Dennis Tuuri

I want to do three things. Mostly this is going to be a discussion, but I have some opening comments in general, then some comments about two of the articles that were shared on the Facebook thread on the RCC page. I asked for cliff notes. Nobody gave me them. Maybe that’s because nobody knows what they are anymore. Instead, I got a bunch of blog posts. You know, and so I read a couple of them and maybe they’ll be typical or maybe they won’t, but I’ve got some comments on those.

So, let’s pray and then some general comments, a few more specific comments about spanking, and then some comments from these articles and then we’ll just talk. Okay, let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this afternoon. We thank you for again the beautiful day and thank you, Father, for all the great things we’re able to do and enjoy and be blessed and happy in these last few hours. Now, bless us as well, Lord God, as we think about our children.

We know the tremendous optimism that causes people to get married and have kids in spite of the difficulties of the present. And so we thank you for that faith in you. We thank you for the stewardship responsibilities we have with our children and your blessings upon us in raising them. Help us, Lord God, in our discussion to give glory, knowledge, and rejoicing life to one another. In Jesus’ name we ask it.

Amen.

You know, that’s kind of what I want to start with first—the idea that God gives us all these blessings about our children, promises rather. You know, if the older people at RCC know that when we started out, you assume you do X, you get X as the result, but what you end up with is Y, Z, A, whatever it might be. You’re really not in control of the process, parents. Sorry, but you’re not.

God is going to do what he’s going to do with your kids. They are completely separate agents from you. In one sense, they’re connected but separate. And so, you know, number one, don’t freak out overly about what you end up doing in terms of parenting practices. I mean, really, take a deep breath. You know, know that you give it your best shot. Know that God will use whatever you’re going to do for him and for his kingdom, and he’s going to do what he’s going to do with your kids anyway.

So, I hope that doesn’t sound too, you know, slack. It doesn’t. I’m not intending that, but I am intending to say that God’s in control. And number two, God’s control of our children, our baptized children, means that we expect and anticipate blessing for them in the long run. So it’s the promises of God to our kids that are ultimately significant, and his interaction in their lives. You know, one of the texts in Hebrews says parents discipline as they see fit.

You know, God’s discipline affects its purposes. That’s not putting down parental discipline. It’s showing the shortcomings, but it’s saying that God is doing what he’s going to do with our kids and he’s doing it for blessing for them.

Okay, so that’s number one. You know, relax. Let’s not get too uptight about the whole thing. Let’s try to learn from the scriptures and let’s trust God for the outcome of our children and not overemphasize our own importance in the process.

Number two is that most families—and this isn’t true of all—most families have two parents. And what that means is two witnesses of God to the child. And while you’re one covenantally, you’re two very separate and different people just in terms of your personhood and certainly in terms of the sexes. So you have two different sexes, two different people with two different sets of personalities, backgrounds, et cetera.

And that isn’t a bad thing. Don’t think that because parents are supposed to have unity and stuff that means identity with one another. Typically, and I haven’t done—I did a study ten or fifteen years ago about this in Proverbs and it’s quite interesting if you look at comments about moms and comments about dads. The Proverbs are different. Typically in our culture, and I’m not saying this is necessarily true biblically, but maybe it is—typically dads tend to be more the disciplinarians and moms tend to be more the encouragers. And so, you know, that’s not a bad thing. Now, it can be a bad thing. And in homeschooling circles, a lot of homeschooling circles can become kind of matriarchal. And in that case, you’re going to have more of a question—you know, maybe more of a hesitancy to exercise spanking than you would if both parents are doing their own thing.

So, you know, certainly you should have a discussion about what happens with division of roles and all that stuff. I don’t mean to say you’re totally independent of each other, but you are two separate witnesses from God to your children. And so, if the mom doesn’t want to spank and the dad does, maybe that’s okay. Or if the dad doesn’t want to and the mom does, you know, you just have to kind of work that stuff out and recognize that there are these two different dimensions—at least two, maybe a lot more than that—in terms of parenting.

You know, there is this hierarchical discipline stuff. Then there’s the encouraging discipline stuff where you’re more getting down on the floor with them, wrestling around, that kind of stuff. There’s different ways we have of dealing with our kids. And so, you don’t have to be identical. In fact, you shouldn’t be. Usually means somebody’s just not fulfilling their side of the obligation of rearing the kids.

And then another very important point in this discussion is diversity within the body. And most of the things that we do in our lives—my family will do things differently than your family. You know, whether it’s entertainment, leisure activities, training for vocation—there’s a great deal of diversity in the kingdom. That means Satan can’t grab the whole thing by one person and blow it all up. There’s diversity.

And the Spirit gives different gifts. There has to be a lot of grace given as we discuss parenting. You know, I think that in this discussion today, we’re not going to try to come up with any great answers, but I do hope that we all agree that there are some ditches. There’s two ditches here. And one ditch would be to say—and nobody says this—one ditch would be to say spank every time, spank a lot, and spanking is the deal for raising your kids. Or that you have to spank at all, right? We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But, you know, one ditch would be overemphasis on corporal punishment as the mechanism. Another ditch would be to say it’s never right, it’s wrong. And that ditch scares me a little bit more, only because of the cultural context that I’ve come out of. I was in San Francisco in the late 60s, early 70s. That side won. And if you look at what our culture is like, it mirrors the counterculture movement of the late 60s, early 70s.

They’re in control. And one of their efforts, since the earliest days of this kind of countercultural revolution, is to remove parental control over children and specifically to remove spanking. Now, you know, whether you come down on the issue today or what your concerns are about your style or whatever it is—understand that the culture wants to outlaw spanking and it’s related to a whole host of other issues in terms of capital punishment, responsibility, and immaturity that others were talking about. There’s a whole ream of things all kind of linked together. But believe me, you know, if you think that for you spanking isn’t what you want to do with your particular child or children, but still think it’s an okay thing—it’s still a tool in the toolbox that other parents can use. Ask yourself this question: How much would you fight state control that says you can’t spank? And I think that some of these articles I read, I honestly think those folks would vote in favor of such a prohibition.

So, whether or not anybody’s going to say we think it’s sin, but think of it that way—and that’s not some kind of theoretical possibility. That remains a highly probable action in our lifetime by the civil government. I think Jason said that Santa Barbara’s trying to outlaw spanking anyway. So you’ve got this cultural setting, but we want to avoid the ditches. We want to have a great deal of diversity in parenting styles.

