On Adrian Peterson and "Discipline"

I hate to write this article. But I have to. Because it speaks to a portion of the problems I have with the church.

The Adrian Peterson situation has brought the issue of child abuse to the forefront. There are a lot of opinions, and there is a lot of emotion on this issue, on both sides of the fence. And it causes a lot of people to really look at and evaluate their thoughts on discipline.

If you are conservative, traditional Christians, I am going to warn you I am probably about to piss you off. Probably better to stop reading if you cannot take a contradictory opinion.

I was raised up believing there was a difference between a spanking and a beating, and I will admit that from the child's perspective, there certainly is. I've had both, and can tell you there is a difference between not being able to sit down comfortably for days and the stinging rebuke of what Adrian Peterson calls "a whupping".

But does that mean either is right? Does a lesser degree of pain somehow make the message any more proper? If you rate spankings on a scale of 1 to 10, with one definitely being acceptable, and 10 definitely being acceptable, where does the acceptable line get drawn? A 6? a 5? And who determines what constitutes a 6 or a 5?

The conservative church holds out that parents who don't spank their children are neglecting discipline. But is that what discipline really is? If you have to beat your child to follow you, what happens when they become bigger and  more powerful? And when we discipline adults, we certainly find ways to do it that don't involve finding a blunt object and applying it to someone's backsides.

This is one area that's reaffirming my decision to renounce evangelical Christianity. Because a very significant part of the spanking culture is a direct result of the teachings of the church.

If you are a new parent begging for parental advice, you will undoubtedly be given a copy of a James Dobson book, which strongly advocates corporal punishment. Worse, you may be given a copy of Michael and Debbie Pearls' book, To Train Up a Child, which I was given when our children were much younger, and which I had to put away after the first chapter.

The problem is, parents who spank their children believe they are doing the right thing. Either through family or church, they believe that this is the way to parent. The people who are teaching that need to own that.

As I grow older, I am increasingly convinced that violence is not a solution in any instance. And I have to wonder if teaching a child that might makes right from an early age doesn't have a good deal to do with the problems we have before us today.

Advocates of corporal punishment will insist that "families that whupped their kids did fine for thousands of years", but they do so based on empirical evidence, and, increasingly in a frightening vacuum where they seriously fear higher education. Is it any coincidence that we emphasize corporal punishment more than any other culture, and we have the highest incarceration rate.

This, like so many other thoughts I've been having, is not an easy one. It is hard going forward in my faith journey accepting that so much of what I was taught by people who sincerely believed is wrong, but honestly I cannot see violence towards another person as being Godly in any sense of the word.

There will be those who will toss out Proverbs 13:24 at me ("he who spares the rod hates his son"), but the rod was used to guide; it was not used to beat the sheep, and the analogy, like many Biblical analogies, was written for shepherds to understand.

So when is a spanking right, and when does it become a beating? at a 3? at a 7? I am not going to come out and tell anyone what to do, but I do think it's a question we should be asking. Because, after all, none of us would knowingly harm our children. So it is in our own best interests to ask whether our actions are unknowingly doing so.