Shepherding a Child's Heart

The Rationale Behind the Rod

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Many questions about spanking children flood our minds. What is
it designed to accomplish? Is it really necessary? Isn’t there a better
way? What is the idea behind it? Will it make your children resent
you?
Nick, a friend from church, and his girlfriend, Angela, were
visiting for a Sunday afternoon. During our meal, one of our sons was
disobedient. I took him to a private room upstairs to discipline him.
“What’s he going to do with him?” Angela inquired.
“Probably spank him,” my wife responded matter-of-factly.
At that moment my son’s cry could be heard upstairs. Angela went
running from the house in a state of great agitation.
What was her problem? She did not understand spanking
biblically, so she felt offended and concerned about what, to her,
appeared to be parental cruelty. Her attitude was not unusual.
The Nature of the Problem
What is the nature of the child’s most basic need? If children are
born ethically and morally neutral, then they do not need correction;
they need direction. They do not need discipline; they need
instruction.
Certainly, children need instruction and direction. But is their
most basic problem a lack of information? Are all the problems gone
once they are able to learn a few things? Of course not!
Children are not born morally and ethically neutral. The Bible
teaches that the heart is “deceitful and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah
17:9, KJV). The child’s problem is not an information deficit. His
problem is that he is a sinner. There are things within the heart of the
sweetest little baby that, allowed to blossom and grow to fruition, will
bring about eventual destruction.
The rod functions in this context. It is addressed to needs within
the child. These needs cannot be met by mere talk. Proverbs 22:15
says, “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of

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discipline will drive it far from him.” God says there is something
wrong in the child’s heart. Folly or foolishness is bound up in his
heart. This folly must be removed, for it places the child at risk.
When we speak of folly we are not speaking of childishness.
Children do childish things. They spill the milk at the breakfast table.
(If you have young children you must plan on mopping up gallons of
milk.) They try to give their teddy bear a drink of their orange juice.
We don’t discipline for childishness even when it is terribly
inconvenient.
Throughout the Proverbs, folly/foolishness is used to describe the
person who has no fear of God. The fool is the one who will not hear
reproof. The fool is the one who will not submit to authority. The fool
is the one who mocks at the ways of God. The fool lacks wisdom (fear
of the Lord). “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God’ ”
(Psalm 14:1). The fool says, “I refuse to acknowledge God; there is no
God to be concerned with; my only concern is myself and my
agenda.”
The fool’s life is run by his desires and fears. This is what you
hear from your young children. The most common phrases in the
vocabulary of a 3-year-old are, “I want … ” or “I don’t want … ” The
fool lives out of the immediacy of his lusts, cravings, expectations,
hopes, and fears.
It is a question of authority. Will the child live under the authority
of God and therefore the authority of his parents, or under his own
authority—driven by his wants and passions?
This is the natural state of your children. It may be subtly hidden
beneath a tuft of rumpled hair. It may be imperceptible in the smile of
a baby. In their natural state, however, your children have hearts of
folly. Therefore, they resist correction. They protest against your
attempts to rule them. Watch a baby struggle against a diaper change
or wearing a hat in the winter. Even this baby who cannot articulate or
even conceptualize what he is doing shows a determination not to be

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ruled from without. This foolishness is bound up within his heart.
Allowed to take root and grow for fourteen or fifteen years, it will
produce a rebellious teenager who will not allow anyone to rule him.
God has ordained the rod of discipline for this condition. The
spanking process (undertaken in a biblical manner set forth in chapter
15) drives foolishness from the heart of a child. Confrontation, with
the immediate and undeniably tactile sensation of a spanking, renders
an implacable child sweet. I have seen this principle hold true
countless times. The young child who is refusing to be under
authority is in a place of grave danger.
The rod is given for this extremity. “Punish him [a child] with the
rod and save his soul from death” (Proverbs 23:14). Your children’s
souls are in danger of death—spiritual death. Your task is to rescue
your children from death. Faithful and timely use of the rod is the
means of rescue.
This places the rod in its proper setting. Use of the rod is not a
matter of an angry parent venting his wrath upon a small, helpless
child. The use of the rod signifies a faithful parent recognizing his
child’s dangerous state and employing a God-given remedy. The issue
is not a parental insistence on being obeyed. The issue is the child’s
need to be rescued from death—the death that results from rebellion
left unchallenged in the heart.