This Christmas, you probably have plans involving a Christmas gathering with family and friends. Free play is an integral part of attachment parenting as it was done in the Early Christian church communities. Make free play a part of your Christmas plans for your child.
God's Law is handed down concerning the doctrine of mutual submission in Colossians 3:20-21 KJV:
Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.
The Greek root word translated "obey" is υπακουο (Latin: hupakouo) and refers to secure trust in parents. Replace "obey" with "trust" and you come to a roughly better translation. However, this refers to a special kind of trust, borne out of maternal warmth and sustenance. Attachment parenting was the norm in ancient Israel and adjoining churches, with mothers holding their children close with swaddling bands, with even older children as young or as old as age 7 being swaddled to mothers, and held on her back when they were older. Children, other times, played freely, but within the line of sight of mothers, with children returning to mothers as "home base", recharging with snuggles and quality time together.
The Greek root word translated "provoke...to anger" is ερεθιζο (Latin: erethizo) and refers to provocations to anger against children, meaning any and all offenses against children, as defined as the slightest of personal offense perceived by the child, coming from entitlement. Making a child sit for a couple of hours can be child abuse, so let them play outside, or inside, in their playful and rambunctious ways. The Apostle Paul here intended to ban all punitive parenting, including punishment and control such as spanking and corporal punishment. Paul was rebuking Greek Christian parents who punished their children as part of pagan custom. Any Christmas or other traditions that involve punishing or unrealistically restricting children come from pagan roots, not Christian roots.
Think, based on experience as a parent. Is it realistic to make a child sit for perhaps 4 hours, and not play outside? It isn't realistic to coop up children in the house, and make them sit through a whole dinner. They want to play, and they want to play without adult interruption. So a vase breaks? You can replace that, but not a broken child due to punishment for breaking said vase.
Play in ancient Hebrew and Christian cultures was very different than today. Children alternated, in the older years of childhood, between states of closeness to parents and free play, usually of the rough and "high-risk" type by today's standards. Children were only stopped once the play became sexualized overtly, meaning in terms of contact, whereas a lot of play had sexual themes to it that were hidden and masked, such as girls wanting to "look pretty" and impress the boys, with sexual awareness in relation to peers coming much earlier than in modern culture, meaning around age 6 or so. Children went naked throughout the biblical context, even in the Early Church, and then they snuggled in the nude with their mothers, getting ample skin-to-skin closeness with mom. Then, they went back to playing, and free play with other children weaned them off needing to snuggle all the time with parents. Children never left the mother's line of sight.
Today, you can get a cell phone for your child, and give them a GPS tracking device and have it installed on their phone, and that can be how you keep the Law in terms of supervising children who play freely. Tell them to call you when something goes wrong, such as when another child makes a sexual overture towards them. The attachment parenting advice I give here applies to the degree the parent can apply it, but punishment and control in parenting is heresy if you don't fight against those tendencies as a parent. Any parent who strives to be better and less punitive will be rewarded by God in the City in the Sky.
The depraved and entitled parents will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them burn in the lake of fire and burning sulfur, which is the second death prepared for Satan and his accomplices! Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!
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