And ye have forgotten the exhortation that speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
This passage, when understood correctly, is comforting to me. The Greek root word translated "scourgeth" is μαστιγόω (Latin: mastigoó) and has a figurative meaning to it. When a Christian man in the Early Church got home from a long day at work, he instead said "God whipped me hard today". God obviously does not come down from the Heavens and whip His children. However, God does punish His children, as only He can, sending trials and tribulations the way of the children that He cherishes the most. However, God only punishes His children when it does not harm them, whereas earthly parents only punish their children when it does, in fact, harm them. This passage was intended as comfort for the Hebrew Christians in their persecution from Rome.
The teaching of "biblical spanking" is a man-made teaching. God does not want His Parenting methods copied by earthly parents, lest they get it wrong. However, the Bible does weigh in on the spanking issue, and then some. See 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 here to offenses or damages, namely the slightest of personal offense perceived by a child, stemming from entitlement. It is one thing to stop spanking your child. However, it is not enough to stop spanking your child, or even stop punishing children altogether for that matter. You need to avoid offense in children; Avoiding offense in children is the same as avoiding offense in other adults. Just as hurt feelings are inevitable in relations between adults, hurt feelings are also inevitable in children when dealing with them. Thus, in order to avoid offense in children, you need to be willing to give a meaningful apology for hurting your child's feelings Usually, all that is necessary is a reassurance of good intent coming from parents, in the form of an informal apology, whenever you hurt your child's feelings with limits not set out of anger, such as "I'm sorry, but I had to set X limit for Y reasons". However, if you ever lose your cool with your child as a parent, including while setting limits, you definitely need to give a formal apology for hurting your child's feelings with your anger, such as "I apologize for losing my temper with you", and then commit never to lose your cool with your child ever again, as any parent anger directed towards children alone is entitlement, and was seen as entitlement in the Early Church. This commandment cross-references the Eighth and the Tenth Commandments, with the Apostle Paul here convicting a group of Greek Christian parents who brought into the church their pagan custom of patrias potestas, which is a Latin term roughly translating to "power to the parent", namely the power to impose punitive sanctions on children, such as spanking or other forms of punishment of children. However, this commandment was ultimately received by the parish at Colossae as prohibiting all offenses as perceived by a child, at minimum. Paul, contrary to popular legend, was anti-spanking, and opposed any and all punitive parenting in his secular writings. Attachment parenting was banned under Roman law, but the Early Christians did it anyway, obeying God over men.
It is a myth that the Early Christians were well-integrated into broader Greco-Roman society. Instead, the Early Christians lived in enclaves in big cities, shunning the broader Greco-Roman world, as well as the outside world at large. Spanking then was seen as a pagan custom that infiltrated Christian churches. Paul would have none of it in the parishes that he oversaw, and wrote two convicting commandments to both the parishes at Colossae and Ephesus with his inspired pen.
The staple punishment in Greco-Roman households was an open-handed spanking to a bare bottom. However, the Early Christians saw this sort of punishment as pagan in nature. Corporal punishment was absorbed into the Western Christian churches by way of European pagan influence. The European pagans were brutes with their children. Pope Constantine himself was pro-spanking, and formed the Roman Catholic Church in his pro-spanking image.
The Bible has an anti-spanking bias. The Bible was written by anti-spanking Jews, with no Jew worth mentioning ever condoning the punitive treatment of children. All of the biblical writers also wrote parenting manuals that advocated attachment parenting. It just so happens that these attachment parenting manuals were not translated into English until the 1960s. Before then, that parenting knowledge only belonged to the Jews.
The depraved and entitled parents who provoke their children to anger through punitive parenting will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them be cast forever into the lake of fire and burning sulfur, which is the ever-burning Hell of fire and torment, suffering God's Wrath day and night forever and ever! Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!
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