Is It Loving to Spank Your Child?

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Christ Alone and the Coming Judgment

People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio. The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Whether Loving Parents Spank Their Children

Alright Tim, the question for today's episode is, do loving parents spank their kids?

Yeah, I mean, do not withhold discipline from a child. If you beat him with a rod, he will not die.

You know, I love how short the Bible is sometimes with these kinds of commands. I mean, you would think that sometimes these commands must be like, with all of the things that various Christians think about a subject like spanking kids, you would think that there would be like no verses that speak just very clearly and very plainly on this subject.

That must be the reason why there are so many stances on spanking kids. And then you go and you look for yourself and you read it and the Bible says, yeah, you're not going to kill them if you spank them.

They'll be alright.

I mean, it's all, yeah.

No one ever died from a good spanking.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing. So, you know, as you think about some of the verses like that, I mean, particularly some of the ones that are in Proverbs, they're all very short, pithy kind of sayings. And so Proverbs 13, 24, Whoever spares a rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

So you're asking me, you know, does a loving parent spank his child? Well, apparently whoever spares a rod hates his son. The one who loves him is diligent to discipline him. Proverbs 22, 15, Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

Proverbs 23, 13 through 14, Do not withhold discipline from a child. I already mentioned that. You know, if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with a rod, you will save his soul from shale.

And then, you know, Proverbs 29, 15, The rod of reproof gives wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. But yeah, I mean, you know, it's interesting. You what you mentioned and what you mentioned is the fact that what people expect is that if you're going to say things like that, that you add thousands and thousands of qualifications along with it, unless you be misunderstood.

And, you know, that that really is that really does reflect pretty poorly on us as a society in general. And it's very like it's a very common thing that people do, particularly when you're trying to talk about just a topic that's pretty straightforward in general, you know, with the Bible.

And so one of the things that people just they do this on a regular basis and it's kind of a mind numbing thing that they do. But if you try to generalize in any way. Right. So if you try to make a general statement or you try to bind on people, certain expectations that the Bible has, what they immediately do is in their mind.

What they think is they try to think about like the craziest kind of scenario that they can possibly come up with in their mind. And then they're going to present that scenario as like basically irrefutable proof that it's going to bash, you know, your generalization or whatever into oblivion.

And then they'll do it with kind of a smug look on their face as if like in thinking of the most ridiculous scenario that they can possibly imagine. They've like they've basically uttered something that was profound or wise in that way.

What's actually happening is like, you know, the Proverbs, what they are, is their generalities. So their statements of general truth that God has given and they're meant to teach you wisdom. So Proverbs are given to teach you wisdom.

So you have these generalities that there's they're just statements to tell you how the world works. Right. So like if you spare the rod, you hate your son. Right. Whoever loves him will be diligent to discipline him.

Folly is bound up in heart of a child. You know, the rod of discipline is going to drive it far from him. So you make a statement like that, like it's just a statement of general truth. And then some smart aleck person on the Internet or, you know, in real life or whatever, when they're hearing something like that, they're going to talk about this one scenario that they could think of where someone tried to spank their child and it didn't work.

Right. Right. And then they're going to say, well, see, it's wrong. You know, it's like so what you're saying is like everyone who speaks to a child, they're always going to turn out right. You know, like that's all that it takes, you know.

And so what they're doing, like they think they've uttered something that's wise. But what they've really done is they've really gone to war against the way the world generally works. And people do this all the time.

I mean, it's like if you were to say something like just as simple as men are taller than women, they're going to point to the one Amazon woman they know. And the one guy who's a midget and they were like, well, she's taller than him.

You know, it's like, but think about the think about the way the world works. Come on. Women are women are women are shorter than men on average. Men are stronger than women on average. Like this. That's the way these things work.

And so like that, what people do in general is they're just pre pre supposed to take any kind of generality or any kind of rule in the Bible. And then they're what they're pretty supposed to do is just like think of the most ridiculous kind of scenario that you can possibly think of as irrefutable proof that basically there is like there's no standards basically.

And that's kind of the point. They don't they really don't want any standards. They don't want the Bible to have anything to say about any of these kind of scenarios. And then, you know, you know, what's added to that is there's just this hyper kind of sensitivity about all the ways in which, you know, these kind of things can be applied poorly.

So, you know, if you talk about anything that the culture generally right now is going to war against, they're going to come up with all these ways that this can be abused. And that's what they lead with.

And so you just get like thousands of qualifications. And the end result is basically, hey, you know, you'd be very afraid of that, right? Like you need to be very afraid because if you spank your child, you know, like they may not like it may not, you know, you may do it in anger, you know, and it may, you know, it may turn out bad and everything else.

