Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are.

Michael Durham.

David Kassin.

And we have a recently asked question that we thought was rather interesting, and we wanted to broach it to everybody here on the podcast and see what we come up with, both from the Old and New Testament.

The question reads, is spare the rod, spoil the child actually telling us to spank our kids? My wife and I are in disagreement. Are there other places where scripture teaches us to hit our kids?

Proverbs on Discipline, the Rod, and Loving Correction

Michael.

Yes, and as one of our brothers here, fellow elder at the church, kind of looked at that word hit as different, it's a different kind of word than the word spank. We're thinking about what the scripture tells us in terms of how to discipline our kids.

Obviously there's not a one size fits all, every child is the same, every situation is the same, you always do the same thing. Discipline and train and chasten, all these different terms are going to be interested in curtailing the thoughts, the affections, the decision making, the behavior of the child for their good.

When we look at the book of Proverbs, Proverbs begins with Solomon exhorting his son to embrace the teaching, the wisdom, the training, the chastisement, the rebukes, just all of the wisdom of both father and mother.

And as we go throughout Proverbs, we find many different pithy sayings that give instruction on that relationship between parent and child. Parents who love their children will discipline their children.

Parents who do not love their children, leave them alone and have nothing to do with them. So in what way do loving parents discipline, train, chastise, rebuke their children? In Proverbs 23 verses 13 through 14, text says do not withhold discipline from a child.

Do not withhold discipline from a child. You can get the picture of, you're not gonna withhold food from a child. You're not gonna withhold clothing from a child. You're not gonna withhold shelter and love and care for a child.

You also are not to withhold discipline from a child. This is one of the needs of the child. If you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol, meaning you're preserving the breath of his life from the grave.

Keep this in mind that when we spank our children, when we strike a child with a rod in an inappropriate way, in the right way, we're thinking to ourselves, I want my child to survive. I want them to live.

I want my child to hear me when I say stop, don't move, or come here now and that they will obey me. If I do not strike him with a rod, there's a very high likelihood that we're gonna be in a situation where he needs to obey and he won't and it will do great harm to him.

This is kind of the basic, the base level of why anybody should be disciplining a child. Too many stories that I've heard, heartbreaking stories about little ones who think it's a game to disobey. They are not spanked.

They are not properly brought up and then they lose their lives because of it. Proverbs 13, 24 says whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. Right, now loving somebody is being for them in the right way even if it costs me and it costs something of a parent to have to get up, stop everything, interrupt, take the child aside, explain what was wrong, provide a controlled environment in which corporal punishment is applied appropriately and then the whole situation is wrapped up at the end with further instruction and affirmation of the parental love.

You know what? Who has time for that? Somebody who loves their child has time for that.

We're not talking about child does something wrong, you smack him across the face and then you go back to watching your football game. That is not the scenario that you just described. You just described a loving father who, and a loving parent in general, who explained, talked to them.

There's no, you're not even doing it in anger. Even if you are angry, you're not doing it in anger. You're doing it out of love, you're calm, it's discipline. This is the consequences of your action and this is why.

Yeah, so that's why we hear he who loves him is diligent and we think of the word diligent with tough tasks, difficult tasks and it is a tough thing to do. It is a difficult thing to do, to discipline your child.

Proverbs 29 verses 15 and 17, the rod and reproof give wisdom. The rod and reproof, see they're together, give wisdom. But a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. Children just left to themselves to do whatever they want will bring shame to his mother.

How many times do we hear a mother heartbroken? Discipline your son and he will give you rest and he will give you delight to your heart. Discipline your son, he will give you rest. Now, sons when they are young, they don't give you rest.

There's no rest for people who have young boys in the house.

Oh yes.

Well, I wouldn't say that it's not so much rest as it is, you were talking about diligence earlier. I think when we're looking at that rest, we're talking about life versus death. I see in this having given rest, having delight in your heart.

These are words that seem there's a life being given there or there is life in that and that shame is words that have connotations with death or with some sort of separation from a mother and child. And with my boys, correcting them consistently and correcting them often, I would say yields more life in the household than death.

And I think that's what we're getting here with the Proverbs, right? Most of the time, you're gonna save that child's life. You're saving his soul from shield. And that diligence and that repetition, especially for young boys early on, and young girls as well, but me having just boys, this is where I'm coming from.

I understand that that consistency is key to giving them purpose in life and giving them direction in life and giving them life in a way. Like I've very rarely ever felt more alive than when I felt the extremes of pain and the extremes of having broken relationships mended.

Whenever we come to our father in reconciliation under the blood of Christ, how life-giving is that experience? How reinvigorating is that experience? It is characterized by coming up from the grave and being cleansed out of our deadness and sin.

