Biblestudy: Childrearing (Part Six)

Necessary Discipline
#BS-CR06
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 16-Jan-88; 80 minutes

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Why does overcoming for you and me—those of us who are adults, we are part of the church of God; we have repented, we have been baptized, we have received the gift of God's Holy Spirit—and yet overcoming seems to be such a mountainous responsibility. Sometimes, brethren, I think that when we get into difficulties thinking about this particular aspect of our life, it is very easy to point the finger of blame at Satan the Devil and kind of lift the responsibility from off of our shoulders.

But before we were baptized, at least in almost every case, a minister of the Worldwide Church of God went over Luke the 14th chapter, beginning in verse 25, because there are scriptures that have to do with counting the cost of being a Christian. It says,

Luke 14:25-27 Now great multitudes went with Him [that is, with Christ]. And He turned and he said to them, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple."

Bear his cross? Well, that is rather ominous sounding. Because Jesus had to bear up the instrument of His death, every single one of us knows that. That after He was beaten, that He had the stake, cross, or whatever it was that He was crucified on, put on His back and He staggered under the weight of it, and a couple of different times He had to be helped up because of bearing the weight. And then finally, the burden had to be lifted from Him entirely and carried by that man who was perhaps just an innocent bystander there.

But what about you and me? What is this instrument of death that we have to bear up under? What is this cross that we carry with us? Are we too staggering under its weight after having been beaten within an inch of our life? And are we too going to have to have somebody relieve the burden from time to time and maybe at the very end bear it on someone else's shoulders so that we are able to be in the Kingdom of God, whatever it is?

Before we are baptized, we are warned that we are going to have to carry it with us all the while we are following Christ. There is no indication here that it is ever going to be completely away from us. It is a burden, a responsibility that we have to carry. If it was something that was going to be taken away through repentance and through baptism and the receiving of God's Holy Spirit, then why would He even warn us that we are going to have to bear with it? So repentance and baptism and the receipt of God's Holy Spirit are not going to take this burden away.

I think that we can do a little bit of deduction here and arrive at what it is that a Christian has to bear up with, even though he has repented and even though he has received the gift of God's Holy Spirit. Mr. Scobie just told us that the wages of sin is death. But where does sin come from? Very clearly the Bible establishes in Matthew the 15th chapter and Mark the seventh chapter, in parallel accounts, that Jesus said that it comes forth from the heart. In James the first chapter, verses 13 through 16, it shows that sin is conceived in the mind and then it is carried out by other members of the body.

The instrument of our death, since all sin begins in the mind, and sin, the wages of which is death, that is what we are going to have to bear with us; that instrument that we have to bear up under is our own mind. That is the instrument of our death because that is where sin comes from and that is where death comes from.

From the time that we were born habits, concepts, attitudes, emotions have been etched into our minds until we are today what we are. And what we are like is a mass. I do not mean the Catholic mass, but a weight, an object that is moving in a direction. This is one of the laws of thermodynamics. That a mass, that a body, that a weight will continue to move in the same direction unless something knocks it off course.

Now, the direction that you and I are moving in is toward death, until God knocks us off course by granting us repentance, and begins, of course, to move us toward the Kingdom of God. But you see, the trajectory that we had even before He called us is not completely turned aside by repentance. It would be great if it did, but it does not.

That is the warning here. That our initial repentance and baptism and receipt of God's Holy Spirit is not going to completely alter the trajectory that we have been going on throughout the entirety of our life. But being turned aside and headed toward the Kingdom of God is a process that will gradually turn us away from the death that we were headed toward in a pell-mell direction.

Would it not have been far better if those bad habits, those inclinations, those concepts, those approaches to life had never been learned in the first place? Would it not have been better if they had been learned in the first place, that somebody who loved us would have applied whatever measures were necessary to change the direction of our life, the trajectory, before it became so ingrained, before it became so set in our character that it was almost impossible to change?

Remember that quote from that book by Muriel Beadle? That if we were writing that verse today, we would say to "train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old, he will be unable to depart from it." When you read a statement like that, you can believe more firmly what Jesus said, that we are going to have to bear up under the instrument of our death. We are going to have to bear up under a cross, and what we are carrying with us is our mind, and that mind is there very largely because someone did not know or did not take the opportunity to train us up, to narrow us in, to change the trajectory of our life before those things became etched, ingrained in our mind, and makes it almost impossible to change. That is why you are having such a difficult time.

Now, do you want your children to have as difficult a time as you are having? Do you not think that it would be better that one of the greatest gifts that you could give to your children would be the dedication of your life to making sure that their life does not repeat the same kind of pattern that your life did? I first heard this cliché from my mother-in-law. She said that "the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree."

