The history of corporal punishment (from Moses to today)

Many people link the biblical context to corporal punishment. This is a false association, as corporal punishment only came about after the Bible was written. It all started with one of the Ten Commandments, namely the Fifth in fact.

It says in Exodus 20:12 KJV:

Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 

This refers to one simple fact - the Bible and Ten Commandments, together, are the one legal document that furthered the status of children, or at least was intended by God to. Before Moses, under Canaanite law, parents could kill disobedient children at will, and sacrificed disobedient children to the idol Molech. After Moses, parents had to go to court to even punish their children, and their children had to be of age, meaning the age of majority. A stubborn and rebellious son had to be guilty of all counts mentioned in Deut. 21:18-21, and be warned multiple times by multiple witnesses for each individual count, with "gluttony" in the Bible referring specifically to unlawful meats, which is specific to the Jewish religion and otherwise doesn't exist in the Christian faith.

In the children's rights tense, Christ's death and Resurrection was intended to promulgate the Hebraic concept of children's rights, meaning child-friendliness, as Christ was all for the little children and their rights (Matt. 19:14). Judaeo-Christian values were never intended to be in favor of any punishment towards children. Paul explicitly forbade fathers from using punishment as a form of child discipline in Eph. 6:4 and Col. 3:21. 

In the 3rd Century, Roman Emperor Constantine ordered the compilation of the Bible. This is where the Roman Catholic Church was honest, meaning books of apocrypha, meaning embellishments that plagiarized true authorship, were removed from the list of books, except one, Hebrews, which is a part of the Bible, yet only mentions corporal punishment in a figurative manner. Hebrews stays in the Bible due to its timeless value, usually in poetic format.

Where did the Roman Catholic Church get things wrong? When proselytizing to the pagan peoples of Europe, they left one teaching out because European men then were so in favor of controlling their families - the attachment parenting teaching. Attachment parenting was the norm in ancient Israel and adjoining churches, but that context was lost throughout time.

Nowadays, more and more biblical scholars, such as Samuel Martin and William Webb, are studying the Hebraic accounts of family life in ancient Israel. Was it harsh? Yes, but only in terms of environmental hazards. Spanking or punishing a child in any way was forbade under the Law, and was, in fact, considered kidnapping in many cases, which involved a death sentence of hanging and bloodletting of parents, and that showed both how that culture felt about spanking, and how God felt, meaning wanting to transport that legal system to the whole world, in spirit, with the Messiah being the Sacrificial Lamb so that children's rights could be spread, largely using secular researchers and professionals as tools of God for the good of children. God does have a hand in this children's rights movement. God will erase all corporal punishment from the land, angry at a world that misuses His Laws and Word to abuse children.

There will be change, and change is already happening. Most fundamentalist and charismatic churches do not have a policy that discriminates against attachment parents, but individual pastors may still preach against such parenting, and often do. This is an improvement, and many more mainline and progressive churches have made statements against the use of force in parenting. In response, many states have either anti-spanking bills archived in their state house, or are gradually reforming themselves by increasingly stringent definitions of physical abuse. In Pennsylvania, striking a child under age 1 is a criminal offense, meaning endangering the welfare of a child, regardless of injury. Such is a felony of the third degree, which carries with it a maximum prison term of 7 years. Laws are changing favorably nationwide, some places slower than others in terms of pace. Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Hawaii seem to be places where progress is accelerating. 

Let's wait and see. The status of children is improving. Let's keep it that way. America is a Christian nation, with all of our founders either being Christians or respecting Christian values, and thus God's Law is above the land. Spanking is banned. See Col. 3:21 for details. Spanking is already banned, as we are a nation that respects natural law first. Lift up the natural law, then the state bans it.