And in these ways, you are giving your son a chance to reconcile with you because they know in their heart that they've done something wrong. I can see the shame come over their face when they've done something wrong.

I'm giving them an opportunity to tell me the truth of what they've done and to reconcile with them after they've perceived discipline. And then the opportunity to go do that thing correctly that they've done wrong.

You mentioned it, that the paradigm, the model is God the Father and how he deals with his children. That is the example that we follow. And Michael, I know you're gonna be working towards that point.

Yes, so one, the question, we have this spare the rod, spoil the child saying that obviously is derived from scripture. It's an effective summary of what the Bible teaches. I think part of the question that was asked, is everybody hanging the idea of spanking your kid on this one verse?

Everyone just quotes this one verse and then, well, one of the reasons to read all these passages is to say, this is a well-developed theme. This is not just a one-off.

And to pick that phrase, it seems to import the least amount of seriousness, right? Like if I don't spank them, they're just gonna be spoiled. No, they might die, right? They may lose their soul. And that's, I think part of picking that phrase as well, seems like it's just, it's going light on the whole scenario for me.

And because the child is made in the image of God, to not discipline the child affects that child's relationship with God, that child's relationship with everybody else in the family, everybody else around them, and brings a spoiling way of life, not just to that child and their own personal life experiences, but in everything around them, in the earth upon which they live.

So this is why discipline is important. Again, spanking, striking with the rod in an appropriate way is not the only kind of discipline, but it is a fundamental of discipline. You can't really talk about disciplining children in a biblical way without addressing this particular subject because it's so ingrained.

Proverbs 22, 15, "'Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, "'but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.'". You can kind of sense in an agrarian society, the chaff and the wheat are bound, but beating the wheat, the chaff is separated from the wheat, and that's an essential discipline to undertake.

Proverbs 19, 18 says, "'Discipline your son, for there is hope.'". So remember that when we discipline our children, we do so in hope, not in despair. We do it because we have hope. We know that there are better days ahead of us.

Good to remember. It says, "'Do not set your heart on putting him to death.'". Right, don't give up on your child. Don't address your child in disciplining them in a way that tells them there's no hope for you, there's no future for you.

You frustrated me so much that I think that you're just a lost cause. No, no, no, no, your discipline for the child is always in hope. Love always hopes. Hopes all things. Proverbs 20, verse 30, "'Blows that wound, cleanse away evil.

"'Strokes make clean the innermost parts.'". Again, addressing keeping, in an earlier time, rather than locking a man up for years and years of life, creating a professional criminal class, when somebody, let's say, stole something and they got caught, they usually got beat in the town square and they were out of work for a month as they tried to recover.

They couldn't do anything. They didn't forget the lesson and then they became productive members of society. That was the idea.

And how much more gracious is that than tossing them in a state penitentiary and making them felons for the rest of their life?

Prison industry. Prison industry is big business, man.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you don't make a lot of money off of a stick. You make a lot of money off of prisons. So, and it is not compassionate, merciful, or humane. So we have in the classic Proverbs 22, verse six, "'Train up a child in the way he should go.

"'Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.'". Now, in the original language in the Hebrew, this is something that Jay Adams pointed out. This is a double-edged proverb. And a lot of proverbs are like that.

So this is the way it reads very basically. "'Train up in the child in the way he would go, "'in the way he would go. "'Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.'". In other words, if you allow the child to dictate the way he wants to go, then this is going to be concretized in that child's life.

So we're kind of sneaking up on a few themes of why do people not raise children like they used to, where the assumptions of Christendom were large and fairly ingrained? Well, what is the pagan conception of paradise?

Remove human intervention entirely. No humans anywhere, that's paradise. Biblical view of paradise is man ruling creation well, making things beautiful and good and setting things right. What is the apex of childhood dreams and so on?

The child gets to do whatever the child wants to do.

All the candy you want, get everything you want.

Get catechized by Disney, you can be whatever you want to be.

Follow your heart.

Follow your heart. And that's very different than what the Bible has to say about parental responsibility. So one last note on just wise ways to approach disciplining children. And again, we're not saying that spanking a child is the right thing to do in every situation.

It's one of the things that is right to do for certain situations, and it has to be a part of the whole recipe of raising children. And one thing I thought was very helpful, Ecclesiastes 8 .11, because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.

In the Christian worldview that informed the establishment of the justice system in our country.

Speedy justice.

Speedy justice. You have a right to what kind of trial?

Yep, there it is.

Speedy trial. Well, that's Ecclesiastes 8 .11. And when you discipline a child, the younger they are, the more important this is. To address something right away is just exponentially more effective. So those are just some, there's a lot of wisdom there from Proverbs and from Ecclesiastes.