There is some wisdom in that. The offshoot, the fruit of the tree is going to be just like the tree. The children in a family are probably condemned to repeating the same mistakes as their parents. Because the parents either in ignorance or because of a lack of desire, of will in themselves, a lack of love do not take the opportunity to make sure that the apple does not repeat the same mistakes the tree did.

Let us go back to Ecclesiastes the eighth chapter, in verse 11, where Solomon writes something from his experiences as a head of a government watching the things that were going on within Israel through the 40 years of his reign in that country. And he understood a thing or two. And he says that,

Ecclesiastes 8:11 Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

Is that not so similar? Different words but so similar to what Muriel Beadle said, "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will be unable to depart from it." Solomon said that if the sentence is not executed speedily, then the hearts of the sons of men are going to be fully set, like concrete that is hardened, to do evil. He said that unless there is a punishment, you see, unless the sentence against an evil work, unless there is a punishment, the habit of doing evil becomes set.

Now, there is a reason why punishment in child rearing is necessary and the Bible explores this with a great amount of detail. So why is punishment necessary?

The first part of this sermon is going to be devoted to that, as to why punishment is necessary. And I have already broached the subject to you and that is that unless a sentence is carried out, then the mind becomes set to do evil. And punishment has something to do with changing the trajectory of a child's life. That talking to a child verbally, trying to explain, trying to reason, will not do it. It is necessary. It is part of training. But often, by itself, it will not do it. God says, as we are going to see, that the rod of discipline, that spanking, that pain is necessary.

Turn with me back to the book of Galatians, the fourth chapter, beginning in verse 1. The apostle Paul writes what I am going to be doing here. And I hope that you adults who are a part of the church of God will take a recognition of the way that God is dealing with you and me and the way that He looks at His spiritual children because that is where the parallel to child rearing is coming from. We are His children growing up toward being the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That is, the full maturity of being able to be born into the Kingdom of God. Our children are little images of you and me and it is our responsibility to begin to set that little mind, that little character as early as we possibly can so that they will be ready for the calling of God.

Galatians 4:1-3 Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave [I imagine that is the way God looks at you and me, like a slave.], though he is master of all [master of all in the sense of potential, he is the heir], but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father. Even so we [Christians, adults but really small children in the eyes of God], when we were children [when we were little kids, human beings, little kids], were in bondage under the elements of the world.

Notice that for some reason, or reasons, we are in bondage. Now, what are we in bondage to? What is a little kid in bondage to? What is a little spiritual kid of God in bondage to? Well, he tells us there. It is the elements of the world. We will explore that a little bit more, but that is really not what I want to pay attention to. I am talking about little children right here.

The word that he uses for child here is nepeos and it simply means an immature person intellectually and morally. Well, that is certainly what we are in comparison to God. We are an immature person, intellectually and morally. It means one who has to have restraints put on him. He is not at liberty to govern his own actions. Thus, the term slave. You see, a slave is one who is not at liberty. A slave is one who is under the authority and control of another. Now, here we are a slave to the elements of the world. A child is in slavery, not only to those things, but to something else as we are also going to see.

Now, we can also reach a conclusion here. And that is that since he is in this series of verses dealing with a person who is immature, someone who has not grown up intellectually or morally, it is then growth that determines a person's liberties. You might remember that in regard to a child. How much liberty you give your children should be dependent upon their growth toward maturity. In other words, their maturity level.

The elements of the world; we broached this subject to you in another sermon and it has to do with the ABC's, the elementary things, the first things of the world. Now, what is a child's first principles? What is the guiding thrust of his life? Let us go a few pages back here to I Corinthians 13, the love chapter. And right at the very end of that chapter, beginning in verse 11, the apostle Paul writes,

I Corinthians 13:11-12 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

Is the apostle Paul here implying that there is a definite line of demarcation between childhood and adulthood? I think he is making that very clear. "When I was a child," he says, "I thought as a child." A child thinks a certain way. It does not think like an adult. And every adult who has had children understands that from experience. They know that a child does not think like an adult, they do not understand like an adult. So there is a definite line between childhood and maturity. And he shows that when we finally become mature and when we are finally in the Kingdom of God, we are going to see a definite line of demarcation between what we are now and what we will be then.

And I am not just talking about the glorious body, I am talking about the mind that we will have, the perception, the discernment, the insight, the understanding, the wisdom, the intelligence, the experience, all of those things coming together in a mind that is part of a glorified body. And then, you see, we will know even as we are known. And it is the same way (maybe not quite as arresting), when one passes from childhood to adulthood, and into marriage, and begins to look at childhood from the perspective of an adult. An adult can see that there is definitely a difference between a child and an adult and they know childhood far better than a child does. And when the child grows up, then that process repeats itself and then the child begins to know childhood from an adult's point of view. And they know even as they were known at one time.

