Not long ago At A Kinky House, I wrote about why I fundamentally objected to Chris and I spanking our daughter when she has misbehaved. I said then that “I have two major objections to spanking (my) child(ren). First, I’m not convinced that it works and have seen little evidence to support that it does. Consequences that fit the situation seem to leave a more last impression at our house. Secondly, and most importantly, for me spanking is a sexual behavior. I realize this is not true of all families or all parents, but at our house, spanking is part of my sexual identity. I find the notion of spanking the princess utterly abhorrent, and my reaction to the very idea seems to intensify as she ages.”
At the time, I didn’t provide any justification for why I think it doesn’t work. I am sure there are many anecdotal cases of it working out there, but I’ve not yet heard one that didn’t come off (to me) sounding as though it was the bigger and stronger person overpowering the weaker more vulnerable one. And, I don’t really want the spanking or non-spanking of children to become a subject of discussion there, to be frank.
Still, I came across a passage in a book this week that probably influenced my early aversion to spanking children, long long before I knew I would even have one of the little tykes. It is one of those passages that I had forgotten, in a book I have had for more than a decade* and read somewhat less than a similar volume by the same author. But when I flipped it open, searching for a devotion, I found this tale instead and remembered it as I read it. Rev. Wangerin does all the things I think, if I should believe that spanking children works, ought to be done. He did not spank to excess. He refrained from doing it when angry, and waited. He set the rule ahead of time, and when the rule was broken, he enforced the pre-stated punishment (spanking) for it – he did not spring the punishment upon an unsuspecting victim. He offered comfort and reassurance after….
But then this is what happened: in the next year my single-minded and tenacious son Matthew stole comic books again. A third time. He hadn’t changed….
There were no choices left to me, nor other people to depend upon except myself … I had to punish him.
I said, “Matthew.”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Go to my study. Wait for me. I’m going to spank you.”
Wordlessly, he went. He closed the door. And then we both waited while in my head I planned the event ahead of me. Nothing should be done in anger, nothing in passion purely. But neither should I for pity foreshorten my arm and muddle the punishment. Oh, I was sad for what I had to do. This is the cold bite of a broken covenant. The curse.
So I went into my study, where Matthew sat small in the largest chair, his face both down and distant from me. The separation killed me. The child was mute in mystery. Then how could I reach his soul to change it?
I, too, sat. As clearly as I could, I repeated the law and the deed that broke the law. Did he understand?
Matthew nodded. But then, he had always nodded.
Rev. Wangerin goes on to describe the five swats he gave his son, and continues:
Then I carried him back to his chair and set him down and told him that I would leave him alone a while, but that I would be back. Alone, I thought, because if he should cry he should do so in privacy, without the sense that I wanted to see his tears. Matthew, however, wasn’t crying. I left the room.
And then I burst into tears.
Oh, this was more than I could stand. I bowed down and covered my face and sobbed.
Matthew’s mother came to see what the matter was, but I could only hug her and lean on her and not speak. I was so sorry, so frightened and sorry.
Well, well. In a few moments I was quiet. I went to the kitchen and washed my face and returned to my study again. Discipline could not be over with the pain. Something better had to follow–and if I’d touched my son to hurt him, it seemed necessary to touch him again in kindness.
So I sat and recited again, all over again, the thing that had been wrong, the thing that should be right. And I said, “I love you. I love you, Matthew.” I said, “I will never not love you, and I don’t know if you will understand this, but it is my loving you that makes me do this thing to you.” And then I got up and hugged him….
Then, later, he writes again about Matthew.
What wasn’t true, however, was how I thought the change had occurred in my son. I thought it was the spanking. I thought the law had done it.
The law can do many things, of course. It can frighten a child till his eyes go wide. It can restrain him and blame him and shame him, surely. But it cannot change him. So it was with Israel. So it is with all the people of God. So it was with Matthew. Mercy alone transfigures the human heart–mercy, which takes a human face.
For this is the final truth of my story:
Years after that spanking, Matthew and his mother were driving home from the shopping center. They were discussing things that had happened in the past. The topic of comic books came up. They talked of how he used to steal them, and of how long the practice continued.
Matthew said, “But you know, Mom, I haven’t stolen comic books for a long, long time.”
His mother said, “I know.” She drew the word out for gratitude: “I knoooow.”
Matthew mused a moment, then said, “Do you know why I stopped the stealing?”
“Sure,” said his mother. “Because Dad spanked you.”
“No, Mom,” said Matthew, my son, the child of my heart. He shook his head at his mother’s mistake. “No,” he said, “but because Dad cried.”
Hereafter, let ever accuser of my son reckon with the mercy of God, and fall into a heap, and fail. For love accomplished what the law could not, and tears are more powerful than Sinai…
Now the meaning of the parable, of course, is that we love and follow Christ not because He has told us that we must (not because He made it a law through which we must be punished when we break it) but because He has shown us mercy through His love and His painful sacrifice on our behalf. But Rev. Wangerin tells the story as a true one, and not something he invented. And I have no doubt that it is.
So today, while I sit here fuming at the absolute inability of my daughter to comprehend the concept of following simple directions while at the same time displaying overt terror at the notion of ‘consequences’, I remind myself it doesn’t work to get angry. To spank. To punish unnecessarily.
It only works to love.
Let us pray I have discerned Abba‘s heart and mind, and that I am following His will…
Amen.
——–
* Wangerin Jr., Walter. “The Manger Is Empty: Stories In Time”. Zondervan Publishing, 1989. If you have never read Wangerin’s early writing, I highly recommend Ragman & Other Cries of Faith, and The Book of the Dun Cow, which I unfortunately seem to have lost. (I have two Ragmans, however, don’t know how that happened.)
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