Staring at the Rod in Wonder
I’ve been known to disagree with Giles Fraser (when he tries to tell us Christianity is naturally opposed to slavery, for instance), but he’s right this time.
“We are told that in England it is a crime to spank children,” writes Debbi Pearl from No Greater Joy Ministries, following a row that has erupted over the distribution of their literature in the UK. “Therefore Christians are not able to openly obey God in regard to biblical chastisement. They are in danger of having the state steal their children.”
See, that’s why people like me get so hostile to religion. One reason anyway – but probably the biggest one. Because it is (of its nature, and cannot help being) so useful to people who want to use it to justify and protect their desire to do nasty things. Because the central claim there is not corrigible or negotiable or subject to discussion or thought, so there is just no way to teach or persuade people who believe that claim that it is mistaken. With other kinds of claim it is possible, however difficult and challenging that may be. But with unarguable religious claims, it isn’t. So if people are convinced God wants them to hit their children with a stick, they are not going to listen to people who try to tell them they’re wrong. If people are convinced God wants them to write books defending the practice of hitting children with sticks, the same applies. If people are convinced God wants them to blow people up in wholesale lots, same applies. It’s no good.
Chastening begins early. “For the under-one-year-old, a little, 10- to 12-inch long, willowy branch (stripped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch diameter is sufficient,” writes Michael Pearl. With older children he advises: “After a short explanation about bad attitudes and the need to love, patiently and calmly apply the rod to his backside. Somehow, after eight or 10 licks, the poison is transformed into gushing love and contentment. The world becomes a beautiful place. A brand-new child emerges. It makes an adult stare at the rod in wonder, trying to see what magic is contained therein.”
Hmm. I might have to read this book.
For, as evangelicals, the Pearls believe that salvation only comes through punishment and pain. God punishes his Son with crucifixion so that humanity might not have to face the Father’s anger. This image of God the father, for whom violence is an expression of tough love, is lodged deep in the evangelical imagination. And it twists a religion of forgiveness and compassion into something dark and cruel.
Well – they could turn that back around on you, Vic. Frankly. Because Christianity is only partly a religion of forgiveness and compassion. This is that slavery thing again; you’re reading selectively. There is plenty of very cruel, cold, vindictive stuff in the New Testament, including in the Gospels, including in the speeches of Jesus.
But, needless to say, I agree with your basic point all the same. This is nightmare stuff.
According to Ted Tripp, in his monstrous bestseller Shepherding a Child’s Heart, even babies who struggle while having their nappy changed are deemed to be rebellious and need punishment. Last month Lynn Paddock of North Carolina was charged with the murder of her four-year-old son, Sean. She had apparently beaten him with a length of quarter-inch plumbing line – plastic tubing. Like many in her church, Paddock had turned to the Pearls’ resources on Biblical parenting. The Pearls say chastisement with plumbing line is “a real attention getter”. Sean Paddock’s autopsy describes layers of bruises stretching from his bottom to his shoulder.
Theocracy’s got to go.
I found this written in my notebooks from 1988, but I’d neglected to reference it as other than John Wesley. Perhaps you already know it;
break their wills betimes; begin this great work before they can run alone, before they can speak plain, or perhaps speak at all. Whatever pains it cost, conquer their stubbornness: break the will, if you would not damn the child. I conjure you not to neglect, not to delay this! Therefore, (1.) Let a child, from a year old, be taught to fear the rod and to cry softly. In order to this, (2.) Let him have nothing he cries for; absolutely nothing, great or small; else you undo your own work. (3.) At all events, from that age, make him do as he is bid, if you whip him ten times running to effect it. Let none persuade you it is cruelty to do this; it is cruelty not to do it. Break his will now, and his soul will live, and he will probably bless you to all eternity.
Your article brought it to mind and the wonder of the internet tells me it is;
http://gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/Wesley/sermons/serm-096.stm
Wow! That’s amazing. Although I can understand them wanting to spank all those disobediant under-one’s – it’s like they just aren’t listening..
I’m amazed that anyone can quite openly put that stuff in a book and not get sent to jail. Disgraceful.
What gets me is we’re always hearing from people who really believe you can’t have morality without religion and, by putting religion first, lose the capacity to see any issue in a moral sense, the one thing that might otherwise save them from committing truly immoral deeds in the name of what their religions decree is moral.
Makes you want to shake them till the penny drops that the religion’s got to be wrong if that’s what it makes them do.
I know this is tangential to the debate, but it actually isn’t illegal to spank children in England at present. Limits on the use of implements and ‘excessive’ force yes (which appears to vex the evangelicals) but smacking is still legal.
That reminds me of this case involving the religiously inspired treatment of a child where, according to the last sentence, the penny did drop.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2142347,00.html
The point, though, isn’t whether it is or should be illegal ever to lay a hand on a child under any circumstances, even in a mild way, but whether breaking the child’s will by means preferably violent as a god-given imperative is something that can have any place in a civilised society.
“After a short explanation about bad attitudes and the need to love, patiently and calmly apply the rod to his backside.Somehow, after eight or 10 licks, the poison is transformed into gushing love and contentment.”
It’s just dawned on me what all those cards with pictures of big women with whips and sticks are doing in phone boxes in central london. I never realised it was to advertise religious practices. I thought it was something else. What a dirty mind I have. Shame on me.
Don, thanks for that link to Wesley’s sermon. Very handy. Next time my 17-month-old wakes up and cries because he’s lost his blanket, I’ll break out the bat.
Seriously, what a bastard. Next time someone tries to make out what a wonderful guy he was, I’ll hit them with that.
EP Thompson in his *Making of the English Working Class* has a wonderfully venomous chapter on Methodist attitudes of this sort.
If only Freud wasn’t such a load of old rubbish, what fine material he would have with these religious nuts…
Is there some kind of evolutionary lesson we can learn here? Something about man beginning without language or morality, condemned to resolve all issues with brute force and then discovering religion “and the need to love,” which provides him with a divinely ordained reason to revert to brute force.
bluejewel, those cards are advertising a religion known as “bdfsm” (bondage domination flying spaghetti monster). My apologies to genuine Pastafarians, who shun all violence.
Giles Fraser manages to show that you don’t have to be an atheist to understand that child abuse is wrong, but he still doesn’t quite get it, does he?
“What makes the whole thing doubly sick is that it’s done in the name of God.”
No, Giles, it is sick because all we know about human psychology and child development shows such behaviour to cause much human misery. That it is done in the name of God just shows how religion can be interpreted to legitimise such malevolence. Invoking a supernatural entity makes no difference to the amount of misery caused, in fact it salves the conscience of the abusers.
“… it twists a religion of forgiveness and compassion into something dark and cruel.”
It would be ok to call it that if it contained no loopholes to enable the twisting. Makes me think of the press conference with god that “The Onion” ran after 9/11, in which he tried to figure out why people didn’t get “thou shalt not kill,” after all the trouble he took to put it in words of only one syllable and if he were the one forbidding it why couldn’t they figure out that to do it in his name was even more forbidden than for any other reason. Why don’t suicide bombers wear T-shirts saying “I’m killing you in the name of He Who Forbids Killing”?
Anyone read the article on Xian bumper-stickers? Personally I think the one that says ‘After the rapture, give this car to my mother-in-law’ displays far too much ironic self-awareness to be used by real Xians. Though if I’m wrong, that would actually be MORE worrying…
I really doubt that that sticker (or any of them) expresses any real ironic self-awareness. Gormlessly unaware self-mockery, is more like it. I think the MORE worrying possibility is the likely one.
OOPS!
Repeat post – sorry ….