A couple of other scriptures in the book of Ephesians, as we continue to gather information, and I will show you that there is something wrong with childhood. It is almost like there is a defect there, there is something wrong, and we spiritually are going through the same processes that our little children are going through physically.

Ephesians 4:11-15 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ.

In those few verses there, he names quite a number of things that is wrong with children. Again, the parallel between Himself and His spiritual children, you and me, which we can in turn use as an instruction in regarding the difference between an adult and their offspring. Now look at it there: "till we all come to the unity." A child is not unified to the family. A child tends to be an independent thinker and to go off in his own directions and to do his own thing.

The second thing that he shows: that a child of God lacks knowledge and so the ministry is given to fill up that lack of knowledge, the knowledge of the Son of God, that is, His knowledge, not knowledge about the Son of God, but the Son of God's knowledge.

The next verse shows that a child is unstable. The children are tossed to and fro, they are moved more by emotion than by character and reason. And thus, a child is very subject to peer pressure, to fads, to styles; very impatient. Also, it does not have much discernment. By the trickery of men in cunning craftiness. You see, a child will fall for those things. It does not have the sophistication to be able to deal with something like that. And of course, in verse 15, kind of a summary statement, the child has to grow up in those areas.

Now, let us go back to the book of Proverbs in chapter 22, verse 15. There we have a summary statement in regard to the problem that a child has. God just summarizes it in general, puts it under one heading, and says this kind of fits every child.

Proverbs 22:15 [he says that] Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, . . .

That is what a child is enslaved by. God does not say that the child is evil. He says he is foolish.

Proverbs 22:15 . . . but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.

The rod of correction. Now, that can of course include a verbal education. It can include drilling a child, you know, putting them through practice runs, giving them things to carry out to build responsibility. But it certainly also includes very clearly punishment, pain, to drive this foolishness out. Children have impulses. Paul says, "When I was a child, I spoke as a child." Children have impulses, they have urges, they have that need to be directed and trained. Otherwise, it is very likely that the child will turn into an egocentric little dictator right in his own home or right in the circle of his friends.

Now, this word foolish, foolishness, it appears in the Bible in quite a wide variety of contexts. So I want to give you the general sense of what it is that a child is in bondage to. The root word implies weakness of mind. A child is in bondage to weakness of mind. It does not say evil; again, I want to impress that upon you, but weakness of mind. The definition of this word almost gets into the area of being Pollyannish. Thus, we find the notion of folly. In fact, some modern Bibles may translate the word folly rather than foolishness.

It means to have fond expectation without any real substantive reason for feeling that way. They just feel that they ought to do something, but they do not know why. They just get the urge, get the impulse, and boom! they are off, they go and do it. They do not think it through, do not think about the end, they do not consider who is going to get hurt. They do not consider the dangers of a thing. They do not consider the good.

Continuing with the definition. Now, this definition that I am going to give you comes from Wilson's Old Testament Words. It means one who is not prudent, without aim. They bounce around just like a ball in a pinball machine, from pillar to post. One who acts without counsel, ready to form rash opinions and hopes, carelessly commits everything to uncertain issues, easily provoked. Does that not fit in with Ephesians 4, going from pillar to post, knocked to and fro by every wind of doctrine? All that somebody has to do is suggest something and boom! the kid's mind is off and away he goes. One who has no reason for what he does except he has a mind to do it. One very confident of his own heart and mind. (It gets worse as we go on here. All from Wilson's.) To act stupidly, absurdly, inconsistently, carelessly, ignorantly, senselessly; to be thickheaded, neglectful of duty.

Brethren, God says that a child is foolish. Everything that makes a child tick is foolish. I might use the word perverse. They put a childish twist on things and do things that seem totally illogical and unreasonable to an adult. God is showing us here that a child is not talked out of foolishness. The rod of correction is needed. You cannot reason; and I will get to why in just a little bit.

Now, neither is pain, correction, the only thing that should be used. It is a tool that is used to accomplish a definite end. We are in the business, parents, of building personality that includes a person's, that child's, character. Likewise, if you were building a building, the carpenter does not use the same tool for every operation on the job. You do not saw with a hammer. Now, some people may say like it looks like they used the claw end of a hammer to do it. But that just shows you that they were pretty foolish when they did that. They did not use the right tool on the job. And you do not use a hammer to pound a nail in, and vice versa, you do not use a saw to pound a nail. But you do not use a tool to accomplish every aspect of the job, do you? No, you do not. And the same with a child.

