Spank or Spank Not, but don't use euphemisms

(edited and revised from the original post)
From Elyse Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace,

Over the previous four chapters we have bombarded you with one message: Give your children grace. ...Dazzle them with the message of Christ's love and welcome...and drench them with it again. ...We remind you of this because every human heart is ...drawn to law.... Factories of human legislation..... Does grace negate the necessity for law? Should we simply ignore our children's behavior and only speak of God's love? Is that what real grace looks like?  (Chapter 5)

Of course, a loving parent is not going to just ignore a child's bad behavior.  A parent gives a child the framework for making his way in the world.  You train your infant to trust you, your toddler to follow and adore you, your preschooler to discover and start questioning wisely.  You can't even begin to find answers if you don't know how to ask questions wisely!  I'm concerned, though, with the tone Elyse takes where it seems she only thinks the preschooler who can't be reasoned with can only be trained like a dog.  She says in chapters 1-5 that no one- kids included- can obey laws perfectly, that laws are there to show us our need for a savior.

But then she turns around in Chapter 6 and says:

For the most part, the Proverbs were written by Solomon...and although they are true and wise words, not even Solomon was able to employ them in such a way that his own son wasn't foolish. Nevertheless, the proverbs were written to instill skill in the art of godly living....

One thing we have to understand, parents, is that God didn't "succeed" in controlling Adam and Eve and preventing them disobeying in the garden.  Solomon's own son was foolish-  so why would you follow the Proverbs as a list of rules and promises for your own children?  

...if we approach Proverbs believing that the entire Bible 'whispers his name,' if we come with open eyes, looking for our Savior, we'll easily identify him there as the Wise Son. Yes, the Proverbs do tell us how to live godly lives, but they also tell us about him. ...the plain words of Proverbs are for our good...if we neglect to see Jesus there, too, we will wrongly assume that we will be able to automatically accomplish something that not even Solomon could accomplish: produce wise children.

I would like to point out that to understand Proverbs you have to understand the literary genre. Our book of Proverbs is a collection of thoughts, maxims, written in poetic form. It's not thought to be written all by one person, but many, although chiefly Solomon. (source) I know that one of the hallmarks of the Monergists is a strict literal interpretation of all parts of the Bible jointly and severally. If you are not a person who follows such a strict interpretation you may find yourself even more frustrated than I by the author's self-contradiction in her spanking hermeneutics:

In addition, because the Proverbs are so clear-cut and seem like promises, we'll believe that our performance will guarantee success... (but) Because a devout Jew could employ Proverbs in the same way, this isn't a Christian paradigm. Parenting methods that assume or ignore the gospel are not Christian. Proverbs enjoins ...the use of physical force, or spanking....

BAM.  She just doesn't know what to do with something that's been taught in Christian churches for a generation, taught so passionately that it is nearly impossible for any earnest person to withstand. She continues with these grace-filled, positive, and truly gospel statements:

If we encourage children to ask for forgiveness when their hearts haven't been stricken by the rod of the Holy Spirit's conviction, we are training them to be hypocritical. We are inadvertently teaching them that false professions of sorrow will satisfy God.(p.104) 

Remembering that genuine love for God and others will only grow in the environment  of his initiating love for us will help us when we are fearful and are tempted to demand some show of repentence....(p.105)

[quoting Martin Luther] "Grace frees us from having to earn God's acceptance by meeting others' expectations, and it also frees us from the unholy pride and prejudice of determining others' acceptance by God on the basis of our own wisdom."(p.105)

She even has a section on "Donkeys, Carrots and Sticks" that says "everyone struggles with obedience, no matter how old they are."  Elyse points out that behavior modification is not gospel-  my margin notes say, Is it gospel for me to demand I get what I want from my children?  Elyse says:

Because both parents and children obstinately refuse to pull the cart of God's glory down the road, the Father broke the stick of punishment on his obedient Son's back. Rather than trying to entice us by dangling an unattainable carrot of perfect welcome and forgiveness incessantly in front of our faces, God the Father freely feeds the carrot to us, his enemies. He simply moves outside all our categories for reward and punishment... gives us all the reward and takes upon himself all the punishment. (p. 108)

So in light of this grace filled gospel understanding, I should say (if I were a Christian who did believe that I must spank my child to obey God as - quoted from Tripp's book, Shepherding a Child's Heart, in a comment the other day) then, "in Jesus," I'll accept my child's punishment on my own back, facing God one day if necessary for that punishment in his place, and lavish rewards of fellowship and family upon my child, and say, "You are my dearly beloved son; please remember who you already are and act like it." (p.107)

That, to me, would be gospel punishment. That, as far as I can see, teaches my child in a concrete way the gospel of Jesus taking our punishment upon himself.

But as I said before, apparently Elyse doesn't know what to do with the "Spanking Verses" in the Bible- saying no child has the capacity to obey (p.17) and then, "We need to be sure our children understand what we are saying and that they are capable of obeying" (p.102).  Her only examples of using "physical correction" involve toddlers and preschoolers, and she says indeed the same things Tripp teaches:

Correction or punishment must come in the context of the Wise Son who took the blows meant for fools. Here's how a conversation before or after a time of discipline might sound: "Child, I am grieved that you decided to disobey me when I clearly told you to put away your toys and get ready for dinner. ...now I have to discipline you...If I fail to discipline you now, I will be disobeying him. I am sad that I have to cause you pain." (p.100-101)

Did you notice this example 600 word lecture she suggests giving before a spanking is to punish a little boy whose "sin" is to fail to "put away your toys and get ready for supper." And it's really just sickening for me to read, honestly. Mostly it's sickening to me because I did this to my first three boys when they were toddlers and preschoolers, because I believed that horrible teaching of so many Bible churches.

This lecture is so horrible, it continues:

"He stood in your place and felt the rod of correction too, so that we would never have to experience God's wrath. But I have to discipline you now because your disobedience shows me that you have forgotten how wonderful his love is." 

Damn, that's just plain old spiritual abuse.  Especially because it continues, to this presumably preschool child:

"I am going to pray for you now and then later, if the Holy Spirit is moving in your heart to make you truly sorry for disobeying me, I promise I'll forgive you if you ask."

Because yeah, you don't ever want to coerce a child into asking forgiveness if they don't truly feel sorrow, because  then you're teaching them to be hypocrites.... but it's OK to make your forgiveness of him conditional on whether the Holy Spirit moves in his heart to make him truly sorry.  :puke:

One last quote from Elyse:

Sometimes we may feel that we are in a season in which we are doing nothing but spanks and that when we share the gospel with our kids they act as though they are deaf. 

Remember, she's speaking from Monergism, believing that it's the work of the Holy Spirit to give a person "ears to hear."

When it's wintertime in their souls, that is the time we need to continue to obey in faith, believing that the Lord will use our efforts to bless our children, reciting the gospel over and over to ourselves [not our children?] and waiting and praying for the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit.

So yeah, now the preschool, pre-Age-of-Accountability time in our children's lives is the "winter in their souls."  And we recite the gospel to ourselves, waiting for the work of the Holy Sprit in their lives. And while we recite the gospel that no one can obey without the Holy Spirit helping, and that Jesus bore our punishment, we tell our precious little ones that HE died for them so they won't be punished but we have to spank them or we'll be disobeying Him.

Plain old spiritual abuse.

Chapter 7 is about sheltering and is fine, with the admonishment not to shelter your kids too much because A) they will grow up and eventually be on their own, and B) evil originates inside of us, not from without, so sheltering doesn't mean eradicating evil. Finally, the gospel calls us to minister, and we can't minister to those we alienate ourselves from.  Same old stuff I always say.  Kudos to Chapter 7.  Except the part about modesty. And I have something scheduled to appear next week on that paragraph.

To see the entire series of blog posts concerning the book, Give Them Grace, click here.