And I think that’s got to undergird this discussion.

One other general comment is that, of course, what we want to do as Christians is not just grab a few proof texts out of the Bible for how we’re going to raise our children or discipline them or whatever you want to call it. What we want to do, though, is look generally at the scriptures. And specifically, God has given us this really interesting tool where he tells us in Galatians that in the Old Testament, the church Israel was immature, like a child being kept under governors and tutors, and now in Christ humanity has matured.

I think that’s why our difficulties are really different than old pagan difficulties—whether humanistic ones. Humanity has advanced in Christ, okay. And but what it sets up for us is the idea to look at how God disciplines his children—by which I mean Israel. How does he work with Israel? Look at the wilderness experience, because what he’s doing in the wilderness experience is taking a group of kids and training them for forty years so that when they go into the land and he says go seven times around the city, they’re not saying, “What? Huh? What do you wait a minute? That doesn’t make sense to me.” They were used to following him, going in circles. They did it for forty years in the wilderness, or at least thirty-eight. He drilled them. He made them do things that seemed to have no purpose. And he gave them laws. And with those laws, he gave them punishments as well as blessings, right? He gave them his presence in the wilderness. He gave them supernatural blessings.

There’s all kinds of things he did as a dad for Israel in the wilderness. And you know, redemptively historically, he’s a dad there over the kids before they mature in Christ. But even in the sense in which we think of it, you know, those kids were two and up as they started that thirty-eight years of preparation for the conquest. And God was training children, getting rid of one generation, bringing up another.

So there’s a ton of information in the Bible about God rearing kids. Yeah. But it isn’t going to be like finding a proof text here or there. It’s a little more generic than that, but it’s very important nonetheless.

All right. So, those are some sort of general comments. And now to more specific comments that I gleaned from the articles. You know, one of the things that comes up is this idea that the rod in the verses in Proverbs is this instrument that’s only a representation of authority. It’s a big cudgel, and if you used it you’d kill somebody. That’s really just poor exegesis, okay? So just, you know, you can go to any good Hebrew help. I always recommend the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. That particular resource has an entry written by Bruce Waltke, who’s quite sharp. And you know, the origins of the word that we translate rod or scepter or whatever it is—or chute or offspring—the origin seems to be the idea to sprout.

So, it’s like a branch sprouting off a tree and it doesn’t necessarily imply heaviness or size. I mean, sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn’t. Now, it seems like some people can’t keep—I don’t want to, okay, I don’t want to be sarcastic. I was going to say, and I’m not going to say it, that some people can’t keep two concepts in their head at the same time. By which I mean that some of these authors I’m reading on this subject—well, if it’s a symbol for authority, it can’t be a means of corporal punishment. What does that mean? I don’t understand. How come it can’t be both things? Why couldn’t it be a branch, you know, a spanking rod or a branch or something, and be also a representation? And it must be for us a representation not of the parents’ authority but of God’s authority. So, you know, first of all, it seems like one of the common elements in some of the articles on spanking calls the practice into question because of the particular Hebrew word translated rod.

I just think that unless I see more evidence, there’s no reason to give any credence to that line of argumentation. The word, you know, absolutely can and does—and you can also, by the way, with Hebrew words, look at how they’re used, how they’re translated in the Greek in the Septuagint and tie that to words in the New Testament. And the overwhelming evidence is that these things were used to rod slaves or children, whatever it was. If all it means is authority, there are words for that God could have used in the Hebrew, right? So, I think it represents authority, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t represent an instrument—a branch or whatever—that could be used to give spanking. So, that’s one of the big deals. And I just from my perspective, it’s one of the reasons why pastors get a little skittish about, you know, eighteen hundred people blogging on things and claiming this that or the other thing about, you know, the Hebrew or the Greek.

And a lot of times it just isn’t so. It just isn’t so. And that’s one of them from my perspective.

So I wanted to make that point. Another big issue—and I mentioned this at the communion table on Sunday—you have this idea that what we want is hard obedience. And so why in the world would we apply some kind of mechanism to the exterior of someone to get them to perform exterior acts of discipline that don’t issue forth from their hearts? I think that’s not good thinking. I think it does. It’s a homo sapiens way of thinking. The heart is usually associated with how we think. How we think is supposed to be transformed by logic and by hearing words from you—and that’s it. But we’re not homo sapiens only. We certainly are reasoning creatures and words are important. But we’re also bodily creatures. We live in bodies. We’re bodily creatures. And I mean, there’s a verse, for instance, in Proverbs 20:30: “Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, as do stripes the inner depths of the heart.”

See, that’s a verse that people don’t comprehend anymore. How could exterior punishment cleanse the heart? You know, if you think the way that some of these writers write, that couldn’t happen. But I think it does happen. I mentioned this in my sermon a couple weeks ago. He says, “Cleanse your hands, purify your heart.” I think that’s the order. Usually, we do—we make external actions and changes with our bodies and what we do in our liturgies. And as a result of that, our hearts change, okay? A lot of what God does is outside in. Baptism is outside in. The Lord’s Supper is a ritual. It’s outside in. And it transforms us. It gives us new kingdom desires in our hearts by doing things. So, you know, you may or may not agree with whether you should spank your child, but don’t fall into the notion that it can’t really do anything about his heart. Exterior actions do accomplish things in the context of the heart, as that verse from Proverbs says, and as I think just a general biblical theology of the psychology or personality of man and the way God works exteriorly to change the internal heart.

So that I think is another big dynamic that I saw in several of these articles.

One last thing before we can talk, if you’d like, about some of the specifics of the articles: I’ve had five kids, and two of those five kids—spanking was nearly useless with them. You know, it took us a while to figure that out, but it was true. And there were other things. For instance, one of them, you know, sending her to her room—immediate repentance. Couldn’t stand the thought of being alone like that.

So, you know, I’m not saying I don’t think anybody’s saying that you have to use the rod all the time in the same way with every child. Children learn differently. Some respond to the rod, some don’t, okay? There’s diversity, and there’s tremendous diversity within a family. So, you know, that’s okay.

You know, you don’t think that because something worked or didn’t work for your child, that becomes the norm for everybody else. That funny article by what was the guy’s name? Matt Walsh. That was funny. But that’s the idea, right? So, kids are different, and parenting styles can be different.