And so the net result of all that is basically just they think they're trying to be like protecting the victim, you know, trying to show love and everything else. But what they end up doing is they end up basically making it like making everyone absolutely afraid to try to do anything that the Bible says because they don't want to mess it up.

We think about that. I mean, that's, that's absurd. Like, that's ridiculous. It's ludicrous. It's like, you know, it would be like me saying, hey, you know, human beings should eat food. And then someone come along and say, hey, you know, you got to be careful what you eat, you know, because you could eat something.

You could eat something that's poison, you know, it's like, yeah, if I don't eat anything, I'm going to die, you know, like, what do you want me to do?

I'm just going to take that risk.

So with anything the Bible says that's good, right? Like, yeah, I mean, it can all be abused. Sure. All right. But then think about the consequences. And so, so think about what the Proverbs is saying about the consequences.

Whoever spares his rod hates his son, right? So if I'm so afraid to do this wrong that I don't do it at all, then I guess I've showed my son hatred, according to what the Bible says, right? So folly is bound up the heart of a child, but the rod of dissonance drives it from him.

So if I'm so afraid to do this wrong that I don't do it at all, I'm not going to drive the folly out of the heart of my child, right? So if you strike him with a rod, you'll save his soul from jail. Well, if I'm so afraid to do it, then I guess I'm leading him down a path that's going to ultimately be leading to hell, right?

The rod of reproof gives wisdom. So if I'm so afraid to do it that I'm not going to do it, then I guess I'm not teaching him wisdom, right? And I'm going to let him bring shame to his mother. But that's kind of people's general reaction to these things.

Why Many Christians Reject Clear Discipline Texts

So you've sort of outlined people's opposition to what seems like pretty clear Bible verses just in general. So I'm sure that the kind of arguments that you're mainly giving right now that would come from the other side are arguments that even pagans would use if they're talking about this subject.

For Christians, though, we know that there's plenty of Christians out there who don't think that you should spank your kids and, in fact, even think it's immoral to spank your kids or it's abusive to spank your kids and whatnot.

So the problem there is with Christians, we have the Bible that we're all supposedly in agreement on. That's obviously not reality, but that's what it's supposed to be. We have this book that we look at and we say, hey, this is God's word.

You and I, we are evil in the depths of our hearts. God is not, and he has revealed what is good to us through this book. We just have to look at this book and it will tell us what is good and what is evil.

And we just need to trust that. And so then you have these verses when it comes to spanking. You have these verses that are extremely clear and, in fact, go as far as to say not only are you doing wrong by not spanking your child when it's necessary to spank them, but you're actually demonstrating hatred for them by neglecting to spank them when it's appropriate.

So those are all clear Bible verses, but then Christians don't agree on spanking. There's plenty who say it's wrong. So what is the argument from people who say that spanking is wrong? How do they explain these verses that seem to be so clear?

Most people aren't really interacting with these verses in any way. At a popular level, people aren't actually going to be interacting with these verses. Most people, they don't actually have this impulse within them that says that they have to actually explain what the verse means.

So this is something that I've commented at various points about this, but this is just kind of a pro tip for people. It's something I learned very early on in my life is that there are people who do constructive theology and then there are people who do destructive theology.

So there's constructive theology and there's destructive theology, and what I mean by that is I learned very early on I wanted to be a person who understood what the Bible says. I want to understand what it says.

So God spoke it. He doesn't have a speech impediment. He's not speaking with a lisp up there or something like that. God knows how to communicate, so he's given us his word. At a certain point, I thought, well, he's Lord.

I want to do what he says. So then what I noticed was and this is a very simple thing to kind of notice when you have eyes to see and ears to hear. But I started to notice that there was a lot of people that whenever you tried to point to something in the Bible, they have what I would call is kind of like a destructive approach to the Bible.

Like all they could do was just basically tell you what they didn't think it meant, right? So all of their arguments basically revolve around trying to make the like they're on this desperate quest to make the thing unclear, right?

So if you were to say and part of the way they do this is they pit one verse against another or they have some sort of easy little escape valves that they use to dismiss entire portions of Scripture kind of thing.

So an example of pitting one passage against another would be to say something like well, the Bible says whoever spares a rod spoils a child essentially, right? Well, yeah, but the Bible also says we should love people, right?

So notice what just happened there. Like when they say when someone says something like that, like all they did was they just basically told you like they pit one verse against another and then what you're left doing is saying, well, okay, fine.

But what does that verse mean, right? You can never actually get an answer from people like when they do that kind of thing. It's just a dismissal, right? It's just a well, no one is perfect. That guy is like, huh?

What do you mean? Yeah, I know no one is perfect. What does that mean? And so what I've learned to do is I've learned to pay attention to the people who are actually going to tell me what it means, not all the people that are going to tell me all the things it doesn't mean or how it can be abused or how it can be this or that.