Let us continue this thought. Go back to the book of Jeremiah, the 25th chapter. An interesting statement again in regard to adults. That it shows, again, the problem that a child has in his foolishness.

Jeremiah 25:5-7 They said [that is, God's prophet], 'Repent now everyone of his evil way and his evil doings, and dwell in the land that the Lord has given to you and your fathers forever and ever. Do not go after other gods to serve them and worship them, and do not provoke Me to anger with the works of your hands; and I will not harm you.' "Yet you have not listened to Me," says the Lord, "that you might provoke Me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt."

In the context here with the children of Israel, it is apparent that at the time that they committed the sin, they did not realize, they did not understand what the end result was going to be. See, they did not realize that, as they bowed down to an idol, they did not realize that when they made sacrifices to the idol that that was going to result in their own death! Now, a child does not understand. It is no more apparent to a child than it was to these Israelites when they bowed down to an idol.

It is no more apparent to a child because of his lack of experience that when he does something carelessly, recklessly, irresponsibly, or selfishly that he is causing himself and others problems. This is one of the major reasons why you cannot reason a child out of his foolishness. He just does not yet have the intellectual capacity. He does not have the knowledge, he does not have the experience to be able to relate to that effectively. He can only relate to things that are immediate. Now, of course, as a child begins to mature then his capacity for understanding or considering the end result of things also increases.

It is interesting in regard to this that whenever God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and He instructed them, He told them, "In the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die." That was the issue whenever Satan came and tempted them. They had no capacity to understand that even though God gave them the knowledge, even as you may instruct your children on things verbally, you can teach them, but they have not had the experience to make the proper relationship even any more than Adam and Eve did.

Well, Satan understood that and so that is where he attacked, because they could not, through their experience, consider the end result. And so his first words were, after setting the trap, "Has God said, you shall surely die?" That was the end result. Well, in their foolishness, they made the wrong choice. Now they did die in that day, in that 1,000 year day, they died literally. But the moment they sinned, they were as good as dead. Children do not understand that. "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child." A child is in bondage to foolishness; Pollyannish. They cannot consider the end. He has no capacity for it. They may agree with you when you talk to them. "Yes, mommy." "Yes, daddy." But do not be fooled by it. God says, in His wisdom, pain is necessary.

Let us go back to Hebrews 11. A child remembers pain because that was the end result. Now, here is another reason why pain is necessary. Verse 24, talking about Moses.

Hebrews 11:24-25 By faith Moses, when he came of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.

God says that sin is often pleasurable. In fact, I believe that more often than not, it is pleasurable. To a child so is carelessness. He does not say, "I'm going to be careless and is this going to be fun! Yay!" He does not say, "I'm going to be irresponsible. I'm going to be selfish. And boy, is that going to be fun!" He cannot think that; foolishness is there, he is in bondage to it. Now see, he is doing that, and you are looking at it from the standpoint of a parent. Boy, was that foolish. Boy, was that selfish. Boy, was that irresponsible. The kid says, boy, was that fun! Hey, let's do it again.

You see, fun is only fun when it defies time without kickbacks for the self and others. A child does not know that any more than those people knew it in Jeremiah 25 when they worshipped an idol. They thought they were doing good. God said, "Boy, is that stupid, foolish, careless, irresponsible." So from your vantage point as a parent, you know it, and so your responsibility is to punish and then you reinforce the real end very quickly.

Let us go back to the book of Proverbs and we will get another summary statement.

Proverbs 13:15 Good understanding gains favor, but the way of the unfaithful is hard [or the way of transgressors is hard].

We have to work with our children to establish in their minds that these characteristics that they have of foolishness, those things that are not adult-like, regardless of the fun and the pleasure that they produce while the child is doing it, that they are going to produce pain and ultimately death, even though those things do not immediately occur. It is part of a major principle in the Bible that whatever you sow that shall you also reap. And you know that when you sow a seed, it does not immediately produce fruit. The same with a child; that because he is in bondage to foolishness, because he has this Pollyannish approach to things, he does not have the capacity to relate things because he just does not have the experience, that he does not know the end.

Now, whenever a child touches a hot stove, the hurt comes immediately and the pain of the mistake is quickly associated and they are very careful about ever touching anything that is on the stove after that. But if a child has a hot temper or if he is selfish or if he is intensely competitive, or if he irresponsibly leaves a skateboard on the stairs, he does not know because he is in bondage to folly. So then, because the foolishness is bound in his heart and because of the effect of his sin is not always apparent, you must supply an immediate pain so that he learns the lesson of cause and effect.

Proverbs 29:15 [Solomon writes] The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

Wisdom is right use of knowledge, and understanding the rod and rebuke teaches him to consider the end. So it is something that occurs immediately.

