Kid's Corporal Punishment - a Risk to Mental Health

[Paidiske]

Please - have you forgotten what you said ???

I quote...

"If someone uses the Bible to excuse harming another person, why should we refuse to point out the error?

Herein there is clear warning about God sanctioning harming others as an expression of His Wrath against wickedness.

No, it's not "harming others." Having a justice system which deals with people who damage the community is not "harming others" (whatever the flaws of our justice system, and they are many).

 

[Carl Emerson]

Were they slaves or are you not that old? Was Apartheid loving too?


Do you understand that most of us find this opinion to be sick and abhorrent?

I saw it working first hand in the 70's - Christian families adopted their servants and they became part of the family. Nothing abhorrent in that - very loving actually.

 

[Carl Emerson]

No, it's not "harming others." Having a justice system which deals with people who damage the community is not "harming others" (whatever the flaws of our justice system, and they are many).

From time to time the police shoot members of the public that are unruly - and you claim this is not harming others ???

 

[Paidiske]

From time to time the police shoot members of the public that are unruly - and you claim this is not harming others ???

Ideally no one should be shot; but what we aim for is a situation where the only time this happens is to prevent greater loss of life. It's a consequentialist ethical argument, and one might take issue with it on those grounds; but even so it's a world away from creating and maintaining social systems of unnecessary violence and brutality.

 

[The Liturgist]

Sounds like good reasoning to update ones source material. Some ideas are out of date.

Scripture does not condone slavery, and it is worth noting that it was Christians, particularly Congregationalists, which I am rather proud of given my Congregationalist background, who agitated for abolition.

 

[The Liturgist]

Good idea - a new bible to reflect modern thinking... The UN could write it...

Thomas Jefferson actually wrote one, and it used to be given to new members of the US congress disturbingly enough, from the 1890s to 1940s. He just took the four Gospels and removed all supernatural elements which he regarded as priesthood, since in his Deist mind our Lord was merely a great philosopher. Literally using scissors and adhesive. It was a bona fide 1800s cut and paste job. He also thought the Native Americans would be more likely to adopt this philosophy if it were presented without the religious elements, which turned out to be an epic mistake on his part.

I suppose the one upshot is that if ever one invents a time machine, a fortune could be made selling a word processor to Thomas Jefferson.

 

[Carl Emerson]

Thomas Jefferson actually wrote one, and it used to be given to new members of the US congress disturbingly enough, from the 1890s to 1940s. He just took the four Gospels and removed all supernatural elements which he regarded as priesthood, since in his Deist mind our Lord was merely a great philosopher. Literally using scissors and adhesive. It was a bona fide 1800s cut and paste job. He also thought the Native Americans would be more likely to adopt this philosophy if it were presented without the religious elements, which turned out to be an epic mistake on his part.

I suppose the one upshot is that if ever one invents a time machine, a fortune could be made selling a word processor to Thomas Jefferson.

Yep - I think you have mentioned this before - a timely reminder thanks.

 

[The Liturgist]

Yep - I think you have mentioned this before - a timely reminder thanks.

Indeed the Jefferson BIble is impressively lame. I dislike all Gospel Harmonies, such as Tatian’s Diatessaron (which did not survive intact, but it was possible to reconstruct it given commentary about it), and other such works, since they suffocate the unique voice of each of the evangelists.

Here is a link to Jefferson’s copy-and-paste job for those who are extremely bored and want to see how impressively dull our third president could be: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...usg=AOvVaw26r3cGw8WizHoHVtAxKefc&opi=89978449

Its a remarkable fall, from the exalted experience of writing the Declaration of Independence, to the self-humiliation this profoundly overrated work entails. I can’t recall who it was who Put these into print for the “benefit” of members of congress. Had I been elected to the congress back when this was in print, which would have been rather a lot of fun actually, I think I would have thrown the book at whoever dared bring it to my office. The book would be offensive to literally everyone except Unitarians, and even they are surprisingly disinterested in it (Unitarian Christians historically maintained throughout most of the 19th century the Gospels were inspired; only recently has that been rejected as Unitarian theology with the advent of increasing amount of atheist, deist and neo-pagan Unitarian Universalists).

