Christianity Taught Me to Abuse My Children
Spare the rod, spoil the child.
It’s an old saying, inspired by a bible verse from Proverbs chapter 13:
Whoever spares the rod hates their children,
but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.
Just in case that isn’t clear enough, it’s mentioned again in Proverbs chapter 23:
Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die.
Punish them with the rod and save them from death.
In the fundamental Evangelical Christianity of my youth, “death”, when mentioned in verses like this, referred to a spiritual death. Turning away from God represented spiritual death. Both the “death of the soul” from no longer being part of Christianity, and the finality of being cast into hell after physical death.
When I was a child, I was spanked. It only happened once in a blue moon — as I tended to misbehave incredibly rarely. I was one of those quiet children who spent most of the day with my nose in a book. And, even on occasions where I did “deserve it”, my mom could not spank me without bursting into tears.
She told me that she hated spanking me, and that she only did so because she loved me. She told me that God says any parent who “spares the rod” and eschews physical…