I thought that the article critiquing Ted Tripp or shepherding a child’s heart—well, there were a couple of things he said in there that I thought were really good and then a number that I didn’t think were so good. But one of the things he said that was good was genre. So, if you look at the verses from Proverbs—and now remember, I don’t think the one article that said there’s only four verses in the Bible that pontificates spanking. And I thought to myself, “Oh, I’ve read that same thing about homosexuality. There’s only three or four of them, and now let’s try to get rid of them for you, you know, and then we’re home free.” You know, corporal punishment or external disciplines—or blessings and punishments, rewards and punishments for actions of law violation—they’re not the only way God disciplines. There are huge ways God disciplines, and it just peppers both Old and New Testaments. But in any event, when you do read the Proverbs verses, you know, the guy, whoever it was who wrote the critique of Tripp, is absolutely right. It’s genre. It’s not law. We’ve talked about this before, right?

Well, a Proverbs verse says, “Answer a fool according to his folly.” And it says, “Don’t answer a fool according to his folly.” Good verse to memorize, because it teaches you these are not laws. It can’t be, because it says this and then it says this. And the idea is that it’s wisdom literature—how to apply God’s simple laws in complex and difficult situations. So that critique was right. Right on. Don’t think because you read a verse about advocating spanking or whatever it is in Proverbs that’s some sort of command to you in every situation. It’s wisdom literature. It’s not law. So I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind when you study the scriptures—genre.

Another thing that article said that I thought was good was you do have to take into account Tripp’s theological foundations, right? So he’s reformed Baptist. So he’s got a different view of his kids than we do. So I thought that the critique of Tripp was good in those two ways. Now, I thought a lot of the rest of the critique in that article wasn’t so good. And we can talk about that if you’d like, but that article I thought was the best of the first few at least that I read.

And so there were a couple of good points to make there, and I wanted to make those points.

So, maybe we could just stop there. I’ve already drone on for twenty minutes. So let’s—you know, what do you think? You’re not asking me questions and I’m giving you answers. This is a discussion amongst us all, okay? So I’m going down there, and you know, I’ll be able to enter into the discussion too. But what we want to do is have a discussion.

One other thing I’d want to say, you know, look, and I’ve already kind of made this point, but look—we all have various backgrounds. Number one, and you don’t know necessarily the background of the person you’re interacting with and trying to convince of a parenting method. Number two, we all have our own sinful tendencies. Some of us know that our sinful tendency is to not deal with our kids, right? And to not discipline them. Others know that our sinful tendency is to be way too—you know, bad aroma going on in our home where all we’re doing is cracking down all the time and we’re spanking away in anger, right?

And actually others of us are kind of passive aggressive. That’s the way it works. You don’t pay a lot of attention, kids go for a while, you finally break, you get mad, you spank them in anger. So, you know, everybody’s different—that’s the point. And so, people are approaching this issue. Maybe for them, they’re not saying you need to stop spanking, but they’re saying we need to stop spanking, at least for a while. Give them that, right? The reformers, you know, fasted from beautiful structures and buildings and stuff. That was okay for a time. It’s okay to fast from something that you’re not doing too good on.

So, I guess my point there is that let’s let everybody kind of find their own level on this thing in their own home. So this discussion is not meant to convince anybody of a particular method, but rather my goal is so that we all feel liberty within those ditches—of calling it sin or calling it mandatory in every case—within those ditches. Avoiding those ditches, there’s lots of room in the middle of the road, and that’s our spirit. Our spirit should be to leave room in that road for people because of their varying backgrounds, the varying understandings. Their kids are different than your kids, and your kids, one from another, will be different. Let’s all just take a big deep breath about this and not get all cranked up about it, okay?

Okay. So, let’s—whoever wants to—somebody else should moderate the thing because I can’t see hands.

Well, I have the Rover mic. So, whoever wants it, raise your hand. Before you do that, just one question: is there one spot where these articles might be available to be looked at? You’re talking about the articles that were posted on Facebook?

I don’t know where they are. It’s on the RCC Facebook page.

Is that underneath? There are other articles that people gave me privately. Several of them are on that thread.

Okay. I may post some brief response.

Okay. I guess someone—something you said got my mind thinking, you know, scriptures like “I know you’re not—we’re instrumental parents, instruments of precious grace.” But I think we’re instruments in the living…

I don’t know. I just—yeah, I could elaborate a little bit. Yeah. I wasn’t saying that I used to teach this and now I’m teaching that. I was saying that I used to expect, right? I—and I didn’t mean that.

You know, there certainly are scriptures that say if A then B. I’m saying that I took a far too simplistic view of what parenting was and the results that it would have fairly immediately in the lives of my children. And what I’m saying is, you know, we’re made in the image of God. We’re nearly infinitely complex—a human being. We’re image bearers. And that means our children are the same way. And you know, certainly we’re important in their lives. But you know, the world is a very complicated, complex place. I mean, this room is filled with incredible amounts of data that we’re all processing all the time. And that’s God doing that, right? The Spirit of God is moving in this room. So, all I’m saying is I think a lot of times we overemphasize the significance or importance that we have in our kids’ lives. It’s a lot of other influences.

You know, if you—if you—and see, now after thirty years, I’ve noticed some things. I notice parents—their attitude, their hopes—and then I see their children. And the best of them don’t really meet what the parents had hoped for thirty years ago. They’re different. It’s a different generation that’s happening now. That doesn’t mean it’s worse. It means it’s different. And so, they’re doing their own thing. And the future, you know, we can’t—

So, I was talking about being simplistic. You know, the future never looks like how you think it’s going to look, including in the life of your kids. God is a lot more interesting than that. So, that’s kind of what I was trying to say.

And one last thing about the promises: I think first of all they’re covenantal—they’re group oriented more than individually oriented. They certainly can apply to individuals. Number two, they’re long-term stuff. You know, I definitely believe that if you raise a child, you know, you can have great hope for that child in terms of walking with the Lord, but I know that is a long-term deal and it isn’t some kind of straight line. Sanctification process hasn’t been for us. Won’t be for them either, okay?

Sorry. So, I’m a pretty big fan of Ted Tripp, but one of the things that I have done is Proverbs 22:9 is pretty helpful for me. The rod and rebuke. And you kind of touched on this, but there are times when I’m speaking to my children and the goal is wisdom, right? To teach them wisdom. And there are times that I’m speaking to my children attempting to give them insight and understanding to help them make wise decisions.

