Spanking As an Act of Love
“Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” (Proverbs 13:24). “Do not withhold discipline from a 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.” (Proverbs 23:13-14).
Spanking is viewed by secularists and Christian secularists as anachronistic at best and labeled by many as abuse. However, the Bible is clear that spanking is actually an act of love.
To equate biblical spanking with abuse is to misrepresent spanking for emotive conditioning, and denotes the change of a culture’s view of child rearing to a non-biblical approach. Those who present spanking as abusive do so by comparing the event to someone beating or hitting another person or some such nonsensical comparison. However, equating the two is like equating muggers and football players because they both make physical contact with another human being.
Similarities do not make two events morally the same if there are essential dissimilarities, e.g. suicide and martyrdom. To devalue spanking because someone takes it too far and thereby transforms it into abuse is misguided. The problem is not spanking but the abuse of it either by flippantly labeling it abuse or calling genuine abuse spanking.
What sets biblical spanking apart is that it is commanded by God as a form of discipline for children, which God would never do if it were abuse. It is commanded in the book of Proverbs, which is a book devoted in large part to a father—parents—instructing their children and rearing them out of a devoted love and concern for the child’s well-being, which is the very antithesis of the motivation for abuse.
Particularly young children need to be taught right from wrong through feeling discomfort because pain is part of the built-in warning system that humans have. Small children are not able to understand rational discourse well enough to protect them from harm; for example, a child needs to learn to associate NO with pain so that they will not injure themselves by touching hot stoves, running in front of cars, etc.
As Christians, we do not believe that spanking is the only form of discipline, or even the best in every situation, but it is a part of child rearing when done in the loving spirit of the whole book of Proverbs. Opponents who extricate the teaching on spanking from its full biblical context expose themselves as shamefully unfamiliar with what they are talking about or so repulsively dishonest for political gain that their ramblings should be summarily dismissed. Spanking is from a loving parent for the benefit of the child’s full development and well-being, whereas abuse is a hurtful dispensing of adult anger or frustration upon a child for the narcissistic benefit of the parent.
Indebted,
Ronnie W. Rogers