Pro-social mirror - Why children are a mirror for a parent's behavior

Many parents believe in punishment and control as ways of dealing with their child. Most all parents believe in abuse in this manner in the United States. However, it not wise, to say the very least, to punish a child, and provoke them to anger. However you treat them is what you get back.

Divine Codified Ordinance states in Colossians 3:20-21 KJV:

Children, obey your parents in all things, lest they become discourage. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they become discouraged.

The Greek root word translated "obey" is υπακουο (Latin: hupakouo) and refers to secure, vulnerable rest in the care, support, and protection of parents, being able to say anything to parents, owing nothing to parents, with parents loving children in a sacrificial way, just as Christ gave Himself up for His children, turning himself in for a crime against them that He didn't commit. The Greek root word translated "provoke...to anger" is ερεθιζο (Latin: erethzo) and literally translates to "stir up" and is one of the Greek words that lift up the offenses, or the damages and torts system imposed upon the nation of Israel by God through the Eighth, and summed up the New Testament as the slightest of personal slights perceived by a child from an adult, as a form of entitlement. Entitlement was denoted by the Greek root word πλεονέκτης (Latin: pleonektés) and refers to not only wanting things from children, but wanting them to the point of seeking to impose said want onto a child, leading to theft/abuse as determined in vs. 21, meaning whatever the child perceive viscerally as abuse objectively is.

Usually, children express provocation to anger not through lashing out at parents, but by rebelling against parents as a cry for help. This is known as pro-social mirror. The moment you see your child rebelling against you, look to see into their behaviors. Are they similar to how you lash out at them? Children mirror the anger to their parents, and either shine that light right back to the parents, shine it in the face of other adults, or other children that they would bully.

The Apostle Paul was actually pro-attachment parenting (he was single and never married), as was the ordinance of the Christian Churches of God in the 1st Century. What he was warning to fathers is that when you punish and control your child, you end up with a child that wants to punish and control back, meaning the counterwill. The teaching then was that whatever you put into your child is what you receive, meaning if you put punishment into the child, you get punished by your child.

Ancient Jewish culture was an attachment parenting society, meaning closeness was near constant with mothers and sometimes fathers to varying distances, with co-sleeping being the norm among families. Whippings as documented in Proverbs and Hebrews were poetic references to judicial corporal punishment under the Mosaic Law, which only was administered to adults on death row, not young children who "talk back". Minor children, meaning under the age of majority, were exempt from all prosecution in any case, thus punishing a child at all was completely illegal then. God lifted up those child abuse standards today, which all ancient societies had, to today's context using the New Testament as a vehicle of religious change.

Churches like the parish in Colossae served many Greek converts. Greco-Roman society condoned the physical punishment of children, as part of the Roman legal doctrine of patrias potestas meaning a man has the right to control his family, whereas, in the Hebraic context, fathers/husbands provided for their families. In this verse and one written to the parish at Ephesus (Eph. 6:1-4) had problems with Greek converts abusing their children. Such churches based their ordinances on Jewish law, with Jews having to keep all three 613 statements of the Law, whereas Christians only had to go by the spirit of the Law, meaning loving God and your neighbor, and loving God through loving your neighbor, with the rest detailed by the New Testaments. Children were the neighbor of adults then, and punishing your neighbor was an offense against your neighbor without valid proof of guilt in court - which children could not provide, due to defense of infancy - therefore punishing a child is immoral and illegal, as the New Testament applies word for word today, whereas the Old Testament is for reference, as the Early Church was seen then as keeping the Law, but with gentiles only having to adhere to every one of the Ten Commandments but the Third. Apart from that, the same offenses did exist from the Old Testament in the Early Church, including fits of anger towards a child and fornication. 

The entitled parents who provoke their children to anger through child abuse will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them burn! Let them suffer! Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!