Gentle Parenting isn’t “Biblical”; Spanking isn’t Christlike
Response to The Gospel Coalition's article about Gentle Parenting
The Gospel Coalition just released their most recent attempt at using the Bible to justify corporal punishment of small children. This is not new, but it’s certainly not in line with the teachings of Jesus.
Quick Overview
This is just a quick recap of the article, feel free to skip if you’ve read it
The author, Bernard Howard, a pastor of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, poses the question of whether “Gentle Parenting” is Biblical or not. Let me first say that the beginning of the article Howard did a good job up front of acknowledging that there is a wide swath of opinions out there on gentle parenting, and he even agreed with the main premise of the paradigm, which is connecting children with their feelings.
I love those suggestions, and I love the general principle of being aware of children’s feelings and seeking creative ways to avoid treading on them unnecessarily.
However, he sadly went straight into constructing a straw-man of gentle parenting by painting a picture with gentle parenting claims he considers “unbiblical”, and therefore wrong:
Bad behavior is caused by feelings produced by environmental, external factors
Rewards and punishments only modify surface behavior without addressing inner feelings
You may see these two points and think, “Well yeah those are obvious, how can they be unbiblical?” From Howard’s, and many Evangelical Christian’s point of view, not only does the Bible claim we are sinful from birth, so we are not inherently good, but also that punishment and rewards “are a vital part of that shepherding”. We’ll get to this analogy a bit later.
Howard then goes into a defense of corporal punishment, laying out a frankly terrible exegesis that compares the parent’s role to that of civil authorities and then using such passages as Romans 13:3–4 and 1 Peter 2:14. For the uninitiated, these passages have absolutely nothing to do with parenting nor should they be used as such. He then predictably, links corporal punishment to every possible passage he can find on discipline, and of course the verses in Proverbs about use of the “rod” and it’s his imagined implication that it refers to spanking.
Now let’s get into it a bit.
Spanking in Proverbs
One of the points Howard makes regarding Proverbs is the “requirement” of using a rod. By this he means spanking or some form of corporal punishment.
Loving parents are biblically required to make use of that rod (Prov. 13:24), and physical punishment is one way to fulfill that requirement.
Howard is quoting the following passage:
Those who spare the rod hate their children,
but those who love them are diligent to discipline them. — Prov. 13:24
However, there’s an even clearer and more direct passage referring to the “rod” that gives a bit more light onto what the above passage is referring to. It’s not surprising, Howard tried to pacify Proverbs by avoiding this passage though:
Do not withhold discipline from your children;
if you beat them with a rod, they will not die.
If you beat them with the rod,
you will save their lives from Sheol. — Prov. 23:13–14
There’s two Hebrew words here which are, in my opinion, horribly interpreted: rod and child/children. Before we dive into these verses, notice that nowhere does it say “spank”, “swat with a hand”, “use a spoon”, etc. It intentionally says to “beat with a rod”. So what is a rod?
This word in Hebrew is shebet and in this context more literally translates to “a large stick with the primary purpose of inflicting violence”. Let’s take a look at the word’s usage throughout the Old Testament.
And [Beneniah] killed an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits tall. The Egyptian had in his hand a spear like a weaver’s beam, but Benaiah went against him with a shebet, snatched the spear out of the Egyptian’s hand, and killed him with his own spear. — 1 Chron. 11:23
You shall break them with a shebet of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” — Ps. 2:9
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me; your shebet and your staff, they comfort me. — Ps 23: 4
Notice though that the shebet (or rod) is juxtaposed to the staff. The staff was used for gently leading sheep, but the rod was used to ward off wolves and predators of those sheep. It was never used against the sheep.
Each of these passages views the rod/shebet as a violent force of correction against enemies of God or those who sin against him or innocent people, in David’s case (the writer of these Psalms) there was that incident with Bathsheba. Now let’s look at the word in Proverbs for child/children to get some context.
There are a few words translated to “child” in Hebrew, most notably: yeled and na’ar. With very few exceptions in the Hebrew Bible, na’ar is a young man capable of marrying and going out to war and a yeled is a baby, toddler, or little kid. Generally what we think of as a child. Some examples:
And the na’ar [Shechem, the guy who raped Dinah] did not delay to do the thing because he was delighted with Jacob’s daughter. Now he was the most honored of all his family. — Gen. 34:19
Immediately he called to the na’ar who carried his armor and said to him, “Draw your sword and kill me, so people will not say about me, ‘A woman killed him.’ ” So the na’ar thrust him through, and he died. — Judges 9:54
Then the king [David] said to Joab, “Very well, I grant this; go, bring back the na’ar Absalom [the son who tried to kill David].” — 2 Sam. 14:21
This word na’ar is the one used here in Proverbs, not yeled.