And the use of the rod and striking the child, and again, we're not talking about just hitting kids when you get mad. You can see all kinds of bad examples of that.

Right.

And that's not discipline, right? Like we wouldn't even categorize that as discipline. At that point, that is abusive. If we're just mad, if we're just exerting ourselves in anger upon our child, that's not discipline in the least.

God the Father, Hebrews 12, and Discipline as a Form of Catechesis

Yes, so we don't just have basic good ideas of how to raise children in the Bible. The reason why these are good ways to raise children is because they're grounded in who God is. And what does it mean that he has made us, that we are his?

What does it mean that he is our father and has made us his children through the work of his son, Jesus Christ? What does that mean? That's what informs our raising of our children. So we do have instructions in the New Testament about how parents are to raise their children.

And before we get to those instructions, I want us to think about the overarching theological reality. So Psalm 103 verse 13 says, "'As a father shows compassion to his children, "'so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.'".

And this is just one sample of many different passages. We could look at the model prayer in Matthew chapter six and so on, are relating to God as father. And some people have observed that bad relations with fathers often turn into bad theology because people think of God as in light of the fathers who failed.

But we're not left to our experiences to try to understand God. We are given his word to consider who God is and then to correct our understandings and to interpret our experiences by the light of God's word.

So when we get to Hebrews chapter 12, we are told to look to Christ, consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. And that's something that children do all the time.

You always have to encourage children to continue on. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

Exhortation that addresses you as sons, children of God. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, just like we saw in Proverbs, and chastises every son whom he receives.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

We had talked about it earlier that when God, and then this is throughout the scriptures, when God hates someone, he leaves them alone, lets them go their own way.

Yeah, Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. Jacob he hounded, to Esau he said, you do you.

Yeah.

Yeah, in effect too, we don't want to use the word those who hate him. If you're just not his son, right? If one is a son and one is not, if you're just not his son, simply you're released from any obligation, or you're released from any discipline.

This is true.

Or any instruction.

When I walk into a room, and there are several young men from variety of families, and they're all 10, 11 year old boys, and they've been roughhousing, and doing something they're not supposed to do, in an area they're not supposed to do it, and I walk in, I loudly address and correct my son.

In the process, all the other sons are like, oh, but it's my son whom I'm calling out.

So what is then, and I know you'll probably get to this, and we addressed it a little bit, but what is your response to the idea that violence begets more violence? When people spank their children, the modern psychological evaluation is that you are teaching your children, your young children, that your hands aren't for hugging, your hands are for hurting, and they will take that hurt with them, that trauma, and they will become abusive as a result.

How do you respond to the person that says, you're just teaching them to be violent?

That's a good question. I would say that if the kind of spanking that you're doing is violence, you're spanking wrong. If all striking with an instrument, no matter how it's done or what context it is, if all striking with an instrument is violence, then we should stop building houses.

We should stop forging steel. We should stop putting fences in the ground. We should stop doing constructive, productive things. Striking a child is not violence always. You can strike a child with a proper instrument in the proper way to do something constructive.

You're building something in them. You're building character in them. You're building truth in them. You're showing them something that in some situations cannot be taught any other way. They're just not gonna get it another way.

And if you were to say that all violence begets other violence, you only need to look to the cross to explain otherwise. I think that there was an extreme amount of violence that went into what happened on the cross, and yet it causes us as brothers to beat swords into plowshares and be producers rather than destroyers.

So holding that in your hands is only violence. They understand a part of mimetic theory, but they don't understand what it is to be reconciled by the blood of Christ and the most violent act that we've ever known.

Sure, and that of course presupposes that you understand that the violence that was done to him is what you deserved. That whole idea of I have been forgiven for so much that makes it easier for me to forgive others and to be merciful when I have a better understanding of the mercy that was shown me.

Of course, you look at it from a biblical worldview, then yes, I would agree with that. But the people who say this are convinced that spanking your child makes them abusive later in life.

And I think that's because viewing human beings as autonomous BBs in a can, rather than recognizing human beings in a network of God-ordained relationships wherein there is hierarchy, right? The state is to punish evildoers and they're going to do so with violence.

Parents are going to discipline their children and they will use spanking, which I don't think is violence, but they're gonna use spanking as part of that discipline process. It's their role, it's their right, and it's good.

And if you simply remove all of that context of relationships about how we're to love each other rightly, and if you remove all that context of relationships, then it doesn't make sense to you anymore.

