As I knew it would, my post on discipline certainly sparked thoughts by some. The “anti-spanking” crowd certainly has the support of media and superstars. I mean, why wouldn’t it? In our society, we want the smoothest path, the least cost paid and easier road to fame. This is the land of participation trophies because we can’t stand to think that our child might suffer. I get it. As a father of three, I desperately wanted (and still want) my girls to get the lead role, have been the star player in softball, found their way to academic greatness.
However, as a former coach and professor, I know that such things do not happen merely because someone wishes it, but rather through an arduous process of work and training. That idea of training, as I wrote last week, involves discipline. Often, the discipline was in the form of instruction, drill training and repetitive work that will, as I said last week, “create a new, correct action.” Note, my athletes and my current students will tell you that this work, particularly the drill aspect, was not “fun” if by fun one means “frivolous or jolly action that feels good.” Yet, over time, most of my athletes and my students saw the improvement in their work at the right time, during the swim season or facing the next major exam…and doing well is always fun.
Still, at times, the discipline needed and applied was to “bring correction, either from a poor or wrong action.” And always, as I said last week, it involves pain. In the parenting realm, that can involve spanking. For a child, particularly a younger one (younger than say 10), a type of punishment that is mental only simply fails to connect. The child does not comprehend that the punishment being applied, say something that involves a lecture or merely losing access to something like a game or toy, is due to whatever their poor or wrong action was.
Spanking is the part of discipline that has most people upset. David Prince at cannonandculture.com has a very nice piece on this. In the piece, he speaks to the issue arising due to Adrian Peterson’s horrific whipping of his son. Prince writes, “that most evangelical Christians are appalled by the photos of Peterson’s son and would not endorse the obvious anger and lack of parental self-control demonstrated by the physical harm inflicted in those photos. A biblical understanding of proper parental use of corporal discipline in training children repudiates discipline administered with a lack of self-control. Physical chastisement of a child is not a way for parents to vent anger or relieve their frustration on their child—that is hellish, not holy.” Amen and amen!!
Prince further says (probably better than I) the point of punishment: “Verbal instruction and correction, along with consequences for actions and restitution when possible, will be the more consistent form of discipline and training of one’s children. Nevertheless, there are times of willful defiance when the controlled, loving use of corporal discipline will accomplish what words cannot in driving folly out of the heart of a child (Prov 22:15).”
One of our problems these days, and I mean problems for Christians, is that far too many people make the claim of faith when there is little to no evidence to support the claim. That issue is probably better served in another post some other time, but suffice it to say, most of us have found times when we’ve been lumped in together with a poor representative of some group we belong to. Still, there are Christians who do a poor job of parenting. As Prince writes, “All forms of discipline, including corporal discipline, are to focus on training the child and not the comfort of the parent. When the “rod” is used in uncontrolled anger, the child becomes dehumanized as an object on which the parent releases their frustration, and the result is a hellish division between the parent and child.” Yes. I can remember many times when my own irritation at an act committed, either by an athlete or my own child, led me towards a path of anger. I realized that I needed to walk away and calm down rather than try to deal with the discipline at that moment.
Perhaps the best part of Prince’s post comes toward the end when he goes to the heart of what he believes is good discipline, compared to poor discipline of one’s children. This is such an important issue. As I wrote last week, our problem is that we do not know how to discipline well, if at all. But, poor discipline, which is so often around us as evidenced by so many misbehaving children or, as later teens and young adults, children who have a wanton disregard for respect of authority…that poor discipline is also a creation of our culture. Parents yell and scream, bargain or plead and yes, sadly, resort to physical violence in a way that is hellish. We’ve lost so much touch with a proper understanding of discipline and how it helps prepare a society for mutual interaction to accomplish the common goal of a successful society. That I did not address last week, but Prince does so very well; let me give him the last word:
Every parent has some approach to how they discipline their children. Some parents yell and scream, others parents banish their children to their room for an hour, and some beg, plead and bribe their children to obey. Often, immediate corporal discipline, accompanied by verbal instruction about sin and gospel hope that ends with an embrace and declaration of love provides some of the sweetest moments of intimate and affectionate love between a parent and child. Sin is clarified, the consequence of sin is administered, reconciliation is quick, and the gospel is proclaimed—a strategic gospel opportunity.