"He who spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes" (Proverbs 13:24) and "Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell." (Proverbs 23:13-14)
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.(Proverbs 22:6)
"Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)
We must get the "mother" energy back into our concept of The Almighty in order to break the bondage of the patriarchal model for "raising a child in the way he should go." Our wrath should be reserved for what harms the vulnerable and not for what inconveniences or displeases the strong. It may not be that the Judeo-Christian scribes were wrong in the stories of what happened, but wrong in their interpretations of the events.
Perhaps it wasn't God who told Abraham to sacrifice his son, but Abraham's understanding of his god as being a god with a lust for blood sacrifice. Perhaps the "angel" who stayed Abraham's hand was his wife who pointed out the error of his interpretation of the voice of their shared Spirit.
Are there any blessings from bullying and beating of those over whom one holds the power of life and death? The reading of what Christians refer to as the Old Testament would have us believe that the Creator of Life is unable to control his children without the threat of death. How is mortal man to find his strength in the powers of persuasion that are made possible by bonding, when he is encouraged to react with rage to all displeases him?
I honestly believe that my father was attempting to follow the example of what he saw as God the Father in not "sparing the rod." Wrath was a part of his sensibility of how one is to train up children in the way they should go. He didn't kill any of us, but he certainly drew blood on more than one occasion. As a chivalrous man, he didn't believe in hitting his wife, and he did believe in protecting her, even from her own "beastly" children.
I hurt for many men raised in the traditional male manner, who they have been taught no nurturing skills, and resent any pain inflicted on their wives, even by their own children. I also grieve for the love lost to them and their children.
The expectation of my mother from all in our family was to, "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect." All mistakes were "corrected" by corporal punishment perhaps because, in my mother's mind, pain was the way to perfection. This seemed to be a result of the huge amount of emphasis put on the belief that God demanded that His Only Son suffer and die in order to make up for the sins of our ancestors which were passed down to us.
I prefer to believe that a greater gift than his suffering and death on his last day was Jesus' ability, joyfully and without sin, to live on earth, following the stringent Jewish law. Even though I'm not from the "show me" state of Missouri, I learn better by following examples. This is an example that I can attempt to follow.
We do not have a clear scriptural example of how a monogamous married couple is to comport themselves, nor does the Bible have a great deal of information on how we are to behave toward our spirited children. I have to believe that there must have been some couples' and women's accounts of dealing with family life in a moral manner. Why do we include none of these in what we accept as sacred scripture? (Paul was not married and only advocated marriage as a substitute for the fires of Satan's domain.)“I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn” (1Corinthians 7:8,9).
I'm hoping to hear more about how families of faith raise their children "in the way they should go" and comport themselves as couples. This would be sacred scripture to me.
