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The Bible and the Rod
him" (Genesis 22:12). God doesn't say, "Don't kill the lad, but it's all right to beat him."
THE VIEW OF JESUS
"Foolishness is found in the heart of a child. But the rod of correction will drive it far from
him." So declared Solomon (Proverbs 22:15). But Jesus held otherwise. "Verily, I say unto
you, unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven"
(Matthew 18:3).
To Jesus, not only did the grown-ups not have all the answers, but they may have forgotten
things that they knew in youth. Many things fade as we depart from childhood. The power
to laugh joyfully, to dream and imagine, to love truly and form deep friendships, to believe
in wonders and sense the things of the Spirit. In teaching youth our knowledge, instead of
"beating the foolishness out of them", we may have something to learn in return.
Some of the gloomier theologians believed that children were born depraved. They were
"tainted with sin" and had to be beaten and subdued. Thus, John Wesley wrote, "Break his
will, if you would not damn the child. Teach him to fear the rod and to cry softly ... Break
his will now that his soul shall live" 4 . But Jesus viewed the child as did the poet
Wordsworth:
In trailing clouds of glory do we come ....
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing boy ...
At length, the man perceives it die away
And fade into the common light of day. 5
Said Jesus, "Suffer the little children to come unto me., and forbid them not. For of such is
the kingdom of Heaven" (Mark 10:14)
And Jesus warned, "It were better for him if a millstone were hanged around his neck and he
were cast into the sea than that he should offend one of these little ones" (Luke 17:2).
Jesus does not advocate throwing child abusers into the sea with millstones around their
neck. He just says it would be better for them if it happened.
There are some who cite the Bible to populate our schools and homes with rods and paddles.
But they are very silent on the subject of millstones.
Instead of force and fear, Jesus would bring forth the Divine Power that lay within, for man
was made in the image of God. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect"
(Matthew 5:48) .. "Seek and ye shall find ... Call and it shall be answered ... Knock and it
shall be opened" (Matthew 7:7).
And Jesus asks, "Of what man is there of you who, if his son asks for bread, would give him
a stone?" (Matthew 7:9)
Yet for hundreds of years, in the schools of avowedly Christian nations, youths who sought
the bread of education were given the stone of corporal punishment.
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