Stop Using Jesus As An Excuse To Hit Your Kids

woman-holding-bible-threateninglyIn the wake of everything that’s been in the news lately about what does and does not constitute appropriate punishment for children, there is at least one group of people that is all for opening up a can of whupass on your toddlers. These aren’t the ones that say, “Oh, my parents spanked me and look how awesome I turned out“.

I’m talking instead about a select group of Christians who believe that spanking is biblical, and it’s necessary to raise godly children, whatever that means. Before I type any more words with my sausage fingers, I will of course pause to say that I don’t mean all Christians beat the shit out of their kids, only some, so there’s that.

Take a blog post from some crazy mofo over on noted crazy mofo endtimes bunker Townhall, entitled If You Don’t Spank Your Kids, Jesus Certainly Will. The title sounds pretty absurd, but the sentiment that comes directly after isn’t exactly unheard of:

As usual, progressives have seized this opportunity to besmirch a time-honored and Biblical practice””corporal punishment. This shouldn’t surprise us, since progressives abhor the notion of personal responsibility. And, why not? The entire progressive edifice is built on the foundation of unbridled hedonism and man as his own chief deity.

I am very familiar with “for the Bible tells me so” parenting. Growing up in a home that practiced the “time honored” biblical practice of hitting children for the horrible offenses of pissing in our pants and sneaking food sucked major, major nuggets and had very little to do with my concept of personal responsibility. If anything, it caused me to become awesome at not ever getting caught, and wonder, even at an early age, what kind of douchey grandfather type God was if he was all about beating up on little kids.

The reasons I left the church are numerous and varied and spanking falls somewhere at the bottom of a very long list of reasons about the length of my arm. Once I had a kid, it sort of raced to the top.

I’ll be honest, the idea of Jesus spanking a kid, even metaphorically, grates on me big time. I’m one of those atheists who thinks Jesus was an A+ dude, and he was all about upending the status quo, not reinforcing it. It grosses me out when people use gospel as a reason to justify doing something like hitting kids.

I can’t imagine spanking my daughter. It’s not that she’s perfect or that I’m perfect or anything, it’s more that in my daily life, few adults are capable of flipping my “I really want to fucking hit you right now” switch, so the chance of my child or anyone else’s doing something that causes me to haul off and slap them across the face or tushie is basically zero.

If you aren’t the same way, fine. If little kids piss you off so much that you want to physically discipline them, fine. It would be great if you could stop hiding behind the Bible to justify being a huge asshole about it, though.

(Image: CREATISTA/Shutterstock)

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