And they just aren’t hearing it. And so then I’ll say, “I need to discipline you. I need to give you the rod.” And when I spank them, whether it’s the sting of the rod or whatever it is, somehow there’s clarity that comes to their brain. And they now can listen to the words as well. And it’s pretty amazing. And I’ve had children, a child in particular, that the spankings do not seem to be working, but they see my consistency in obeying God’s word and years later it seems to sink in and they come back and they say, “Daddy, we’re sorry we weren’t following Christ. We want to.” And I think more than the spanking, they see the consistency. And it wasn’t always spanking. I think there’s a balance. And I appreciated your genre point, you know, examine the child’s heart, right, in particular, and say, “What’s going to work at this time?”

As an example, I use this tool as an employer, right? There are employees that sometimes I can give words of instruction and guidance and that helps, and other times I have to use corrective action to get their behavior to modify to be wise and proper. And I’m not making a parallel that children are like employees or employees are like children, but I think there is some similarity. And I also think that if we use the word rod only to be authority, well, in Romans we’re told the authorities bear the sword, right? So the authorities are used to exact punishment on the wicked as well.

So those are some of the thoughts that I’ve had. And but I do think—I know that I struggle at times with disciplining in anger or frustration and have to rein that in. And God uses the rod on me, you know, figuratively as well as with my wife. So anyway, I just think it’s important. It hits me in the head, you know.

You know, the Tripp article—the one that is posted on the RCC thread—it’s a critique of Tripp. And it’s written from a covenantal theological perspective. So it’s going to resonate more with the people in our church. But I think that the bulk of it is really creating kind of a straw man out of Tripp and putting arguments in his mouth that probably are not really there. So I thought the critique of Tripp was really not particularly good except for those two points I mentioned.

I don’t want Chloe to be like I was. And enough of you know about my history to understand what I mean when I say that. And when I had a conversation with one of the families in church who has recently stopped spanking one of their kids, they said something to me that just totally shook me and really made me think and question a lot of the assumptions that I had held up to that point. And it was that they thought that too many people in the church as a whole who believe in spanking—that’s their immediate response and that’s the first thing they do. Forget about instruction, and instead of it being just one of many tools in the toolbox, that’s their go-to response for when a child is disobedient. What about instruction? And they said to me that it should probably be a lot more instruction than it is using the rod.

And you know, one of the questions that I had was, what are you supposed to do when you have a two-year-old girl who’s either hit your wife or bit your wife or is screaming and throwing a tantrum. And I’m thinking, you can’t reason in that situation. So, you know, one of the things that I told Brenda before we got married, I said, “She doesn’t hit you and she doesn’t bite you. That’s not negotiable at all, ever.” You know, so yeah, it’s made for a little bit of confusion. However, it’s made me stop and think a lot more when those situations come up. And in that respect, I think the whole discussion has been very good.

Yeah, I agree. I’m not sure exactly what you’re talking about, how it works out, but I know like when I’ve disciplined some of my kids, that you know, instruction doesn’t happen a lot at church, okay? Instruction, I mean, when you’re in a public situation, you know. So I—

So, as we look at each other and how we, you know, raise our kids, we’re not going to see really the full picture. It’s not going to make sense. “Well, boy, they should be instructing their kids more.” Well, they probably are. I think in our case, how I instruct my kids, you know, during the agape is not how I do it during the week usually. So, I don’t think it’s a fair comparison. I’m not saying you’re saying this, but I’m just saying as we all look at each other, you know, it’s not the paradigm that’s necessarily in place Monday through Saturday when we have more time and it’s, you know, less of a weird situation or something like that.

I have a question for Dennis, and that is—and it’s something I’ve been thinking about a little bit—it goes back to the talk this morning. You know, we need to be reflecting. You touched on this. So I’d like you to elaborate. I guess we need to image our heavenly Father to our children, and there is no condemnation in Christ, right? But you know, for a one, two, and three, I mean—well, you know, Romans talks about how the law brings us to the gospel and there is wrath in there. And that wrath needs to be sandwiched in love, obviously, but you know, we’re teaching our kids a lot by the liturgy you talk about, and it’s obviously not the only thing in the tool bag. But if you could comment on some more, I’d really appreciate it.

Well, I mean, just—we’d be imaging—we’d be imaging our Father to our kids, and if all we have is words or moving them physically to another place or, you know, isolating, whatever—I mean, are we really demonstrating the fullness of God’s attributes to them, right?

Yeah. And I’d say, no, we’re not. That’s why we’re using his words, you know, God is doing all kinds of things with us. You know, it’s interesting. I don’t know if you guys have ever had this experience—probably a couple of my kids and at least one of them—that my spanking didn’t seem to do any good. It would be very interesting, and I mean, it almost happens to this day sometimes, where they would be in a condition of rebellion, you know, and they would fall, they would trip, something bad would happen to them, you know.

So but it’s an example of how God uses providence—by which I mean you know all the events of our lives as the kind of backdrop for his presence with us, into which the instruction comes. And as we know, there are these consequences that we have to our actions. And so yeah, I think that God does use these multiple methods. You know, there was an old couple of tapes by James B. Jordan on this topic, and he tried to tie it to Father, Son, and Spirit, and the different things going on.

So maybe one third of that stuff is instruction, but a third of it is this proximity—the nearness, the presence of God to us through the Holy Spirit. And then the other third is this idea of hierarchical patterns from the Father to the Son and our needed obedience to him. So, you know, I don’t know if I could say much more than that, but I think that’s the key—is to look at the fatherhood of God, see how it’s multidimensional, and see how it changes as maturity comes, right?

So, an example that Jordan uses: Old Testament—immature church—lots of calendar stuff. So heavily controlled times, right? Lot and lots of food laws, heavily controlled diets, lots of boundary stuff. We come of age in Christ, and the Spirit comes in fullness, and now we only have one central rule, you know, the Lord’s day instead of multiple ones. So we have more obligation to order and structure our time without the externalities of discipline that the Father imposes upon us in our immaturity.

And with our kids, of course, it’s the same thing. I mean, hopefully most of us are imposing bedtimes every night. This is the deal. Maybe other structured times throughout the day—family worship or whatever it is—and the kid has high structure. Now, when they grow up and assume their own home and stuff, maybe their bedtime is going to vary quite a bit. That’s okay. But the pattern of structure is one of the ways that God deals with, you know, immature people is through lots of external disciplines placed upon them. In the Old Testament, it’s diet and its time and that kind of thing.

