By Dr. John Adams, Executive Director • Moral Action
Dr. Chuck Swindoll stated, “Sometimes I meet parents who think that if they love their children enough, they will never have to exercise corporal punishment.” Few things could be further from the truth. Proverbs 13:24 (NLT) doesn’t call that love: “Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children.” That may make us gag a little, but that’s what God has said.
The simple fact is that fair, consistent, biblical discipline confirms your love for your child. Children don’t know how to behave properly without the security that discipline brings. Discipline is essential for learning self-control, but correction and discipline should be given while upholding your child’s dignity and value.
Parents, and not the government, have the primary responsibility for the education of their children. The late President Ronald Reagan, in an address to the National Commission on Excellence in Education, stated: “Parental authority is not a right conveyed by the state.”
The following are radical ideas being upheld by court decisions:
• Children have the right to divorce their parents and receive alimony.
• Children are eligible for minimum wages if they do household chores.
• Children should be able to charge their parents with child abuse if they use biblical disciplinary measures.
• Children have the right to sue their parents for being forced to attend church or to avoid going places with them.
• Children and teenagers should have the right to decide whether to have an abortion, quit school or hire their own attorney.
The liberation of children by parents’ slackness has been underway for nearly three decades — so gradually that most parents are unaware of it. Christianity teaches that one of the most sacred of all rights and responsibilities of parents is to rear their own children.
All that has transpired in relation to children and their rights versus parents’ rights should cause some questions to be asked by concerned parents and believers.
What Rights for Children Does the Child Rights Movement (World Forum Foundation) Seek?
John Eldsmoe, author of God and Caesar, answered this question on behalf of those who fight for Child Rights:
• Freedom from any kind of physical punishment. As a result, Sweden already has a law prohibiting spanking.
• Freedom from any type of religious indoctrination. Parents should not be allowed to compel children to attend Sunday School and church.
• The right to divorce one’s parents, arguing that a child should not have to live with his parents if he doesn’t want to.
• The right to birth control information and abortion without parental knowledge.
• The right to choose one’s own sexual preference.
These so-called kiddie-libbers are certainly not pro-family, and it is unique in that it is led entirely by adults. They have been instrumental in that three decades ago, most states set the age of independence at 21; today, the legal coming of age occurs around 14.
What are the Pro-Parents, Pro-Family Policies?
• Promotion of the traditional Judeo-Christian values instilled in children by solid families and Bible teachings.
• Advocating for the restoration of parents to the overall educational process of children and teenagers.
• Opposed the government’s role in facilitating and encouraging adolescent sexual activity.
Families, not government programs, are the best way to make our cultural and spiritual heritages perpetuated, and our values preserved. We must be strong on the family unit.
What are God’s Guidelines that Instill Strong Family Ties?
Some people may ask with sincerity, “What would be wrong with giving children every right of adults?” The Biblical News Service publication answered, “Attached to every right is a responsibility! To give children all adult rights is to burden their immature and inexperienced minds with the responsibility of forming judgments and making life-determining decisions which are difficult for even the most mature adults.” This is child abuse in one of its cruelest forms! Scriptures of God declare a greater truth:
• “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother; for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck” (Prov. 1:8-9 KJV).
• “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old: he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).
• “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell” (Prov. 23:13-14).
• “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Prov. 29:15).
• “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. 12:11).
• “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:1-4).