Let us turn to Lamentations chapter 3, verse 27. Here is a statement as to the best time.

Lamentations 3:27 It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.

The younger, the better—in his youth. It is a part of the "as the twig is bent" principle. Now, some of us, of course, have children who are older than the optimum time to begin training a child. But nonetheless, they are still young. So begin where you are. Incidentally, the word "yoke" in the Bible is used as a symbol of submission, of being submissive, of a child, in this case, being submissive to his parents. And of course, whenever two animals are yoked together, the yoke is then used to give guidance to the team. So it is good that the child or a person bear the yoke, that is, being made to submit and to be given guidance when they are young.

I have a list of characteristics that I am going to give you and I am giving you this so that you might be able to evaluate your child, begin to see whether or not you are having a problem or your child is having a problem and you are going to soon have a worse problem. I do not know whether you should try to write these all down because there are 17 of them. I am not going to dwell a lot on each one.

1. Do you have to speak more than once to get them to do or stop doing something?

2. Do they cry when they cannot have their own way? Certainly not having their own way is going to make them sad. But letting them continue in that attitude is not good. Life is full of disappointments and if you allow them to cry when they cannot have their own way, they are going to be suckers for depression and frustration on a very quick level, however, we want to put it. When they get to be older they are not going to be able to deal with disappointment.

3. Do you constantly have to be picking up after them?

4. Do they often have "accidents"? (I have that in quotes on my paper here.) Accidents are caused. Do they often have accidents? For example, spilling milk, dropping things. Every child is going to do that once in a while. But if they are having accidents like that frequently, that is the same kid who later on, when he gets in an automobile, is going to have an accident that might kill somebody. Just carelessness that is permitted.

5, Are they possessive, selfish with other children, will not share their toys? Boy, that one can have disastrous results. Uncooperative spirit.

6. Are they consistently late for things? For example, meals, going to bed, you tell them to do something and they dilly-dally around doing something else.

7. Do they refuse to eat what is set before them?

8. When you put them down for bed do they stay there? This shows you how much your word means.

9. Do you catch them in lies or consistent self-justification? "I did it because Tommy made me do it."

10. What kind of expression do they have on their face when you tell them to do or not do something? Children are an open book. They cannot hide their feelings. When they begin to be able to hide their feelings, you know that they are beginning to become sophisticated.

11. What kind of inflection is in their voice when they respond to you? Do they sass you?

12. Do they ever swing at you? Strike you? Attempt to kick you? Or pull away from you even in so-called play? Boy, they thought the wrath of God hit them. That is something, brethren, you cannot allow your children to get away with.

13. Do you allow them to cry for sympathy? Crying out in pain of a spanking is one thing, crying to get sympathy is another thing altogether.

14. Does your child stutter, sleep with you, or appear to be unduly attached to either father or mother?

15. Does he exhibit running or other disruptive behavior in crowds or in others' homes?

16. Do you find yourself giving in to the child because of where the problem takes place? There is a biggie.

17. Do you find they are forgetful? They forget to go to the bathroom before services, they forget to get a drink before services. They forget where they left their toys, they forget their lunch. When they go to school, they forget to take a jacket, they forget to wear a belt; they forget, forget, forget.

Well. . . why does a child behave as he does? Very simply, because he finds that it gets good results for him. Remember, they do not think things through, but they find that their particular line of behavior gets good results for them. And to understand that, I feel, is to understand a major key to effective child rearing. Behavior that produces desirable results will recur. That is a law of psychology. It does not matter whether you are old or young; that if a person perceives that a type of behavior produces good results for him, it will recur, and in the case of a child, it will recur even though all it does is incur your anger. As one psychologist put it, "A soggy potato chip is better than no potato chip at all." At least whenever a child forces you to spank him, he is getting your focused attention and you are touching him.

Suppose your child refuses to eat his beans (or in the case of Sharon, her eggs), and you say to that child, "If you eat them, I'll give you a piece of candy." What have you just done? You bribed the little fella. Is that a good child rearing method? You are bribing him to do what he should do as a matter of course. And yet we always hold out things that really are not very good for a child, like ice cream, candy, and other sugar-laden products. We hold them out as treasures to be won for good behavior and we give them the poison. Is that not kind of contradictory? It is not good psychologically as well as not being good for the body.

Do you understand that laziness is learned because we reward them even though they do not carry out what we told them to do? Laziness is learned. Now, if little Johnny talks in a normal voice, nobody pays him any attention. But if he yells and if he whines somebody listens. You know what we just did? We rewarded whining. It got a response. It got attention. If a child makes a disturbance in services, we carry them out and there, more often than not, we comfort them, get them a drink of water, pat them on the po-po and say, now wasn't that nice.

