Child punishment: Why the punishment of children violates the unwritten law of the land

Many parents think that children deserve to be punished as a means to control them. Most parents in America support child punishment, and a good number of parents actually use corporal punishment as a means to control children. Do you not know that child punishment is a moral crime against a child, and a provocation to anger towards a child? Do you not know that God commanded the populace to not provoke children to anger through punishments and controlling demeanor.

Child punishment is banned in the Bible. Child punishment is an offense towards a child stemming from parental entitlement. The Bible prohibits all parental entitlement at the level of offense, with such entitlement violating the unwritten law of the land. It says in Colossians 3:21 KJV:

Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.

The Greek root word translated "provoke...to anger" is ερεθιζο (Latin: erethizo) and refers to damages or offenses, namely the slightest of personal offense perceived by a child, including, but not limited to, the slightest of offensive touch or speech perceived by a child. This commandment was understood in its original context as prohibiting all forms of punitive parenting, including any punishment or controlling demeanor towards children. In the Old Testament, punitive parents were put to death by way of bloodletting, after punishing their children too many times, and receiving many warnings beforehand that their parenting was out of compliance with the Law. Parents who punished their children were charged with kidnapping, with "kidnapping" as a charge being defined under the Law as any damages or offense stemming from hostage-taking - child punishment was seen by society in biblical times as holding your child hostage merely for things they did wrong. Paul was lifting up this historical legal context to a group of Greek Christians who brought their pagan custom of spanking and punishing children into the church. The Early Christians had no such custom as an established Christian norm in the Early Church, as the Early Christians were known throughout the Roman Empire for being "too soft" on their children, which was a source of persecution for them.

The teaching of "biblical spanking" does not come from the Bible. It comes from the Roman Catholic Church pandering to the European pagan peoples who beat and whipped their children into submission. This very European custom was spread around the world by the colonial powers colonizing faraway lands. The Anglo-Saxons absorbed their harsh treatment of children into the English church, with the English settlers spreading their absorbed pagan parenting customs into the New World. No such custom existed in the Ancient Judeo-Christian world, as the Ancient Jews and Early Christians were attachment parents. Unlike in other cultures, fathers mounting their children was outlawed as a capital offense, even when the child was latched to the mother. This according to historians and biblical scholars. 

According to the Hebraic context, a punitive parent who provoked children to anger was seen in both the Old and New Testaments as a viper and a monster, meaning they were seen as abusers of children to the point of dehumanization. Most Jewish and Christian parents were incapable of even getting angry with children, being devoid of all parent anger. Any parent who could get angry with their child was suspected of the worst, and when anger or resentment towards a child was voiced or directed towards a child, many extended family members of a child stepped in, and demanded answers from the authorities. The Law did have a concept of a child sex offender, but punitive parents were even more feared by Jewish and Christian society then than sex offenders. It was assumed that all parents were incapable of getting angry with their child, so that when that anger did show, it shocked everyone. 

The Greek root word denoting parental entitlement is πλεονέκτης (Latin: pleonektés) and refers to, officially speaking, wanting things from children, to the point of imposition. Unofficially speaking, it refers to wanting anything from children, period. At the bare minimum, deadly parental entitlement is wanting things from children, to the point of demanding things from them. An adult in a Judeo-Christian society like ours is not deserving or entitled to anything from children. We all want things from children as depraved and decadent adults, but we need to work for what we want from children, instead of demanding and controlling for it. I am not to want anything from a child, but I do, and I struggle with that want, which is pedophilic in nature. Avoidance of parental entitlement is a solemn and remorseful sentiment that one has no inherent rights in relation to children, and that any rights one does have are earned. When you abuse, you lose your rights in relation to children, and deserve to lose your freedom as well.

America is a Christian nation, founded on Judeo-Christian family values. Nowhere in those values does it legitimately say to punish a child. We as a society glean from the Bible and its context, and that source is anti-spanking, when understood in context. America has a certain religious tradition to it. That religious tradition can survive without child punishment being legal. We as a country can move on from child punishment just as we moved on from slavery and Jim Crow. Abolitionists didn't oppose religion, but pointed out our flaws in interpreting the Bible in that regard. Children today are enslaved to parents just as blacks were as house slaves. 

God's Law is above the law of the land, and thus spanking and punishment of children is already banned. It is about time that the secular law caught up with the unwritten law of the land. The unwritten law of the land clearly prohibits child punishment, as we obtain the unwritten law of the land from the Bible, and the Bible, when understood in context, opposes all parental entitlement, including when it leads to offending a child in any way.

The depraved and entitled parents will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them be cast forever in to the lake of fire and burning sulfur, which is the second death prepared for Satan and his accomplices! Let them descend into the abyss which is the ever-burning Hell of fire and torment, suffering God's Wrath forever and ever! Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!