You know, it’s also a beautiful picture that Pastor Farley was giving for us this morning too. We are not the only parents to our children, right? It’s a blessing that they have that God has placed us in their lives, but that He is in and of Himself also a Father to our children. And I think one of you—know, a beautiful picture of that, which also illustrates His care of us through our, you know, through the rod, through chastisement—is the promises that He made to David with regard to his son, that He would be a Father to David’s children. And that included, you know, that He would—when he was—well, what it says is that He is—that He would be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the stripes of the children of men. But my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul. And His promise of that chastisement, of that discipline, was proof of His love—that He would not just abandon David and his son—that He would show His love that way, that He would be a Father in that way to David’s children or to Solomon.

Yeah. Well said.

The other one of the advantages, I think, of you know being in a church community—especially one that does so many things together—is to be able to learn and to receive helpful instruction and even at times correction from other folks when they observe your kids’ behavior and the like. So I would hope that in the midst—I mean, I was helped a lot early on with our kids with some folks coming alongside, maybe for a minute, maybe for longer, and saying, “Hey, you know, I’ve observed this and maybe you might want to try that.” It’s been helpful. And you know, and you can kind of get all bristly about that. You can get kind of defensive. You can feel sort of embarrassed, you know, because your kids have acted out in public. But I wouldn’t want us on the one hand to think that there is one parenting style or method in case, but I would also not want us to, you know, not be open to hearing from one another about, you know, maybe you know, we don’t even—I’m just kind of out to lunch. And you know, if our kids are causing a ruckus in a communal setting, you know, I would hope somebody would come up to me and maybe, you know, give me a word of correction, you know, seasoned with lots of grace and salt and love about that.

So, I’d hope we would be all open to at least still receiving some instruction, one from another, on occasion, because yeah, I mean I didn’t have—I don’t have—I didn’t have all the answers or even a tenth of them when we were raising kids. And there’s a lot of communal wisdom that I would hope we’d all want to still benefit from.

You know, I hope maybe I set this whole thing up badly. Oh, maybe I set this whole thing up badly, you know, by making initial comments. But, you know, this—the whole point of this—is we should have safety in the context of this group to be able to discuss this and to push back, you know.

I know that it seems like to me, actually I don’t know it, but my observation is that the next generation after ours aren’t really—they don’t like that confrontation thing a lot, and our generation sort of live for it, you know. But and I don’t mean to push you somewhere where you don’t want to go. But on the other hand, you know, this is a time to get some questions out there or some comments, some push back against, you know, anything that’s been said, or just explanations as to why you think maybe there’s another viewpoint here that really ought to be listened to show.

So, one of the things—my father was raised in a Christian home where it was a very abusive home. His mother would beat him. They would play games. She would call him stupid and insult him and her other children as well. She had four of them. And it was bad. So bad that my father left the faith—and went, okay, so, not left the faith—he became a Roman Catholic and struggled for years. And so, when my sister and I were being raised, he would never discipline us because he was so afraid of that and falling into the same pattern of his mother and his father, that he would not.

So, so much so that rather than spanking, he still needed to correct the attitude. So, he turned into yelling and screaming, and other tools that are just as much out of control as spanking somebody in anger and would beat us down in different ways. And he later repented of that. And about four years ago, my mother came and really praised Jan and I for the correction that we’ve given our children—the rod and the spanking and the way we’ve been able to do this with control. And it’s been a blessing to her to see our children minister to her and serve her.

You know, the two times my father ever disciplined me, it was not in love. It was with closed fist and in anger, which made him feel even worse. And he’s lived with regret of those two or three times that he has done that. So, you know, I understand some of the reasons why we wouldn’t want to spank because it is difficult to stay in control. And I think that if somebody struggles with that, they need to pray. They need to seek counsel. They need to talk to their spouse to make sure that their spouse understands their tendency to lose control, and there needs to be safeguards there.

But we don’t want to throw out the tool because of an experience that we have in our own lives. Does that make sense?

So my father has recently come around as well, saying, “Wow, Tim, I wish I would have spanked you more. You might have, you know”—so and now what he’s seen in my sister’s family is some of the lack of self-control and yelling and stuff, produced pretty negative effects with their granddaughter.

So we can do both things badly. We can spank poorly and we can also use words very poorly, that can produce an effect that’s equally as dangerous as spanking inappropriately.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is that, you know, like you said, Dennis, we all have our different propensities to sin. And my daughter Molita and I just took a walk down on the beach, and we were talking about, you know—the question really isn’t to spank or not to spank or to yell or not to yell or those sorts of things. But it fits very nicely into the theme of this camp. What’s the aroma of our home? If the aroma is “you are here to serve me and I’m going to yell at you and scream at you because you’re disobeying me”—ultimately, I think you are probably going to set them up for some serious frustrations until they get big enough to fight back.

But my daughter was talking about how mom, you’ve always put it in the context of “I care about you and this is you’re choosing to go down a road that would be destructive to you. So, I want to I want to help you come on to a better road. I want you to turn around and follow Jesus instead of running away from Jesus here,” and those sorts of things. And she’s never—I asked her, I said, “Do you do you feel like you know it’s produced anger in you for us or distrust of us?” And she’s like, “No, you know, not at all.”

So, if the aroma—if there’s a safety and a context in your home and they understand they’re loved and you’re not coming at them just to get them to do what you want them to do, ultimately, in a self-serving way, but you’re trying to direct your family to all follow Jesus and His word is what you’re all wanting to adhere to, and you’re constantly pointing them back to Christ—I think that’s a very different aroma, no matter what technique, how many swats you use or do you talk through or not talk it through each and every time, or you know, mechanically. It’s, do the kids understand that you have their best interest at heart in this? Or are you just trying to get them to do something because you’re full of vain glory and you are messing with my image right now? If it’s about me, then I’m probably not correcting them well. If it’s about you and we want you to have the blessings of God upon your life as you live out of the love that He pours out on you—I think it creates a very different tenor, no matter what your tactic is.

So comments—I enjoyed watching John and Johanna deal with Elanora during a meal while we’ve been here. And Elanora was, of course, refusing to eat, and mother was trying so hard to, you know, be gentle with her and help her. And father is sitting a couple people down from them and he gives her the look, you know, “You respect mother. You eat. You do what you’re supposed to do.” Well, I don’t remember her jumping up and down to obey him real quick, but I really appreciated his firmness, and it I couldn’t help but think back to my own growing up. My father was Christian Scientist and good old Swiss German, and I don’t remember him ever laying a hand on me. But I remember when he said to jump, the only question was “how high.” You know, that was it for me, in some way.