Do you realize that we allowed them to extort us into doing that? That if there really was not anything wrong when you got out there, you should have made that trip out there unpleasant indeed for that child. I have seen children who were making a disturbance in services and the parent went to pick the child up or made some kind of a gesture and that kid knew that the wrath of God was going to hit him outside the door. "No, no, I do not wanna go out!" And suddenly they got awfully quiet. I will tell you if there is no good reason for your child making a disturbance in services. When you get outside that door, you better make it awfully unpleasant because they are keeping you from hearing the sermon. They are disturbing your thinking. They are keeping you from having a relationship with God at a very important time in your life.

At any rate, you need to be very carefully observant of the behavior that you allow to succeed, because if you allow it to succeed, your child is going to continue it and your job as a parent is going to be made exceedingly more difficult.

Now, on the other hand, Proverbs 13, verse 12 makes very clear that,

Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of light.

On the other hand, you should use the reward portion of government very generously: hugs, kisses, verbally praising the child, give them material rewards if you see fit for good behavior, reinforce the kind of behavior that you want your child to have by making sure that they know that you approve of it. But reward them only if they successfully do what you consider to be good within the parameters of their ability. If you reward them for something that you do not consider good, because you consider that at their age they ought to be able to do better, then do not accept the lower scale. (We are going to get to this a little bit later. You should be constantly bringing up the level of your child's skills.) So you cannot, as a parent then, allow a child to decide for himself or for the family what is good behavior or a good result.

This is what mankind has done to God. With God's permission, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they chose for themselves what was good behavior. Brethren, look at the result. We are going to see a verse in just a little bit that is going to say something about that.

Now, if you allow your child to decide what is good behavior for either him or for the family, and brethren, this may be blunt, but you have abdicated your role as a parent. The child is running the show and you are going to be very poorly equipped to rule in the Kingdom of God. You have abdicated your role. Incidentally, that applies regardless of how old the child is. It could be just a few months old. Mr. Armstrong said very frequently, you begin right away with a child because if you do not, of course, Satan will.

I think that we fail to appreciate our child's psychological need for both attention and also knowing where the boundaries are. I remember seeing as an illustration in an article of an example that was to me, it was pretty vivid. It was of a of a young girl. She was three years old and she had been put down by her mother for the afternoon nap. Now the mother left the room, the girl was quiet for about 10 seconds, and then she decided that she needed water. Now, she had already been taken to the potty. She had already had a little glass of water before she went in there. But she was in the room now and she was all by herself and she was told by her mother to go to sleep, but she wanted water.

For a little while, she kept asking for water. "Mommy, I want water, mommy, I want water." And the first thing you know, her request escalated into a scream. Now here she was screaming at her mother that she wanted water. Well, finally the mother surrendered and she brought a glass of water in to her daughter and then the little girl shoved it away because her mother had not brought it quickly enough. Well, then the mother very stupidly said, "Unless you drink this water, I'm going to leave the room," as if that was going to have any effect on a little child. Then she escalated her demand and said, "Well, if you won't drink it, I'm not only going to leave the room but I'm also going to take the water with me." It did not impress the little girl at all. So the mother left the room and immediately the child screamed at the top of her lungs once again.

Well, can you see what was happening here? This little girl was dangling her "adult" (I put that in quotes) mother back and forth, back and forth. So the mother was just completely nonplussed as to what to do. Throws her hands up in the air and "what can I do?"

This little episode illustrates something. This was no simple difference of opinion. This mother was being challenged, she was being mocked, she was being defied, and the child was brazenly rejecting her mother's authority.

Parents, what would you do in a case like that? It should have never even gotten that far. Unfortunately, we tend to fall between two extremes. There is, on the one hand, the parent who is the trained observer. You may think that you do not believe in evolution, but the trained observer parent is an evolutionist at heart. He believes that childhood is nothing more than going through a series of stages and that a child's typical behavior will be in that stage. And when they get through that, they are going to go into another stage until finally, somehow by observation and by talking, this child is going to evolve into a perfectly model citizen at the age of 21. Unfortunately, the only thing that changes during the years is the child's potential to do greater harm.

On the other hand, there is the paddling machine. Unfortunately, in the church, we have had many who played this part. We have got to understand that spanking is not child rearing. Spanking is a tool that is to be used of course, but it will not of and by itself produce trained children. A child may be obedient because he has been spanked, but he is not trained. There is something that is sadly missing. We have got to understand that punishment is not just something that we do to a child, it is something that we do for a child.