I find it ironic that the wealthiest and the poorest religions on a per capita basis in the US, the Unitarians and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, are both built around the denial of the deity of Christ. I suspect this is because the J/Ws rob their members blind using the threat of Scientology-style shunning, and the Unitarian Universalists are also tightwads - their denomination seems to spend more on political activism than on charity. Also, many Unitarian families have been Unitarians for generations and include the wealthy old Yankee families in Boston and Rhode Island. Harvard Divinity School has been controlled by Unitarians since the 1700s and is one of the worst in the US, although the UCC’s divinity school in central Illinois, the name of which I forget, is actually more liberal, and Harvard Divinity School at least has a very good library (Harvard is also connected with Andover Divinity School which recently merged with another which is Christian and was historically somewhat good, although it’s not on a par with Nashotah House or St. Vladimir’s).

 

[Carl Emerson]

Ideally no one should be shot; but what we aim for is a situation where the only time this happens is to prevent greater loss of life. It's a consequentialist ethical argument, and one might take issue with it on those grounds; but even so it's a world away from creating and maintaining social systems of unnecessary violence and brutality.

So what scripture recommends is "unnecessary violence and brutality"?

PROVERBS 23:13-14

Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell . Do not hold back discipline from the child, although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.

 

[Paidiske]

So what scripture recommends is "unnecessary violence and brutality"?

Carl, if you can't see that beating a child is abuse, I'm not sure what I can possibly say to you. I'd post pictures of the injuries, but I'm pretty sure they'd fall foul of CF's rules against distressing content.

 

[Carl Emerson]

Carl, if you can't see that beating a child is abuse, I'm not sure what I can possibly say to you. I'd post pictures of the injuries, but I'm pretty sure they'd fall foul of CF's rules against distressing content.

Sadly you seem unable to discriminate between loving correction as Scripture recommends, and abuse. Sadly and most likely because of your own personal background.

It has been difficult to remain true to Scripture and sensitive to your personal pain at the same time because of the emotional confusion abuse generates.

Please forgive any insensitivity on my part, it has been a tricky thread - I have tried to present a balanced view but pain demands answers way beyond reason and we needed a larger platform of participation, impossible over the Christmas recess.

A few more voices would have helped. Thanks for your patience.

 

[stevevw]

Or we could take, "not so abusive that it breaks the relevant law" as a pretty low and necessary bar.

Yes I think its a pretty low bar but not a zero tolerance bar considering that there is evidence that its not always abuse and may be beneficial.

There is plenty of Australian law around child abuse. The law is not silent on this matter.

But like I said if the majority are right then there the law according to the majority is that any CP is illegal. If Australian law came across this so called majority evidence that any CP is illegal it begs the question why haven't they also based the law on that majority evidence. Is there are difference of opinion on that evidence. If so whose right.

You have have lots of knowledge about the law but its another thing to be truthful about it and not rationalise that truth away.

The key word there is "seemed." That didn't make it right.

No its actually clear. If beating a slave at all is abuse Jesus would not have used that example.
Proverbs 22.15 Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of correction will drive it far from him. This points out that foolishness is in our hearts especially as children. We are born with a sinful nature to rebel which is not taught to us. Children are morally immature so the rod of correction will drive that foolishness out.

This implies that physical punishment as a measured discipline is needed sometimes to correct behaviour because of our sinful nature and because we are born sinners reasoning is not always going to work. So measured physical dicipline is one important way to train children to be moral.

Peter is writing to slaves who were owned by non-Christian masters, in a situation where they had no choice, and giving them advice about how to conduct themselves in that situation. He wasn't condoning slavery, or beatings!

Actually Peter was writing about Christian slaves as well.

In this verse, Peter clarifies that a Christian—slave or otherwise—receives no credit or commendation for pain that comes as a result of doing wrong. In other words, if a Christian slave is beaten for something that would be in rebellion to God's will, that's not commendable.Get back to me when God literally beats you, and then we'll take that as precedent.

What does 1 Peter 2:20 mean? | BibleRef.com

For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. - What is the meaning of 1 Peter 2:20?

www.bibleref.com

No. No it is not. There's no such thing as a "loving beating." The suggestion is vile beyond belief.

Then are you saying the beatings described in the bible to dicipline slaves is vile beyond belief.

 

[Paidiske]

Sadly you seem unable to discriminate between loving correction as Scripture recommends, and abuse.

No, I'm quite able to discriminate. It's really simple. Loving correction doesn't include beating someone.

It has been difficult to remain true to Scripture and sensitive to your personal pain at the same time because of the emotional confusion abuse generates.

I'm not confused. Please don't patronise me by suggesting that I am.

