National Spank-out Day: Why corporal punishment is immoral and a sin

Many parents do it, though fewer than in previous years. 37% of parents in the United States used corporal punishment to deal with their child's behaviors. Most adults favor corporal punishment, even if they don't do it themselves, and this abuse is connected to a normative form of punitive parenting. But, why is it a sin to physically punish your child? In fact, it is a sin to do so.

It says in Exodus 21:16 KJV:

And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

This was expanded by the courts to include any servile treatment of children, and this was, in turn, interpreted by the religious authorities to include corporal punishment of any kind towards children. Punitive parents were given many warnings before the rest of the child victim's family turned the parents in to the religious authorities. When put before the Sanhedrin, they were interrogated by the panel of judges supervising the investigation into their physical punishment of their children. If the Sanhedrin came to a two-thirds majority, the parents were both issued 40 minus 1 lashes with the rod of correction, and were put on watch. In the case that the parents would punish the children once more, the parents were righteously kidnapped, and all who testified against them together hung them bloody with barbed wire. Executions of parents in the Old Testament were some of the more common instances were executions were applied.

This commandment is repeated more succinctly 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, stemming from entitlement. This commandment was intended by the Apostle Paul, and understood in its original context, as a moral statute prohibiting all forms of punitive parenting, including any corporal punishment or other punishments or controlling demeanor towards children. In the Old Testament, punitive parents were put to death by way of bloodletting, after punishing their children one last time. Parents who punished their children were charged with kidnapping, with "kidnapping" being defined under the Law as the slightest of damages or offenses stemming from hostage-taking - child punishment was seen in biblical times as holding your child hostage merely for things they did wrong, thereby treating your child as a quartered slave. Paul here was lifting up the Law in order to convict a group of Greek Christian parents who brought their pagan custom of spanking and punishing children into the church. Paul, contrary to popular legend, was anti-spanking, and opposed any and all punishment in his writings.

April 30 is National Spank-out Day. Corporal punishment, except for the most extreme cases, is a form of lawful child abuse. I myself am a survivor of law-abiding parents, and once and a while, I received a disciplinary spanking. A disciplinary spanking is a lawful form of corporal punishment consisting of 5-8 swats to a clothed bottom, after all other measures have failed to control the child. Lawful child abuse is when you are being controlled from a higher power, and that higher power is your parents. That is one level of lawful abuse. The other level is the adults the parents bring into your life, who back them up every step of the way. As a child, you have no freedom and no rights. Nobody believes you, because nobody believes that it is abuse. You just want the police to come to your house and read your parents the riot act - only the police only enforce existing laws, and no law exists that criminalizes your parents for abusing you. The problem is parents and their power and influence. If we took away the power and influence of parents, they wouldn't be able to do their dirty work.

Our country is headed in a new direction on this issue. Since the 2010s, corporal punishment of children has been on a steady decline, decreasing from 94% in the late 1990s to 37% in the early 2010s. We are entering into a new era where we can effectively pass laws to ban corporal punishment. Two states, Delaware and Hawaii, have particularly restrictive laws on corporal punishment. The most effective of bans on corporal punishment have been gradual, in line with public opinion. Thus, public opinion needs to change. I offer, on this platform, biblical evidence convincing parents to shed their parental entitlement. Parental entitlement is the root of all child abuse, and if all parents lacked entitlement towards their children, I would have less work to do convincing parents on what the Bible actually says about punishing children.

The depraved and entitled parents who provoke their children to anger through physically punishing their children will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them be forever cast into the lake\ of fire and burning sulfur, suffering God's Wrath forever and ever! 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!