical? They aren’t Biblical.

This business about spanking our children if they whine, about whining being disobedient? You can do that, but it’s not Biblical. Good gravy, a whole bunch of the Psalms are songs of David whining. He got frustrated, he complained, he felt sad and depressed. But in the end, he chose to follow God. And God said that David was a man after God’s own heart! So we *can* technically spank our kids into having good attitudes, but, that’s not Biblical and that’s not the way God works on our attitudes.

And spanking your child if he does not obey the first time, instantly? It might work, but that doesn’t make it God’s way. And, interestingly, it’s a very similar system to the way Nazi Germany trained their future soldiers: you learn not to think, not to question, but just to obey instantly. You learn to shut off your critical thinking skills.

Sorry to write a book here. I should probably just take this to my own blog. Again, it’s not spanking that I have a problem with. It’s the way we say that our American brand of spanking is Biblical. It’s just not.