And that's I mean essentially that's Satan's attack in the garden is to say, did God really say, right? God didn't say. So a lot of people are engaged in that kind of thing. So it's just about they'll pit like love against spanking, and then a lot of them, they'll appeal to like psychological studies at that point to that are supposed to be proving that kids who got spanked or turn out worse or something along those lines.

But I mean all these things, like no kid is going to like to be spanked, okay?

Right.

Until they get older.

I didn't like it. I got spanked and I never liked it.

I didn't like it until now. I like it now as an adult now that it's not happening anymore, but now I'm thankful for it, right? I mean that's essentially what the Bible says. No discipline is enjoyable at the time essentially.

It's always painful. All discipline is painful, but in the end, it yields harvest of righteousness and all that. So a lot of people do that kind of thing. The biggest thing that people do in a shallow kind of way is they'll just basically just wave their hand against the whole Old Testament and basically say, hey, that's the Old Testament, right?

It basically doesn't even count.

It doesn't count. At all.

God was angry in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Jesus is coming along and he's a nice guy. So he's not the Savior.

He's like, whoa, chill, man.

And then they'll do these silly little things where show me in the New Testament where Jesus says. I want to know where does Jesus say, quote, you must spank your child today in the New Testament church, end quote.

I want all those words in there. They'll ask for ridiculous things like that. But all of that, there's just a lot of different ways people will basically ignore everything there. They have no ability whatsoever to explain what those things mean.

And that's just they're not interested in it. And so it's not what they're trying to do. What they're not trying to do is tell you what these verses mean and what do we do with them. They basically just have a lot of different tactics that are basically just throwing smoke at you, smoke bomb at you, whatever, just trying to get you to evade, ignore, just shift the focus.

So in this scenario, a lot of people, if they even do interact with these verses, is essentially just kind of wave like the well, that's the Old Testament. It doesn't really count.

Yeah, it's not really loving.

Try again.

That's what they did back then.

You hateful, abusive Christian.

Yeah, we're not Jews. That's what they did back then, that kind of stuff. But what they don't have is like an explanation for like a real explanation for why like God's immutable. He hasn't changed.

Why was it wise to do this at that point in history? Why shouldn't we do that now? And like did he just tell us to do something that was fundamentally stupid and now we've just gotten smarter? Or is it just that he knew something about human nature that we don't know?

And so now it's just become like we're hypersensitive towards certain topics and our intuitions aren't firing the way that his he wants us to fire them to fire. So I've never heard anyone give me an answer for what those things actually mean.

All they do is just basically say, hey, that's Old Testament. Jesus didn't say that. That's not loving. I disagree. And that's like the worst one is when they just say, I disagree. It's just you're just like you're not really allowed to just disagree with the Bible.

But they say it so

Agree to disagree there, God.

They say it so authoritatively. They're just like, well, I just disagree.

Oh man.

It's just like, man, you're lost. You're lost.

What was the verse you read at the beginning? Which one was it?

Do not withhold discipline from a child. If you beat him with a rod, he will not die.

Well, Tim, that's just like your opinion. That's just your interpretation of that verse.

But sometimes it really does amount to that kind of thing to where I mean I will like if I'm talking to people about these kind of things in real life, and I will just kind of make references to all those verses just because I mean I know what they are.

I mean whoever spares a rod spoils a child. I can paraphrase all of them, and they just look at me like I've said something monstrous and crazy, and they don't even realize it's in the Bible. And then I just look at them and I'm like, those are actual verses.

Did you not know that these are actual verses? And then like the end result is just, well, I disagree. It's like, OK. I don't know what to tell you here.

The Literal Meaning of the Rod in Proverbs

What about the objection I have had some people come to me and say, hey, we'll talk about this subject, and then I'll bring up some of these verses where it's very obvious what's being said. And then the response is, well, that's not actually talking about literal physical spanking.

That's just talking about like metaphorical spanking discipline in general. So like send them to their room or give them a stern talking to perhaps. So what's the response there to that kind of argument?

Yeah. All right. So Proverbs 14 .3, by the mouth of a fool comes a rod for his back. It seems like as you're thinking about this idea of the rod in general let's see. So over and over again, you'll see that the rod is for the back.

And yeah, there's some verses I can't think of off the top of my head that talk about like stripes, rod bringing stripes on the back and that kind of thing. But yeah, I don't really know how to interact with that kind of thing other than just to say, hey, yeah, I don't know what rod means to you.

So if you beat your child, he will not die. Do not withhold. If you strike him with a rod, he will not die. I mean, it seems about as clear as you can possibly get.