One more thing that I want to interject and that is this: that before we have children, we tend to underestimate the demands of time and energy that a child is going to require. And then after they come, we quickly grow weary of the demands and we either become permissive, allow them to do virtually anything and watch them go through stage after stage, or we become the paddling machine hoping to get a quick fix.

Proverbs 19:18 Chasten your son while there is hope, and do not set your heart on his destruction.

The King James says, "Chasten your child while there is hope, and let not your soul spare for his crying." What it means "to let not your soul spare for his crying" incidentally is not a very good translation and the one that I gave you is much better, "Do not set your heart on his destruction." What God is talking about here is that if a child is not chastened, then the parent will be responsible for reproducing that child's destruction. God will hold the parent responsible. Destruction, meaning death.

Now, spanking a actually makes a child secure. I once read, maybe I heard this on radio, I know it was a number of years ago. I think I heard it maybe down in South Carolina, it may have been even way back before when I was down in what is now Garden Grove. I heard of an example of children who were in a daycare center and the people in the daycare center found that the children would always go up to the fence that was in the playground and they were always looking longingly out into the area outside of the fence. And they thought that these children must feel as though they are caged in here, like they are in prison. It was in a pretty safe area. So they decided to take down the fence. After they took down the fence, the children huddled together in the middle of the schoolyard. The fence actually made them feel secure. And whenever the fence was taken down, now they did not feel secure and they huddled together in order to feel the security of the group. The fence was a boundary. They knew that they could go that far and no further, that there was protection within the fence.

That is what spanking does. Whenever a parent gives a child a spanking, it provides a boundary and the child then feels secure in between the boundaries that you have established.

You know that if you were driving along a road and suddenly that road ended in a bridge that went over a yawning chasm and you could look down and a couple of thousand feet there was a river down there with crocodiles and everything swimming around in it and you had to get across that bridge. Where would you walk? Probably you would walk right in the middle of the road where you felt the safest. Well, that is the way it is with a child. They want to go where it feels safest and wander around in between.

Proverbs 13:4 The soul of a a lazy man desires, and has nothing; but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.

Proverbs 13:11 Wealth gained by dishonesty will be diminished, but he who gathers by labor will increase.

The point here is this: that child rearing is something that requires a great deal of effort and if we are diligent, it will produce the right kind of fruit.

Verse 4 indicates that we will be abundantly satisfied. Verse 11 indicates that the growth will come little by little. There are no quick fixes. This is something that requires time and energy. It requires a great deal of thoughtfulness and meditation on our children, planning to guide and direct them into the path that you want them to go. So we need to consider, are we too lazy? Are we preoccupied with our own thing? Or do we not care what our child does until that child irritates us? Brethren, child rearing is too important to allow it to slide by the boards. It is a major responsibility within marriage. And I think that there is hardly anything that is more important than our children's future.

Punishment, in order to be effective, must be:

1. Immediate. Remember Ecclesiastes 8:11.

Proverbs 13:24 He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him properly.

The reason for that is that a child has a short attention span, they cannot think spatially very well. And so if the punishment is delayed, when he finally is punished he cannot really understand why he is being punished. He does not get the lesson. So mothers, what this means in actual practice is if your child misbehaves, you take care of it right on the spot. Do not wait for dad to come home. If you do, you have done that child a disservice and you have also done dad a disservice because when he finally does correct, he gets the brunt of the child's anger. He becomes the one who is unloved when you were the one who did the unloving thing by not punishing immediately. Take care of it right away. There you give the child the very best benefit that he can get knowing cause and effect immediately.

Proverbs 23:13-14 Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod, and deliver his soul from hell.

You parents want to be responsible for your children's death later on? A child does not see end results so you do it for him. He does not see the course that he is on. So what God is saying here is punishment will spare him from a fate worse later on.

2. In order to be effective punishment must be fair.

In Matthew 23:23, Jesus there lists three characteristics right in a row. In the King James, it says judgment, mercy, and faith. They are the weightier matters of the law. My Bible says justice, mercy, and faith. Now, if these characteristics, these qualities are listed in order of importance, then justice is more important than either mercy or faith. Justice means being exact, being right, being fair, being correct. Justice is the administration or the management of that which is fair or exact or just.

Now, spanking is not to be viewed as the last resort as though it is the answer to all problems. Therefore, child rearing requires judgment, it requires discernment. It means that you have to study your child and you have to study the situation as well. There are no pat answers as to how much punishment is just for any given crime that the child commits. You are going to have to learn to differentiate. God is calling you and me to be kings and priests. He is calling us to be judges. We are going to have to make decisions.