Please forgive any insensitivity on my part, it has been a tricky thread

Asking for forgiveness would imply that you might actually stop making posts promoting or condoning abuse, beating, violence, apartheid or slavery. Because all of those are beyond insensitive. If you manage to stop making such posts, that might go some way to repairing the possibility of some form of mutual regard.

- I have tried to present a balanced view but pain demands answers way beyond reason

Again, please do not suggest that I or my position here is "beyond reason." Especially right after asking forgiveness for insensitivity.

 

[Paidiske]

No its actually clear. If beating a slave at all is abuse Jesus would not have used that example.

Steve, again, if you can't see that beating anyone, let alone a slave, is abuse, (not to mention completely in contravention of the second great commandment), then I think we're done here. Once you get to the point of promoting the beating of slaves, we have absolutely no agreed moral foundations from which to proceed.

Actually Peter was writing about Christian slaves as well.

But not slaves to Christian masters, which was my point. Christian masters were instructed to not so much as threaten their slaves (Ephesians 6:9).

Then are you saying the beatings described in the bible to dicipline slaves is vile beyond belief.

Yes. Of course.

 

[The Liturgist]

In the US, if a parent spanks their child hard enough to leave a bruise or welt on their posterior, or with an implement, they risk losing custody of the child to Child Protective Services.

However public schools routinely paddle children hard enough to cause bruising. In many states, paddlings can be conducted by a member of staff of the opposite sex as the defendent. Now, usually there is a limit of three swats, but these are typically delivered with full force. I recall the case of a 17 year old cheerleader in Texas who was removed from the cheerleading team and paddled without parental consent after she was caught smoking, and her mother reported that her daughter experienced bleeding from her reproductive anatomy not related to menstruation for three days after the paddling. In Britain, I would note that girls were never subject to caning, which was doubtless a more severe punishment limited to males at least thirteen years of age.

There was a recent horrifying case where a single mother in Tennessee was coerced by threats of being reported to Child Protective Services into allowing her five year old boy to be paddled. She secretly took a video of the paddling conducted by two older women and uploaded it to the Internet.

It is my desire to organize a choral school for youths in one of the states where public schools have corporal punishment, that would exist specifically to provide a safe haven for youths to not experience that. It would also be a Christian school which would teach the children how to sing in choirs such as the superb boys and girls choirs in the UK, which are sadly rare in the US (I am aware of only four off the top of my head, one at St. Thomas Fifth Ave, which is probably the best, which has a boys choir and a girls choir who sing at alternate times of the year, one at Trinity on the Green in Conneticut, one at Washington National Cathedral and then the choir Cantores in Ecclesia Dei at a Roman Catholic Church heavily linked to the Tridentine mass in Portland, Oregon, which is a city historically associated with exquisite musical programs and which historically was one of the centers of culture in the Western US. They also have the world’s largest independent bookstore, and one of the best (only in the UK have i found bookstores on a par with powells, and they are much smaller), which is really a delight as they sell new, used and vintage books on the same shelves, carefully organized. So one can buy for instance the original 1950s editions of the Tom Swift Jr. juvenile novels and other vintage science fiction books by authors such as Heinlein, Bradbury et al right next to modern works in the SF genre. But I digress. At any rate, I have a relative with a MusD who is opposed to corporal punishment of youths, particularly the severe paddlings engaged in by American public schools, who has consented to run it, so the next step is to finance the project.

 

[Carl Emerson]

No, I'm quite able to discriminate. It's really simple. Loving correction doesn't include beating someone.

I'm not confused. Please don't patronise me by suggesting that I am.

Asking for forgiveness would imply that you might actually stop making posts promoting or condoning abuse, beating, violence, apartheid or slavery. Because all of those are beyond insensitive. If you manage to stop making such posts, that might go some way to repairing the possibility of some form of mutual regard.

Again, please do not suggest that I or my position here is "beyond reason." Especially right after asking forgiveness for insensitivity.

Well that went down well - like a lead balloon...

Pretty much confirms that I am hitting a nerve by presenting Scripture...

My comments were well meant and I cant demand your understanding.

Pain is no small challenge.

Claiming I am 'condoning abuse, beating, violence, apartheid or slavery' can only be coming from pain as it sadly twists my position and presents it as grotesque.

I tried to withdraw with grace and peace.

Romans 12:18
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

 

[Paidiske]

Pretty much confirms that I am hitting a nerve by presenting Scripture...

Not by presenting it, but by how you're using it.

Claiming I am 'condoning abuse, beating, violence, apartheid or slavery' can only be coming from pain as it sadly twists my position and presents it as grotesque.

