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Choosing Not to Spank - Part 3

by Laurie Morgan

GOD IS GOOD

Being hit as a child for any reason threatens the child’s ability to see God’s ultimate authority as benevolent. Although I have heard other people profess this truth, I only my own experience to prove this. Please take my word that being hit as a child did this to me. Some Christians point out that life just “is” hard. The assumption seems to be that if everyday life does not crush the spirits of children then spanking should not either, or vice versa. But the natural pain involved in living everyday life is not the same and does not carry the same emotional weight. Everyday life doesn’t need to be filled with arbitrary or misguided abuse from the people who are supposed to love us the most. I don't believe then, that all pain is abuse. Pain that is intentionally inflicted by a parent is abuse IMO. God permits pain, but does not inflict it.

I have said that some Christians believe that God punishes us in the same way that human parents sometimes punish their children. But this anthropomorphic view of God’s motives is highly egotistical and minimizes God's role in our lives. God gave us free will for a reason! God does not beat us into obedience. It is the dysfunctional view that God causes bad things to happen that drives people away from God. If I believed that God caused my sexual abuse, for instance, I never could have climbed into his loving lap and accepted the healing from Him that I did. It was blaming God for letting something so bad happen to me that led me away from God for twenty years.

God does not abuse us. God allows us to make poor choices that result in pain. God wants us to choose to love to Him with our free will. If he desired to manipulate us into loving Him, in His infinite power He would have just created us to love Him like He created the Angels. With our cooperation He brings good out of bad things. Do you believe in the Devil? To say that because bad things exist means that God created them is like you saying that because God made the devil, He is the Devil. In reality, the belief that God causes our pain is a tool of the devils that causes many Christians to stray in times of tragedy.

I suggest reading Toxic Faith by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton to understand this delicate balance between God as all-powerful and God as "punisher" better. They are not the same. From page 82, "The toxic thinking that all things are good [because they are caused by God] makes people question whether or not God is a cruel God. It forces them to see God as a cruel joker who inflicts pain and expects His followers to be happy about it. This perspective is a means of avoiding reality. It is an addictive habit, producing quick relief, blocking reality with poisonous faith. A loving God wants the best for us and is grieved when the best is missed. True faith in Him allows these bad things to be woven together in a protective covering that grows stronger in fiber and softer to the touch."

Trying to show a parallel between imperfect human parents punishing their children and God allowing pain is flawed. God is perfect. We humans cannot emulate God to such a degree and we are not meant to. We are not to be the ultimate judge of our children. We are to emulate Christ the Son. Christ did not hit children. Many, many people told Christ that living the way He told us to was impossible, but I don't remember Him making any adjustments to His teachings to excuse parents to hit children even though He did not. You could argue that Christ did not go to the dentist either, but we do. This train of thought is faulty too. You don’t really have to go to a dentist any more than Christ did either. Perhaps because of your sin and imperfection, you think you need to hit your children in order to discipline them, but you must agree that this is not what Jesus taught.

A better analogy of God's parental relationship to us would be a parent who creates a safe environment for a toddler who is learning to walk, but allows him to fall down and get up on his own. God has "baby proofed" our lives to the extent that we are never given more burden than we can bear. That does not mean that we never fall, but it does mean that God never punishes us for walking the wrong way. I don't know how to make the distinction between natural consequences and deliberate, parentally inflicted ones any clearer.

It may be impossible to objectively prove that spanking hurts kids, every time, in the ways we all know it hurts some kids some of the time. Some spanking does hurt kids. Such spanking, some will claim, was just not done in the “right” manner. However, none of this can be taken to mean that we should spank. If I could prove here that spanking hurts kids, and that the Bible does not command it, would the Christian parents that read it endeavor to discipline without it? From my experience it seems not. For many Christian parents there is far more impetus to spank than just the biblical excuses given. Perhaps the belief in a false biblical “command” to spank gives some parents relief of their guilt over losing control. This should give significant reason for reflection.

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Copyright 2000 by Laurie Morgan
Used by permission

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