And of course He’s gone now, so I can’t ask him. But I knew that I was to obey him. And that was that. I don’t know whether I was fearing a spank or what I was fearing, but I was fearing. And I think sometimes we disregard our reactions to the Lord in that way. You know, while He is loving and He is assuring, He is also firm, and we need to follow what He says.

Well, you know, it may be more to do with you than it was whatever he was. You might have just been responding to the authority in his person, you know, we’ve had a child or two like that, too. And so, it’s—that’s what I—it’s very interesting how different children are and how what sorts of things they respond to and what sorts of things they don’t. So, yeah, that’s—yeah, it doesn’t have to be anything beyond that. You’re fearful, like spanking, with some kids and some parents. It’s just the presence, the authority, and you say “how high.” Yeah, it’s good.

I’m really struggling with confidence and knowing what to do in certain situations with Chloe. One of the questions that was asked of me is, “Well, how does God deal with you when you sin? Does he spank you with a paddle?” And you know, how do you want your—how do you want your children to relate to you and see you? And I have to admit that part of it is I’m afraid of the results of no discipline.

So I know academically, and you know, not I don’t know all of the scriptural basis for it, but I know that we are supposed to do it, okay. But I’m afraid of going too far one way or the other as well. I don’t want to be like my mother was with me. And I don’t, you know, I don’t want to have there be no discipline either, because I’ve seen both sides of the fence and they’re both ugly. And one of the things that—even though it is good, like Chris said, to have all of the different opinions and everything—that’s a double-edged sword, because people are convinced that their way is the way you should do it. And one of the things that I’m observing and seeing is that yeah, there—no two kids are exactly alike and you can’t apply a cookie cutter approach to every child.

So, well, and you know, obviously I’m going to say that an important part of that for you is your wife. I mean, you know, that’s again this two-witness thing and that keeps us within a particular set of boundaries. And I guess too I would say that when you seek out advice from other people, I would generally try to seek it out from people that I respect and think are doing a pretty good job and maybe so, rather than somebody who thinks they know exactly how it’s supposed to work. I’d almost prefer somebody who’s going to tell me, “Well, this is sort of what we’re doing. This is kind of what we end up with, you know, inferred from the scriptures, but this is just for us.” I would listen to a person like that who’s having good results rather than somebody that thinks they’ve got every eye dotted and every tee crossed.

You know, to tie in a little bit with what you were saying, one of the things I don’t necessarily appreciate about the non-spanking side—and it probably more the extreme side—is that they always emphasize God’s love but no fear of God. And hopefully this is safe to place to say it, but I want my children to fear me. I want them to be actually afraid of me, for when they do wrong, they’re afraid of what the consequences are. I want them to be afraid of me because I’m also afraid of God. And when I do wrong things, think of what my kids have to grow up to and fight. You only get one shot at doing meth wrong, and you’re stuck in addiction to meth that’s going to destroy you.

So God does spank you. I mean, you know, I’ve seen people make mistakes and die because of it. So it depends on the consequences. So are we really imaging a God that doesn’t have consequences that are fearful? And I’m afraid if I go down the no-spanking route, or that, you know, however that is—that I will create a false view of God just as much, you know, as if you’re spanking out of anger creates a false view of God. If you don’t have any fear of God, I think for me that’s a false view. So in my responsibilities, I want my kids in the proper time to be afraid of me. And I don’t think that takes away from them loving me either. It’s the context sometimes.

Well, I appreciate the discussion, and I know lots of people have different views. But in my course of raising children, when we started having kids thirty some years ago when Eli was born, our Sunday school teacher at the time gave me a book. I can’t remember the name of it. I think it was “You and Your Child” by Chuck Swindoll. And one of the points that it made, if this is helpful or useful, is that you can’t discipline a child you don’t love. You can’t love someone you don’t know, and you can’t know someone you don’t spend time with. So, for just anybody at any time to come along and correct a stranger is not going to have the same effect as the child you bore, the child you breastfed, the child you’re with every day, every hour, for twenty-four seven, for a month upon month, year upon year.

So, when you’re spending time, at least for me, from the very moment they were born, you’re making eye contact, you’re doing all of these things—you’re building a relationship. And my thinking is that God covets a relationship with us. He loves His children. And one of the things we were talking about earlier, at lunch, is that it’s an overwhelming emotion that you don’t even expect to have happen when you have a child for the first time—when you look into their eyes and the wonder, the amazement, the glory of it. And that just changes your whole perspective of, at least for me, what am I going to do with this? The overwhelming responsibility that came along with that.

And one of the things that I did as a young mother, and I would encourage anybody to do this, and I’m not a Greek scholar or a Hebrew scholar or an enormous Bible scholar, but I went through the Strong’s Concordance and I looked up every single verse on parenting, father, mother, child—everything. And I just asked God to speak to me on what that was. And what was the overwhelming—just short version of all of that—is there’s way way more verses on nurturing, loving, spending time, teaching in the congregation, blessing, praising, “This is my son in whom I am well pleased”—those kinds of verses.

And my observation is if you do that—if you if you pay your dues, you put your time in—the amounts of time you have to pull out the rod is so minimal. And in the wilderness, the forty years in the wilderness, when God is doing, you know, running them in circles and doing to discipline—is not mean to beat. It means to teach and bring alongside and nurture. So, those line upon line—and I just like that in Deuteronomy. It’s not just line upon line. Here a little, there a little. It’s line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little, here a little, there a little. It’s repeated. It’s repetitive, over and over and over. That’s what we do with our children, over and over and over. We set our boundaries. We have our bedtimes. We have our mealtimes. We have our things we do. They grow up in that security. And when they’re little, food is there. They don’t have to think about it. They don’t have to prepare it. It’s there. Bedtimes—your bed is there. Your mother is there. Your father is there.

Those things are so much more important in the overall scheme of things than whether or not you’re going to spank them, in my opinion. But it’s a good tool in the toolbox. Sometimes you have to pull it out. That’s my two cents worth.

I wanted to go back to David’s point. I think it is exceedingly important. You know, as the older guy, trying to you know, pass what we can on to younger ones, I think what David said is absolutely right on target. You know, throughout the Bible, the Gentiles are referred to as God-fearers. And the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And what we have lost in our culture is the fear of God. And everything else—most of what we see, the degradation and the downward slide—is because of that. It’s related to no fear of God in their eyes. And if we can move—get rid of the last little bastion of the fear of God, which is the Christian church and the Christian family—you know, the world’s in very bad shape, there.