Carl, you have just been going on for pages insisting that beating is good and necessary, that it is not abusive, praising apartheid as "loving," and so on. I can't remember now whether you joined in with steve's arguments for slavery as Biblical, but even if you didn't, the rest of your position here really is grotesque.

I tried to withdraw with grace and peace.

Accusing me of not being able to discriminate, of being confused, of being "beyond reason," is neither gracious nor peaceable. It's gaslighting, and I'm not buying into it.

 

[The Liturgist]

Now to be fair, while I disagree with several of the views expressed by Carl Emerson in this thread and agree with most of the views expressed by yourself @Paidiske , it is my belief that gaslighting requires an active intent to deceive. In other words, gaslighting proper must be done with a view to tricking the victim into doubting the reliability of their own appraisal of the situation, which was integral to the plot of the Ingrid Bergman film The Gaslights from which the verb is derived, which I highly reccommend if you haven’t seen it. Indeed I recently had a discussion with @BobRyan on this subject (and I am not sure whether he agrees with my view that gaslighting requires an intent to deceive or not). By the way Bob I would really like to hear your opinion on the subject matter of this thread.

My view is that all corporal punishment of children is problematic, although I do not believe parents should be prosecuted for it unless they hit their child on the head or spank them severely enough to cause bruising, or use an implement like a belt, cane, paddle, martinet, wooden spoon or ruler (in particular, hitting the hand with a ruler which used to be a common form of corporal punishment in schools is barbaric).

I also reject on absolute grounds the idea that apartheid was a good thing, an argument I occasionally hear from South Africans which tends to be informed by their anecdotal, personal experiences; the fact that not all white South Africans and Rhodesians and Namibians mistreated Blacks and Coloreds, or that the ANC government of South Africa has become extremely corrupt and the country is being suffocated by rising crime and a collapsing economy, does not mean that the one party state in South Africa led by PW Botha, who was actually a dictator by any objective standard (consider the NP, or National Party, was the only legal political party), was in any respect good or worthy of admiration.

That said concerning @Carl Emerson, I have found him to be a good friend and I do not believe him to be the sort of man who would engage in intentional dishonesty, which I believe is a prerequisite to gaslighting. In my experience sometimes people lose their train of thought in the course of a debate or lack an external perspective, and this can in some cases cause the appearance of gaslighting.

I am admittedly in an awkward situation in this thread because I love both @Carl Emerson and @Paidiske , and I agree with the views of @Paidiske in this topic, at least, the vast majority, but I don’t believe @Carl Emerson has tried to gaslight anyone based on my opinion of his moral character.

 

[The Liturgist]

Ideally no one should be shot; but what we aim for is a situation where the only time this happens is to prevent greater loss of life. It's a consequentialist ethical argument, and one might take issue with it on those grounds; but even so it's a world away from creating and maintaining social systems of unnecessary violence and brutality.

Indeed, the reality of policing is that sometimes it is neccessary to use lethal force to take out subjects. In the US, typically whenever police use lethal force, regardless of whether or not the person was killed, they are temporarily put on paid leave while the shooting is investigated to ensure that it was warranted and not a breach of department policy, or worse, an act of murder or attempted murder. I don’t know if the same system is in effect in Australia or New Zealand, but I think it is a good system. I also think the British approach of having most police officers unarmed has become unacceptably dangerous and hampers the ability of British police to do their job. I did like the British idea however of having unarmed PCSOs to assist in patrolling was a good one. Another well-known problem with most British police forces is the disproportionate amount of time police spend filling out paperwork rather than patrolling on the streets.

 

[stevevw]

Steve, again, if you can't see that beating anyone, let alone a slave, is abuse, (not to mention completely in contravention of the second great commandment), then I think we're done here. Once you get to the point of promoting the beating of slaves, we have absolutely no agreed moral foundations from which to proceed.

I think your loading the word beat with something that it doesn't mean. Obviously the bible is speaking of beating as not in todays understanding. Beating would have been with reeds from memory and it would have been measured smacks and not beating as in beating someones head in. So the word beat did not have the same meaning as today. But we already knew that.

But not slaves to Christian masters, which was my point. Christian masters were instructed to not so much as threaten their slaves (Ephesians 6:9).

So were Christian slave told to accept a beating from their master graciously.

Yes. Of course.

So does the beating refered to in Luke 12:47 and 1 Peter 2:20 mean. Was beating those slaves for doing wrong vile.