In Defense of Biblical Chastisement, Part 2

By: Michael Pearl

This is the second half of “In Defense of Biblical Chastisement.” We have examined the Word of God and seen God's perspective on the necessity of incorporating the rod as part of our child-training methods. Now we will discuss the how, when, and where.

This is a practical look at spanking children. Parents must understand that spanking is just one element in God’s child training program. It is essential, but is not the whole—only a part. Nor is it the most important part. Important yes, but not all-important.

One of our wise readers suggested: “Try, yet again, to explain to parents how to train, discipline, and enjoy their children. Too many parents get stuck on one of these elements and let the other two slide. But just as you need several key ingredients to make a cake, as parents, those three elements are crucial to having happy, obedient children.” E. D.

1. Enjoy your children

Parents must first enjoy their children. Only in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust can parents impart anything positive to their children. In an environment of tension and criticism, training and spanking are ineffective, even counterproductive. Make your children part of your life—the biggest part. Look them in the eyes and smile right through them. Love your way into their souls. Delight in the things they delight in, and they will delight in you. If they know that their existence pleases you, they will want their actions to please you also. Only in this context are either of you ready for training.

2. Training

Training is done before the need to discipline arises. Training is what you do in the moments when all is well and you take time out to condition them to obedience. Your well-spoken words of praise and instruction will prevent many possible acts of disobedience or foolishness. Impart an understanding of why obedience is important. When you cause children to understand that you will hold to your authority firmly, you are pre-conditioning their hearts and minds to obedience.

You must also condition their bodies to obedience by seizing many opportunities throughout the day to walk them through acts of obedience. As the military drills their soldiers, you must drill your children. We have discussed this many times, and since our subject is the rod, we will not go into the training aspect here, but we want you to see training and discipline in perspective.

When parents have failed to train, their “discipline” tends to come in explosive spurts. Instead of training the child to obey, they wait until his disobedience drives them into violent discipline. That is like driving a car by bouncing off the guardrails on either side. It might knock your kids back toward center, but in the end it will wreck them. If you don’t take time to train, you haven’t taken time to be a parent, and your discipline will be more like war. If it makes you feel abusive, it proves you still have a conscience. Spanking is a great corrective tool when used on trained children, but it will make an untrained child stubborn and mad.