You know, there are people today coming out of our circles, out of—not still in. I don’t think—who advocate that fear is an immature relationship to God. So when Paul says to fear God, he’s writing as an immature Christian. And when John is mature, he says “perfect love casts out fear.” So now, even within reformed, you know, circles, there’s an attempt to redefine the way we look at the New Testament, even its affirmations of the fear of God, and get rid of every one of them.

And along with that, that same person is very big on eliminating corporal punishment, eliminating capital punishment, eliminating all forms of what he would call violence. And saying that God really—the mature God—is not violent either. It’s a huge theological point David made, and very significant.

I think that was good metaphysical, you know, big-picture thinking on his part, as well as you know, Patty’s thing, you know, down-to-earth practical sort of stuff.

I’d say though that you know, again, different families, different kids, different settings. I do not necessarily think it’s always true that if you give them all that, you’ll have to spank very infrequently. I have had different sorts of children, and there have been one or two of them that, in spite of the exact same environment, you know, the number of spankings was far greater, and it was required to keep the child from damaging himself.

So, I take—I’m back here. Sorry, everyone. I take great consolation in what you’re saying about how different kids are going to be different. We have two—one is six months old now, and our two-year-old is making me evaluate the spanking issue. And it’s—it’s not always, but when I go to spank my child, I see I do see a mirror, and it makes me sort of pause because I sometimes—just the way we have been running our house that day—has created an atmosphere where they’re extra tired or they did something and it was because we provoked it. And then I make a decision. Is this going to be a spank or not? And now my almost three-year-old helps me decide. He says, “No, no, no. Don’t spank me.” And it makes it real hard, real hard to know, because sometimes I say, “Yeah, you are right. This time I am not going to spank you, and here’s why.” And maybe he’s really young and we need to just be really consistent, but I don’t have—I guess I really appreciate the discussion that’s ongoing, because some of us are young parents. And even though we grew up in inconsistent homes, we sin, or we don’t fear God ourselves in some way, in some way, and we see that in our kids. And so I appreciate what David Spear said about fearing God and our kids fearing us. So I’m taking a lot out of this. I appreciate it. So, thank you.

Thank you, Pat.

I liked what David said, but I’ve spoken to people that have said, “Well, you don’t want your children to be afraid of you.” What do you, you know, I guess I’m not looking at fear in the same way. I mean, I don’t know. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Is fear what type of fear? Or describe good fear or godly fear towards your parents? Or can you—I’m asking you or David. Do you have a response?

Let’s let David here. So since my kids are really young, I want them to be afraid of the consequences, and that’s personified in me. Afraid of me when they go play in the middle of the street—like, that’s about—they’re not allowed to do that. We have a sidewalk on a busy semi-busy road, and they’re not allowed to. They should be afraid of the consequences of going to do that. And the idea is that so they can be afraid of that, and they have that fear. So when they grow up and they have bigger choices, they still have that fear. So they have the fear of getting into drug culture. That’s one thing that my dad was really good with me. I was afraid of my dad, and I was therefore afraid of doing drugs, even though I had ample opportunity to do so.

So, in our, you know, hypersexualized culture, I want them to be afraid of pornography, and how easy it’s one click away, just like it’s one step away from going to play in the road. So, I want them to learn to fear the consequences of what’s wrong when it’s really easy to see. You step in the road, you get a spanking. It’s very easy to see the physical harm that comes from sin.

So, the harder things to see when they get older—it’s harder to see the physical harm of doing drugs for the first time or doing pornography. It might be harder to see, but there’s still real physical harm. There’s real curses that God brings.

So, that’s kind of my thought and where I’m at kind of now.

Hearing a lot of the parents talk about they don’t want to have their kids be scared of them, I grew up in a household that was really fantastic in pretty much every way, because my mom and dad balanced each other really, really well. But I was scared of my dad only when I did something wrong. And it was one of those situations where if someone were to come up to you with a two-by-four and smack you across the head, you probably would not jump into their arms, you know, ten seconds later. My parents followed—I don’t—I think it was someone from like Christian radio, those kind of people. He’s based in Colorado. I don’t remember his name. Dobson.

Yeah. And so they would spank me, and they would say, “This is why I’m doing this. I love you. I don’t want to hurt you. It will hurt, but I don’t want to hurt you.” So there was always that separation. There was always that separation between the pain was what I did. It wasn’t what they were doing to me. And it was never out of anger, at least not that I can remember. There was always that separation.

So, I know it’s probably really hard. The only experience I have is with my dog, when she wouldn’t behave, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this—how do I not hit this dog when it just did that?” But yeah, that would be my encouragement. Is just, I mean, I just came out of that. I remember, you know, it wasn’t that long ago, just the separation is extremely important because I love my parents to death. They spanked me a lot, but I never linked, you know, anger with the pain I felt. It was the pain from the decision that I made.

One of the things I thought of the verse is just about how in Psalm 119, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray,” and how a spanking can be kind of an affliction in our children’s lives that gets their attention. And it is really a part of loving them. You know, some of the things I’ve read where they’re, you know, kind of talking about against spanking—it’s almost like they’re saying gentleness and spanking can’t coexist.

And sometimes the spanking is one of the best ways you can love your child, you know, to clear the air and to be able to sit down and explain, “This is why we’re doing it,” just like Kenny was saying. And that you don’t want to do this, but you’re doing it because you love them and you care about them, and you want to spare them from worse consequences later in their lives.

You know, I just be really careful to not think that you can’t be gentle and spank at the same time, because God is gentle and He does discipline us because He loves us.

I think that kids will be very secure if they’re in an environment where they don’t have to fear that you’re not going to feed them. You don’t—they don’t have to fear that you’re not going to forgive them when they repent and show love to them. And then when they’re that secure, then when you do spank them, they’re also secure in the fact that when I sin, I’m going to get spanked. But then there’s that love that follows up.

And we try not to use our hands because it’s the rod that God talks about. And it’s yes, our hand is connected to the rod, but in some way I think that helps the child to see the rod as the punishment and not just the parent just wailing on them.

Yeah, I appreciate the comments about fearing and especially Kenny’s input. The verse that comes—the verse that comes out of Romans 13: “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. And the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God. Those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.” Like Kenny was saying, he understood that this was the choice—the consequence for the choice he had made.

