There's an article in yesterdays's New York Times about a pastor in Pleasantville, Tennessee, who has written a book about how to raise children. Apparently the book was hailed by parents who severely abused their adopted daughter until she died. When her body was found she was emaciated, had been beaten, and apparently had been forced to live outside in an unheated barn. The upshot of the article was that the pastor had written a book along the lines of, "People are inherently sinful. Parents need to train their children not to sin. The only way to keep them from sinning is to spank them, or withhold food from them, or give them some other form of punishment until they eventually learn to behave."
What strikes me is the inherent lack of the gospel in this story. At the very end of the article the pastor is quoted as saying, "To give up the use of the rod is to give up our views of human nature, God, eternity." Where is the gospel in that? Where is grace? He seems to believe that the only way to get to heaven is to beat our human nature into submission, physically, so that God will accept our beaten up submission and allow us into heaven. If the only way to get rid of sin is to beat it out of a person, then why didn't Jesus come down with a big stick and give us all what for?
Isn't the whole point of the gospel that we can't sacrifice enough to ever make ourselves worthy? No amount of beating will ever cleanse us from our sin. Only the atoning death of Jesus can pay that price. And then we don't have to. There's no, "grace plus beating" clause in the gospel. The pastor's comment makes no logical sense in light of what Jesus has already done.
I wrote something here once, but it has been lost apparently.
ReplyDeleteI continue to be amazed by Christians who continue to abuse the grace we have been given as an excuse for the abuse of power. The Pearls' book on parenting is exactly that - an abuse of power in the name of God. When Jesus came to earth he divested himself of all power except that which was minimally necessary to bring glory to God while here while maintaining all authority. Modeling Jesus through parenting means knowing how to exercise authority, not power. Because, frankly, the only power we have the right to wield is the power Jesus gives us to bind the wounds of the brokenhearted, not inflict wounds in the name of "Christian parenting."
What is becoming a growing concern for me as well is the selective process by which Christian fundamentalists choose which passages of Scripture they want to read literally and which ones they do not. More often than not the passages that get read literally are the ones that allow for the exercise of power, force, and "othering" of people who don't seem to be like "us" (however defined). I think of the passage of the rich young ruler, where Jesus looked on him and loved him. The rich young ruler was clearly sincere, but also engaging in trying to justify himself at the same time. Jesus *knew* all that. I've seen gross abuse of commentary that states explicitly that the young ruler had to have become a Christian else Jesus would not have loved him. Hogwash! That's reading in-groups and out-groups into the text.
I am a radical double predestinarian. I should be (by conventional wisdom of people who don't understand) one of the most oppressive people on earth. But I can't be for two reasons. One, predestination leaves me in awe and reminds me that no matter what I do, *none* of it saves me. The more I am aware of who I am as a person, the more his predestinating act makes my ego shrink in comparison to the presence of God, his glory, and his power. Second, we do not know who else God has predestined and as a result we are called to bring God's glory to everyone. As my former pastor Tom VandenHeuvel used to say, "believing like a Calvinist gives you no excuse not to live like an Arminian."
The best way to exercise the power of Jesus in the world? Give the power away. Relinquish it. Because if you're the one exercising it, that just means more mess to clean up.
I tend to feel hesitant to comment on parenting issues, as someone who has not done parenting and not faced the challenges that parents face. But whether or not people spank their kids or use other forms of punishment, there has to be a limit, there's a difference between punishment and cruelty - and using God to justify such unbelievable cruelty is blasphemous. Yes, parents have the responsibility of trying to teach their children how to behave, and I think there is a principle behind "spare the rod" which is that parents should take that responsibility seriously and that children do need some form of punishment to help them learn that there are consequences to their actions and that there are boundaries they're not allowed to cross. But there are different ways of exercising punishment, and if it's done with cruelty and without love then the kids are not going to learn the right lesson at all :/
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of ways to discipline children without getting caught up in what kind of implement to use how many times and when. Even the verse about "sparing the rod" is an example of "selective fundamentalism." The original use of rods was in the care of sheep and the purpose was to *break legs*. None of us would ever recommend that. Look, my faculty advisor is a guy who wants to *outlaw* corporal punishment (do a Google search on Andrew Grogan-Kaylor). We talk about this frequently. Stopping to think for yourself - ever so briefly - in the light of the overarching narrative of Scripture should make a believer stop and think twice about carte blanche use of corporal punishment. If a parent is having to resort to it frequently the problem is not the child, but the parent. Again, authority over power.
ReplyDeleteI agree. But I think there's also a component that has to do with the kid and what they respond to. I was spanked as a kid and I picked up right quick on what was appropriate and what wasn't and it wasn't long before the spankings ended. They worked really well on me and therefore were rarely required.
ReplyDeleteNathan just seems to grow angrier when he's spanked. He works far better with a reward system than with a punishment system. I could escalate the spankings and it just wouldn't have done anything. Spanking just plain never worked with him at any point. Encourage him to behave well by dangling a -carrot- Transformer or Lego in front of him, and he was a perfect little angel.
The girls... I think the only thing that ever worked for them was for them to dig themselves into such a deep hole that they needed to be rescued. They had to go all the way to the end of their misery before they'd realize that when I told them they shouldn't do such-and-such it wasn't because it was going to hurt me but because it was going to hurt them. ... Or I'd cry. That also worked with them, sometimes. If what they were doing made me hurt, then they'd stop.
So I think there's a place for spanking. But if spanking isn't working, the answer isn't to escalate it, but to find something different. (Did I use too many commas there? Hmmm.)
From my research, the mode of discipline is not as important as the consistency of the parent -- and the trust the child has in the parent - who uses it. A child who has to be disciplined so regularly because they're out of control (even Dobson's s"strong-willed child") does so because there's a need for some kind of regularity that they're not perceiving. Sometimes it's because the child doesn't perceive it. Sometimes it's because the parent doesn't provide it. Either way, it's a two-way street. Child and parent adjust to each other. At least, that's how it should work...
ReplyDeleteHave you read (or heard) any Bryan Post, Claudette? I'd be interested in knowing what you think of him.
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard of him. I just went and took a brief look at his model. It's relatively similar to some other things I've seen. The stress model seems to be similar to a model that I utilize/theorize for looking at parents involved with the child welfare system. I would have to take a further look at it, but it seems to be sound. The only thing I am cautions about is that there's a lot more to life than love and fear and in fact I believe fear is a secondary appraisal. But beyond that, it's worth a further investiigation.
ReplyDeleteI think that makes sense. I can imagine that some parents just get really frustrated and escalate it out of sheer exasperation - not everyone is so good at thinking outside the box, looking for alternatives.
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