One thing I want to throw in here is that as your child begins to get older, even when they are three years old or so, you must never lose sight of your child's awareness that he knows that he is doing wrong. Sometimes they do not, but more often than not, they do. Remember the story that Mr. Catherwood told about his grandson and the television set and the turning it on? That kid was only two years old or less. I think he was 18 months, and he knew it was wrong to turn that television set on. Otherwise, why did he look around the room to see if anybody was watching? And then wham! hurry up and turn it on. He knew at 18 months.

The most effective means of control as the child begins to get older are those that manipulate something that is important to the child. It might be time, it might be an event, it might be a thing that you manipulate the use of. But nonetheless, again, you have to think these things through.

Now, the most serious aspect in disobedience is a child's attitude. You are going to have to discern in your judgment: was the child foolish and forgetful, and if he was, then you spank lightly, maybe just a couple of swats. But if he disobeyed you because of anger, bitterness, resentment, self-pity, pride, these are spiritual problems and the punishment is much greater because these are the things you do not want your child to get into. You can write down Psalm 103 where it says, "Like as a father pities His children." God judges us and it says that He looks down on us and He remembers that we are dust. So He makes His judgment according to those things.

Make sure that when you punish that you have yourself collected, you are calm when you do it, you are not punishing with a contorted face, you know, all screwed up because of anger and excessive irritation. Make sure that your voice is not strident.

3. Punishment must hurt. Proverbs 19:18 (a scripture I think that we just used there).

Make sure that you do not beat him, that you do not bruise. I would suggest that you use something wide like a ping pong paddle type. Sometimes you are going to be able to judge that the natural consequences of what he did are worse than any punishment afflicted by you at that time. You might tell your child do not climb in the tree. So he does something foolish. He climbs in the tree, the limb breaks, and he falls down and breaks his arm. What are you going to do, give him a spanking on top of that while his arm is dangling over here? The fall out of the tree is enough. He learned his lesson very quickly. This time God intervened.

But punishment should not be neglected lest the child go astray and suffer a fate worse, that is, death, and you be the cause of his death.

You might also deprive a child of something, toys, desserts, events. But again, here is something that I think that they should be old enough to be able to grasp and feel the effect of missing those things.

Sometimes parents ask about isolating a child, as if he was in jail. There are no jails in the Bible, except in two occasions. In both cases, a person was held in ward. One was overnight and then the person was stoned the next day when they find out what to do. Isolation may be good if it maybe follows on the heels of being uncooperative with other children. But do not ever isolate them into a dark, small, confining place like a closet. Maybe isolate them in their room. I think that there is reason for saying that this is all right because God caused lawbreakers to have to run to the city of refuge and there they were isolated, but they were isolated in a place that was open, where they did not have the feeling of being completely cut off and estranged from society. You know, like we do today. We put people in small cubicles that are 8x10 or 6x8 and that does not rehabilitate anybody.

4. In order to be effective, punishment must be consistent.

This is very important. Maybe the most important, I am not sure. If there is any kind of punishment going on, it ought to be consistent. Remember those scriptures that Mr. Scobie used, Malachi 3:6, "I am God, I change not." "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever," in Hebrews 13:8. Brethren, we do not want to produce confusion in our children. If God acted the way we act as parents do, we would be totally confused. We could not count on Him for anything. But once His word leaves His mouth, He says it will not return to Him empty. It will do what He says.

Now, what you want to do is make sure that what is an infraction on Monday is also an infraction on Tuesday, is also an infraction on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday. It does not matter when the child does it or where he does it. You are consistent and you carry through. Another way of saying that is, let your yes be yes and your no, no. You speak once and then you act. You take care of it in love following the other things as well.

When I began this child rearing series, it was with a sermon on the importance of child rearing. I followed that with the chemistry of government, which in turn was followed by the parental example, or how to develop godly charisma. And that is, of course, your relationship with God, the attitude of the parents toward one another in their marriage, and the attitude of the parents toward children.

I feel that of all the sermons, that was the most important one. That if your relationship with God is right, you are going to be guided by God's Holy Spirit and you are going to have a much stronger tendency to do the other things in the right way.

The fourth sermon had to do with how to really love your child, the focused attention that a child needs. He needs to know that he is precious, that he is important to you, that he is unique, and that you love him with all of your heart. The fifth one had to do with training your children, with teaching, with putting them through drills and punishment. And then this last sermon here with punishing your children. It has to be immediate, it has to be fair, it has to hurt, it has to sting, and it has to be consistent.

In Proverbs 20:11, it says that even a child is known by his doings, that is, even a child's character shines through the way that he conducts his life before other people and before the family.

Proverbs 23:24-25 The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice, and he who begets a wise child [the rod of correction brings wisdom], will delight in him. Let your father and your mother be glad, and let her who bore you rejoice.

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