Why do these people get to hit these other people? In a Marxist worldview, the people with power do things against those who don't have the power. And so for somebody who has been more discipled in a Marxist worldview or draws upon that more, they're not gonna see any difference between a parent spanking a child and a husband hitting a wife.

They're not gonna see any difference in that at all. They're just, look, these people are called the oppressors and these are the oppressed. Any kind of striking is just an exacerbation of the problem and violence will beget violence.

And so if you're coming from a non-biblical, non-Christian worldview, you don't have the context of the relationships and the God-ordered hierarchy to even begin to describe what you're looking at.

But in the biblical worldview, that child's negative actions is a result of sin. They have purposely, consciously chosen to disobey. And of course, a two-year-old and a three-year-old's level of disobedience is far less, quantitatively speaking, than an 18 or 28-year-old, but it's still the same, coming from the same place.

So the biblical worldview holds people individually accountable for their sin, even if they are young.

Yes, and the discipline of the parents will teach the child there are consequences to your actions. These things matter. You may not immediately understand how your sinful act brought hurt or suffering or wrong through that act, but by spanking you, you're going to associate that and you're gonna learn it.

Spanking is a form of catechism. And it's not something that you stick with forever.

Right, we would say it's meant for a specific window of time for the child.

Sure.

I would say that my dad, who wasn't always the best example in every respect, we knew that he loved us. He was always there for us. If he ever hears this podcast, dad, I always knew that you loved us because you disciplined us.

And the times that he was the most angry, and he had a temper, and I have inherited it, he was most angry when we were putting our own lives at risk. We, he was so, he was livid because my brother and I were doing something that could have gotten us killed.

My sister and I did something with the car that could have gotten us killed.

That famous line, with the car.

With the car, yes. He was so angry we could hear him breathe from the other side of the house.

Oh yeah.

And, but I know now what we did was so dangerous and so irresponsible, it warranted some serious denial. At that point, we were older, so it would make sense. I mean, he didn't hit us. But the anger that was there and the discipline that came afterwards was warranted.

When we were little, we got spanked. And we learned not to touch the hot stove. We learned not to put, and okay, truth time, I actually put metal instruments inside a power outlet.

Kindred Spirits, you and I.

Seriously, you did this? How are you not dead? How am I not dead?

I almost did. And my dad caught me. We were moving into a new house. I think it was like seven, so you know, I know better. And I've got a fork. And he comes up behind me with some piece of wood that he had lying around.

He got me and he said, it would be that times 1 ,000.

Yes.

And I was like, okay, then I don't need to experience this then.

So he disciplined you with a literal rod and saved your life.

And it was constructive. I now did not feel like I needed to experience what would have happened. He told me, and I was like, yeah, I believe you, man. I'm not gonna question that wisdom.

I mean, there it is, a perfect example. He didn't do that in anger, although it was probably swift.

Oh, it had to be.

It had to be, but it was done out of love. It was done out of discipline, and it was a lesson you didn't forget. So now that you're old, you have not departed from it.

Agreed.

I'm assuming you have not put a fork in a wall socket lately.

No, no, I haven't really been tempted to recently.

Me neither.

So I think that if we frame the question in light of how God has made us in his image, and how God has designed and blessed the family to operate the relations between husband and wife, and parents and children robustly affirmed both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and shown with even greater potential for glory in the new covenant with Christ, we're not looking at something that is to be cordoned off and say, well, now that we live in the new covenant, we shouldn't spank our children.

We're still told in the New Testament that fathers are to bring up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. And any kind of word study of discipline is going to, spanking's gonna be part of that at a certain point in time for certain situations.

That's just gonna be a part of that tool set to raise children. And at the same time, we're encouraged to not provoke our children to anger. In other words, to not exasperate them, to not make it so that they can never succeed, to give them a sense that no matter how hard they try, we'll never be pleased with them.

Right, like, yes, the Father disciplines us, and we want to be like the Father in His fatherhood. He also told us who He was well-pleased in. He also exalted His Son when He deserved that exaltation.

He also encouraged Him to do all that He had to do, whether in, I think we can say He encouraged Him to go through everything that He went through even though it was hard. And when we take that fatherhood as well, that we see Him giving to our Savior, I think we can be much more encouraging to our children and much more constructive to our children as well.

Like, because I mean, if you try and be constructive on your own without much reference to the Father, I think it's difficult. I think when I don't, when I'm not thinking how would the Father encourage me and my woes or my bitterness or my unthankfulness?

You know, if your son needs discipline for throwing a fit because he wants a specific thing, you get his attention and you say, look all around you, look what you have been given. You don't realize what you've been given.

