I guess the news about Vikings running back Adrian Peterson hitting his kid in the name of discipline has prompted some new discussions about corporal punishment – a fancy term that helps us avoid saying “hitting kids.” I see from this Baltimore Sun editorial that the U.S. is joined only by Somalia in refusing to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child ‘in part because the treaty aimed at ending child trafficking includes language about “acting in the best interest of a child.’ That, in turn, has been interpreted by some in the U.S. Senate as anti-parental rights or anti-spanking.” But, when you have Somalia on your side, you’re in pretty stout company.
You can tell that this devotion to spanking is going to resist any number of studies showing that spanking children doesn’t help them. I think that’s at least in part because there is a deep cultural distrust of happiness in this country. Hard work and suffering are inextricably linked to probity.
Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.
Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
Proverbs 23:13-14.
I suppose some parents think they need to hit their kid to make them behave. I don’t blame generations past who thought that’s the way things had to be. But now we have studies and experience showing that you can raise good kids without hitting them and, in fact, are more likely to raise good kids if you don’t hit them. Hitting your kids these days reflects a lack of patience and a lack of imagination.
It’s not o.k. to hit anyone else in the world except the most defenseless person who trusts you most? Seems legit.
Let’s see – father weighs maybe 200 pounds and boy weighs maybe 35 pounds. Would he get a whipping if he weighed as much as dad? Hmmm –
As a historical note, Proverbs is a collection of sayings, gathered from the ancient world. The quotation which you cite is ensconced in a group of Egyptian sayings called the “Teaching of Amenemope”. It’s in the bible, yes, but you can more appropriately blame the ancient near east for that worldview, in this case ancient Egypt (ca. 1300 B.C. – 1075 B.C.).
In the case of the football player who whipped his son with a tree branch, as well as the guy who knocked out his girlfriend, the state of mind of American football requires its guys to be obsessed with aggression and violence. For that matter, this is a society which hasn’t decided about how to deal with that issue. While they demand that these guys be something short of rhinoceroses most of the time, the spokesmen act shocked when they act it out with their kids and girlfriends. Sorry, but most of these guys probably have difficulty compartmentalizing their lives, keeping it civilized and respectful here and monstrous there. I’ll bet $100 that physical abuse and unrestrained violence is a common occurrence with many of these people. Check out the behavior of these guys during the next TV broadcast, and try to imagine them coming in the door saying “Hello, honey, I’m home!”
What translation of the bible are you quoting, because going back to the original language, studying the meaning of the words as word study, that is not what those verses originally meant when wrote. It has been a while, but I actually did the original word study of those verses. It has been lost in translation. The use of the rod in those verses was just a generic version of the word rod associated with shepherds and herds. Shepherds used the rod as a symbol of authority, but not really as a beating stick. Rods were used at that time in the Bible to help guide and poke animals along, rods were used to provide temporary fences to a herd, the curved portion of a shepherd’s rod can be used to grab an animal by the neck and pull it back to the herd, or also pull it away from an unsafe situation. This was common understanding of the word rod in the time that the verses were written.
Over time, we forgot how shepherds actually used rods. The concept of rod meaning a beating stick evolved later through later translations. The more direct and proper translation going back to the meaning of the words in the original language at the time they verses were written: if you don’t provide boundaries and guidance to a child, you will spoil the child. It really is a beautiful verse if translated properly.