“For rulers are not a terror to good work but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same.” So what I’m hearing, and what I have really appreciated about some of the discussions that I’ve been having with people, is that there is this desire to understand both the complexity of—we are made as image bearers of God and we have giftings from God and all this good—but we are also totally depraved. And our children need to somehow learn, through how we train them and the different influences that they have in the world, to be subject to those governing authorities. And those governing authorities need to make their choices on how that gets taught.

One of the dangers that I think I’ve heard in some of the discussions is that they think that well, if I—if they’re hungry and I feed them, if they’re tired and I give them rest, and then they will just be good. And I’m not—I’m not saying don’t feed them and don’t give them the rest they need. I think we need to be very in tune to our children and provide those things. But I don’t want us to think our children are clean slates or born naturally good either. And we have the big responsibility of helping them become armed to fight against their own tendencies to sinfulness, just like we have to continue to fight those.

And we model that through our own repentance and asking them to forgive us when we have crossed the line and disciplined them in anger or those sorts of things. So, you know, one of the things I really want to convey in our own household is, how do we get back right with Jesus? You know, there’s a sense in which God always loves us, and we’re not earning. And one of the things I tell my kids on a pretty near daily basis is that you have God’s love and you have our love. You’re not earning it. You already have it. Now, live out of that. Live out of the overflow of that in response. We’re responders. But there’s there’s a fight within you to run away from that, and a lot of that’s based in fears and shame and different things. And we have to help equip them to fight that good fight of faith.

And that’s what I think a lot of the disciplining things have to do. But I said something to Susan here: you know, in the Old Testament, you know, some of the physical things that God did—I mean, did He spank? Well, technically, did He get out a stick and what? No, He like swallowed old peoples into the ground, you know? I mean, there’s definitely physically manifested disciplines from God, whether it’s the literal rod or not. And so, I’d caution us to steer away from the whole package of “I don’t want to do anything physical”—that somehow that’s unkind or un-Christlike—because the same Christ who loves us and that we can crawl up on the lap of is also the one who will rule the nations with a rod of iron.

Yeah, we’re kind of running a little closer to dinner, and I’m—in some of the discussions I’ve had with people so far, I haven’t talked with anybody who didn’t want to train up their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. In other words, common goals. I see I haven’t run across anybody who didn’t want to, you know, apply discipline of some sort to their kids. But there are, you know, some folks who’ve been reading stuff and and seeing that maybe perhaps there’s there’s a ditch on the side of the road that says that spanking should always be the first thing pulled out and in many cases the only thing.

And so they’re they’re beginning to, you know, question that to a degree. And my concern is I just want to make sure those folks have had a chance to be heard. And if any of any folks would feel that there’s some points that they’ve learned that would be beneficial to this group, I would want to hear those before we have to eat dinner.

I’m still a kid. So I what do I know? I know I don’t know much. But that’s—this is very helpful for me in preparation for looking at the kind of family I want to raise, and I want to model my father in how he raised me. I was that kid that needed to be spanked and spanked and spanked, and I did need it, and I’m ever so thankful that they did. I know that isn’t always the case, but with me it was. But one thing I always really appreciated was my father telling me that later in life, you’re going to want—you’re going to wish you could still get spanked, and it wouldn’t be what you’re going to get.

And as I get older, I know I don’t get spankings anymore, but boy, I wish I did, because God is much more thorough. And I really I really appreciated that. The spankings not only disciplined me and shaped me, but they trained me to expect the—because the discipline is going to happen one way or another. When I was young, it happened through my parents. Now it happens through, you know, God. And the spankings trained me to know that when I do something wrong, something painful is going to happen, and it’s going to train me.

So, you know, Dennis did mention something in the introduction. So, I grew up in Vancouver, BC in Canada. And there’s a guy you may have heard—Sven Robinson—who’s the first gay MP in Canada, who’s now with the UN. And what is he trying to pass with the UN is the non-spanking thing. So, we grew up with that in Canada where we had it. We actually called them “timeouts” because you weren’t allowed to say spanking. You know, we had to say, you know, I had my best friend used to tell his kids, okay, you get a timeout. And we have to be careful of that as well—is who is pushing this information on us.

And I, you know, I’ve really appreciated these talks because for me this was a slam dunk. I never really had any questions about this spanking. We were trained as parents, we were trained early that it’s a tool—not the tool—a tool. And more importantly, is you try to get that wisdom across. And I hopefully, you know, Katie’s here—hopefully that we tried to hug our kids, pray with our kids afterwards, and depending on their age, explain the reason why. And I really appreciate, you know, both sides here. Or I think we’ve only really heard one side. As Chris has said, I really appreciate that. One thing we’re doing here, all of us, is we’re looking at the scriptures and trying to figure it out, which you don’t get at a lot of churches.

So, we’re getting close. Anybody else?

Five fifteen.

Oh, here we go. We’re not part of this discussion, and I think it’s great that you guys are doing this as a congregation. And I would simply add to something you was sort of bookend—because you mentioned the agenda of the world, and you picked up on Canada. And I think it’s important to remember that it is even within the church, as you hinted at in a bad way. I mean, we can have all of these discussions about what the proper mix of parenting is, but if we look at the scriptures, there are disciplines given to each authority. You’ve got the rod in the family, you’ve got the sword at the civil magistrate, and you have the keys in the church, which is almost totally forgotten in our country today. And it’s the most severe as a couple of the young people have pointed out—that they properly should be afraid of.

So I think we need to remember that it’s one thing to have a discussion as to how should capital punishment be done, how should church discipline should be done, how should parenting discipline be done. Those are all good discussions. But if somebody is saying discipline is not good, then that’s bad. And if they’re taking any one of those three levels and saying it’s not good and shouldn’t be around, then they’re really attacking three. So that’s I think just an important backdrop for the whole discussion.

I just want to encourage, and those of you that are starting to kind of question the way you’re doing it—because we kind of got to that point, not questioning if we were supposed to spank them necessarily or not, but that, you know, are we doing—are we really doing this right? And we’re doing it differently with our younger kids than we did with our older kids. And there were definitely things that we wish we hadn’t done, and we’ve repented about that to our kids, and they’ve readily forgiven us. And it’s helped us to learn, and it’s helped them to learn. And so it is good to question because that’s what makes you better.

And this, you know, kind of a round table, is really good too, because you know, you get that good information and build yourself up and help you to learn—because it’s always a learning process, even though we’ve, you know