Spare the Rod & Spoil the Child
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
“We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating. We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it.” – C.S. Lewis
How many times did you say the following as a parent: “This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you?
Why would we say that… and why is it so very true?
Simply because, as parents, our most basic instinct is to love, protect, and provide for the safety and wellbeing of our children. However, part of loving a child is providing appropriate discipline – whether it is gentle corporeal punishment when they are young or withholding privileges when they are older. After all, the writer of Hebrews says that that is how God deals with His disobedient children (see Hebrews 12:5-11). He lovingly chastises or reproves us with the ultimate goal of correcting and redirecting our behavior.
Pity the parent who says he or she loves their child but refuses to discipline them. Likewise, pity the parent who disciplines their child out of anger, inflicting pain as pure punishment rather than as a corrective and restorative measure.
Dr. James Dobson, who recently went home to be with the Lord, took a lot of heat for his support of limited corporeal punishment for children up to the age of 8. As a Christian psychologist, he took to heart the words of Proverbs 13:24: “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly.”
Knowing when – and how much – to discipline a child is one of the keys to proper parenting. I think my parents did an adequate job of exercising the right amount of discipline in my life and looking at the way our three kids have turned out, I like to think that Deanna and I did likewise.
However, the credit is not ours, but God’s, because all we did was try our best to model how He treats His children… of which I am glad – and forever grateful – to be one.
Meanwhile, see the dangers of failing to properly discipline your children in the passage below…
“For I have told him [Eli] that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them.” I Samuel 3:13 (NKJV)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