You want this one thing and you have abundance just around you and I have to do that with myself all the time and I would have to believe that sometimes our apprehensions when disciplining our children in this way is because we do feel disqualified to come to this situation and say, I can administer this discipline to my child because I myself have done what I can to be right with God and be self-disciplined as well.

I know those apprehensions hit me all the time. I know when I'm disqualified from doing what I'm about to do. I need to get right with the Lord and I need to go and deal with that and then I can deal with my son.

And I'm, to the asker of this question, I empathize with or I sympathize with the issue of disagreeing with your wife on this. I luckily don't have that problem but I can't imagine, you know, what it would be like to have a disagreement on this sort of, especially, I think this is an extremely important topic before you come to parenthood with your spouse.

Extremely, extremely important that we agree on how we're going to discipline as a Christian family. And I'm sure you guys would reiterate that as well.

Yeah, I mean, we had said before, every child is different and if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I mean, that old saying is true. And, you know, I know that every child is different but, you know, spanking is, you know, usually for younger kids.

The discipline that your older child requires looks different but the principle is still the same. It's still day in, day out and it is done out of love, concern and never in anger and it's hard when you watch your child do the exact same thing that you did at that age.

And part of you is like fighting back a smile.

Oh, every time.

But I think that if you remember that you did that, then the discipline that you're providing is not a punishment or not a revenge for this child defied my authority in the home. Okay, you need to back off that probably.

This is not payment for them defying you. This is a loving discipline and concern because you want them to have a better life. You want to save their life. You want them to, this is for their future good so that they can become a responsible adult.

And like remembering you having done the same thing, I think sometimes it's helpful because I remember having done the same things and realizing which discipline applied to those situations helped me the most.

Now, that may not be the same for my son but at least it reminds me of how I've had it dealt with in the past. Like a little bit of familial wisdom being passed down on how to handle certain things has been very beneficial for me at least.

I don't know how you guys have come up with some of those, come across some of those things that you see yourself in them anyway.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of dynamics that goes on. Honestly, this would be something you would want to kind of talk about and know before you get married.

Yes, absolutely.

But even then, I mean, you're gonna find out that husband and wife just have different parenting styles. And sometimes there's a reinforcement, right? God gives two parents for the family, for the children and that's a good thing.

But there is little else more stressful on a marriage than when husband and wife are in a middle of it. The need to discipline a child and they are disagreeing about how to do that in the moment. There is little else more stressful than that.

And those little centers will see that and take advantage of it.

Oh, absolutely.

100%.

Oh yeah, divide and conquer.

They'll do that.

Oh yeah, I did that.

And they will do that early because they'll know the difference is going on. But it comes down to husband and wife is the primary relationship. There needs to be unity there first. There needs to be a clear headedness.

You all need to be talking about how to discipline your children well outside of those disciplinary moments when things are calm, when you can hear one another clearly, talk about it, read through a good Bible study on it.

I mean, do a Bible study on this like we've been doing in this podcast. But you all need to be in agreement. You need to know, oh, what's the military term? Rules of engagement. You need to know what the rules of engagement are before you get into that crisis situation so that there's no mistake about it.

You all know exactly how to respond. The child will feel far more loved when that's the case, guaranteed.

Yep, I agree. Well, I think that about wraps up our discussion on discipline in the home and how to either handle it in agreement or disagreement. And where do we go? Where do we go in the scriptures to find it?

I think we laid out a pretty good amount of scripture and there's actually, I would say there's far more that you could delve into. Maybe even look at how the Lord deals with his children across the wider breadth of scripture.

And he might put someone's hip out and he might give them a thorn in their side, but it's all to discipline them and to, for in and for their good. So we'll move on to what we recommend this week. Michael, what do you have?

I'm recommend the Christian Family by Herman Bavinck written in 1912. And the things that he writes about in Dutch society in 1912 are the things that have been happening in our nation in the last 20 years.

And he talks about the ardent desire of some to completely dismantle the family and replace it with the state. And he describes the chaos of that. And he advocates a biblical approach to family rejoicing in the good of a husband and father, the good of a wife and mother, the good of children, sons and daughters, and how God has designed that family.

And so I highly recommend the Christian Family by Herman Bavinck.

All right, David.

Now I would be shocked if we hadn't already recommended this on a previous podcast, but I'm gonna go ahead and mention it anyway because I just finished the audio version of this book, which I don't recommend.

This is by what standard? God's World, God's Rules. Jared Longshore is the primary author and editor. Now, Jared Longshore has famously gone from Southern Baptist to Presbyterian, but we still love him.

This book, kind of a fleshing out of a documentary that was done, I think, just earlier. This book, the one that I read, was 2019. I listened to the audio version of it, and I think the person that they chose to read it was not overly familiar with the source material.