And isn't it interesting too that over and over again, like even if you're reading of those passages is like, OK, it's talking about metaphorical spanking, right? Like just discipline in general. Well, then why is the rod a picture of discipline that the Bible keeps using in a positive light?

Well, yeah, I think yeah, if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. Maybe with some of the other ones like whoever spares a rod, like the rod symbolizes discipline in some kind of abstract way or something like that.

But when you say if you strike him with a rod, you've left the realm of metaphor at that point. I mean, that's pretty that's more like you've moved away from like this is a very this is about as direct as you possibly get.

So I think a lot of people what's happening is people just they've left the they don't have some kind of category for the usefulness of corporal punishment in that way. And a lot of it is like I think we just don't understand how human nature actually works anymore.

So like many people think like they really do think that you can just kind of talk to people and talk it all out and sort it all out and that people will just respond. And so a lot of this is just like because we're so matriarchal as a society, we basically think at this point in history that like we don't have a stomach for anything that feels like mean, right?

So when you talk about spanking, like this is generally the province of men. This is the kind of thing that men will do. Like men have a higher capacity for like turning their emotions off and doing what needs to be done at that point.

And so when you get like a society that's like very feminized at that point, what ends up happening is that you end up getting into situations where you just have very unrealistic like expectations about how people actually act.

So you're just ultimately, you're just trying to mother everyone to death and protect them and keep them safe. Whereas a guy like his job he's not so motivated by keeping everyone safe and protecting them from all the difficult things in the world.

There is a certain kind of stubbornness and a certain kind of stupidity that's present in people that is only capable of being driven out of them through use of force. That's just something that our society doesn't have any category for.

I think in general

And that's the loving thing to do?

Yeah, it's the loving thing to do. So whoever spears the rod hates his son, but whoever loves him is diligent to discipline him. I mean if you want your kid to be a fool, then don't give them consequences sufficient for their actions.

That's the point. So this is like I love you so much that I'm going to do whatever it takes to help break the stubborn will of yours, right? So I'm not just going to Johnny, please don't do it, Johnny.

Don't touch that, Johnny. Don't make me count to three, Johnny. So that's what people are doing. They're doing that kind of thing, but that's actually an act of hatred because they're not actually addressing the problem in the way that they should.

I mean most people, they look at spanking and they think, OK, well, the only category they have for it is just an angry person who's just out of control and who's just temper-flaring and is just going to

Wearing the wife beater.

Wearing the wife beater.

Has a six-pack down already.

And a mullet.

Six-pack of beer. Yeah, mullet. Tattoos.

Yeah, and so I mean I think that's not the biblical picture of discipline, but I mean it ought to be I mean it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. So it ought to be a fearful thing to fall into the hands of like a dad who's going to discipline you.

I mean it shouldn't be a fun thing. It's not going to be a pleasant thing, but in time it will yield like the peaceable fruit of righteousness. And so there's I mean like we in our sensitivity, we just we don't have a category for corporal punishment anymore.

But even having that like for prison offenses and things like that, I think that could do us well. I mean we're so sensitive. We think that, well, like the just thing to do is to put a person in a cage for 40 years.

You know what? Like if you would just like give them some corporal punishment out in the real world in the public square, it may be that like one, they get it out of the way, get their punishment out of the way.

And two, it may be an actual deterrent like for people like in that way. So I just think we look at some of the things the Bible says and we just like look down our nose at them and scoff at them. But it's not demonstrable to me that like things are going very well.

And I would just tell you anecdotally like I've never met a parent who doesn't who didn't spank their kids and thought, I want to be around those kids. I've never been in that scenario. Like I've never been in that scenario.

A parent who didn't spank their kids?

Yeah. I mean with all the parents I know who like in my life, I can think of no example of a parent who refused to spank their kids and their kids were enjoyable to be around. I can say like none, none, like zero.

I'm being serious. Like the kids that you want to be around are the ones that like their parents spank them. Like those are the ones you want to be around. You do not want to be around kids who like they're like just sitting there watching parents like beg their kids over and over and over again to obey.

Please do what I'm saying. Please do. Like you just don't want to be around them and they're like unimaginable, unruly. And I mean it's whoever spares a rod hates his son, right? The rod of discipline will drive like the folly far from them.

If you ignore it, you ignore your peril. Now, I mean obviously there's more to being a parent and more to discipline than spanking, but it's not less than that. And you can just you can ignore that if you want.

But then we know what happens to those kind of kids. Like they're the ones who join Antifa and they're the ones who do like who approach they're the ones who never learned like what the word no means.

Like we know what happens to them. Just look at our society. You will see what happens when parents quit spanking their kids. They're all around us, man. They're filling the universities up. And so do it at your own peril.

Closing Exhortation and Podcast Sign-Off

Okay. Fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion. We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.