To recap, a na’ar in the mind of the writer of this proverb, is old enough to be capable of rape, murder, and usurping a king. The proverb is addressing very serious issues in a wayward young man, that are probably criminal in nature, or at least trending in that direction. That’s why the writer adds you will save him from Sheol, the Hebrew word for the land of the dead.
So na’ar is not a little kid, toddler, or an infant. A rod is not spanking. You cannot take the rod as a “symbol” and also ignore that the target of that “rod” is not who want to use it on.
Now let me be clear, this idea is prevelant in Evangelical circles. Howard referenced a book by Tedd Tripp called “Shepherding a Child’s Heard” which uses his same logic with Proverbs to justify spanking children as young as 8 months old! Here’s a quote from Tripp’s book that Howard endorses:
When your child is old enough to resist directives, he is old enough to be disciplined [spanked]… Rebellion can be something as simple as a small child struggling against a diaper change or stiffening his body when you want him to sit on your lap. Your temptation will be to wait until your children are speaking and able to articulate their rebellion before you deal with it.
When our oldest child was approximately 8 months old…obviously he was old enough to be disciplined [spanked].
— Tedd Tripp, Shepherding a Child’s Heard pp 151–152
Nothing about the “discipline procedure” Tripp outlines for spanking, is Christ-like. This is unabashed child abuse masquerading as “Biblical Parenting”. All this is doing to a baby or toddler’s brain is telling them you, as a parent, cannot be trusted. This is fear based parenting, which is — if I may borrow the phrase — “unbiblical”.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. — 1 John 4:18–19
Jesus as a Gentle Parent
It fascinates me how quickly Evangelicals use a few Old Testament verses to normalize their desire for violence and exclusion, and ignore the example of Jesus. If we want to follow Jesus we must take his example of self-sacrificial love and justice for the oppressed seriously. Hitting a child whose brain has not fully developed (or any other kind of violence) is diametrically opposed to the teachings and example of Jesus.
The best example of gentle parenting in the Bible is shown through Jesus’s interactions with his disciples, they certainly messed up over and over again. Did he ever hit them or use violence of any kind? Abosolutely not.
When one of the disciples attacked the servant of the High Priest in Luke 22:50–51, did Jesus slap him upside the head? Did he take the sword and cut off the disciples ear because, as Howard claims:
From the Bible’s point of view, it’s impossible to shape a child’s character without demonstrating the seriousness of wrongdoing through retributory punishment.
Quite the opposite. In fact, Jesus says:
“No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him.
Jesus stopped the cycle of violence with forgiveness and gentleness. That’s the point of gentle parenting.
Many Christians seem to not think of children as fellow people. It’s like Jesus’s commands to “love one another” (John 13:34) or “do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12) stop applying if the “other” is your child. The old adage that children should be seen and not heard is palpable in the behaviorist logic that comes with spanking. Tantrums are a natural part of a child’s brain development, it’s how they are communicating their emotions. Jesus knew this about children, and yet he said:
Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.— Luke 18:16–17
It’s our job as parents to help our children regulate those emotions in a healthy way. It’s our job as Christians to view the Bible through a Christ-centered lens.
We can find any passage in the Bible that we want to justify any number of heinous acts from beating our children, to owning and beating slaves (Exodus 21:20–21), to stoning our own child if they are stubborn and rebellious (Deut. 21:18–21). We don’t have to disregard these passages, but we must read them in the historical context of a violent and tribal society of the Ancient Near East. We can’t just pick and choose which Bible verses we want to apply to our context because they align with our existing biases and identity politics.
About gentle parenting…
So does the Bible support gentle parenting as we know it today? Of course not. It was written thousands of years ago in an extremely different culture. Hopefully we’ve advanced beyond using Proverbs from the 5th century BCE for parenting advice today. The Bible can provide wisdom, but we also must use wisdom to determine how, and if, to use certain passages in our context.
We can use wisdom to say, maybe there are definitely some good aspects to gentle parenting. Maybe this child psychology thing is worth listening to. Maybe, perish the thought, Child Psychologists might know more about child brain development then the conventional wisdom of the patriarchal and violent Ancient Near East…or your local evangelical pastor.
These same folks, who know far more than Bernard Howard or Tedd Tripp about the brain, say that spanking has the same effect on a child’s brain as more severe child abuse.
We know that spanking is not effective and can be harmful for children’s development and increases the chance of mental health issues. With these new findings, we also know it can have potential impact on brain development, changing biology, and leading to lasting consequences.
As Christians, we center our lives around the person and work of Jesus. And Jesus showed us through his example what it meant to not exchange violence (like a tantrum) for violence (a spank). If we are truly following Jesus, we will take up our cross, not our rod.