Recently the Oklahoma State House of Representatives voted down a bill to disallow corporal punishment for special needs students. The debate pitted legislation against the Bible. I wrote this for our church. I am reposting it here after learning that the House make take the bill up again tomorrow for a redo. Here is hoping that our State Representatives take the opportunity to get it right by not pitting God revealed in Jesus against the least of these.
Do you have a Text Group? When it came time for our Family Vacation, someone created a Text Group for our gang. We notify of our locations, lunch preferences, and needed stops on our way to our destination. When our niece, Amanda, recently had her baby, she used the group to update us and send photos.
One of the Text Groups I am in includes a group of friends who are pastors, former pastors, and church staff members. One of the group members living in another state heard some news out of Oklahoma and shared it with the group:
So, OK didn’t pass a bill to disallow corporeal punishment on disabled kids?
Maybe you did not know that Oklahoma is one of 19 states that still allow corporal punishment in schools. Before you recall the days when teachers or coaches handed out licks in class as if to say, kids are too soft today; I remember well Mr. Shinn’s paddle in woodshop class and Coach Mack’s plastic bat in gym class. Just because it was done to you is not a suitable justification for doing it at all.
I had to look up the story that spurred the text my friend had texted our group.
Shocked.
After reading what I could find and hearing clips of the House debate, I felt like the bill’s author. He believed the bill was to have been an easy measure to pass. It was not. He was embarrassed by the outcome. I was embarrassed by my friend’s question.
What struck me was the clip of an opponent of the bill, a minister, reading the Bible during the session. He chose Proverbs 10:24,
Those who spare the rod hate their children,
but those who love them are diligent to discipline them.
Over time we have shortened the proverb,
Spare the rod, spoil the child.
Who thinks Solomon intended his saying for special needs students with Autism, Down’s Syndrome, or Cerebral Palsy?
Our reading from the Book of Psalms for this Sunday includes this,
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—
they comfort me.
You are familiar with Psalm 23. Human beings are likened to sheep in the Shepherd Psalm as it begins, The Lord is my shepherd. The Hebrew word for rod is the same in Proverbs 10:24 as it is in Psalm 23:4. Imagine paintings of Psalm 23 where the shepherd is paddling his sheep. How is it there are no such art pieces to hang on our walls?
A shepherd’s staff, those we have seen with a crook in one end, serve double duty. Sheep, once on their backs, cannot roll over and get up like your pet dog. Left there, upside down, they would eventually die. Traveling near precipices, sheep might fall, and so the shepherd’s staff would enable the shepherd to use the crook to help the sheep to its feet, even from a distance.
Sheep are not the brightest animal. The staff was also used to guide the sheep, not punish the sheep. Should they stray from the group on the way to green grass, the staff was used to guide the sheep to better pasture. No one is consoled by the presence of the Good Shepherd, which uses a specially designed wooden paddle with holes in it for a severe effect.
What do we do then when the same word in Psalm 23 is found in Proverbs 10? The key lay in the use of the rod. Sparing the rod that points a child in the right direction is not the same as a rod of punishment. Read Proverbs 10:24 with that in mind. If a parent fails to point the child in a better direction, surely the parent hates their child. Punishment is not required to interpret rod in Proverbs 10:24. In fact, Proverbs begins,
The learning about wisdom and instruction,
for understanding words of insight,
for gaining instruction in wise dealing,
righteousness, justice, equity;
to teach shrewdness to the simple,
knowledge and prudence to the young-
Let the wise also hear and gain learning.
We could read on and find the call for children to listen to instructions. To fail to instruct a child, to point them to better pasture, to spare the rod, is to hate the child. Reading Proverbs 10:24 against the backdrop of selecting your own switch is not what Solomon had in mind. Nor should we impose our default that makes paddling a child, especially a special needs child, a preference because it is simpler than helping them with life decisions, which is much harder to be sure.
I eschew hearing or reading on social media, “If your pastor says/does/believes/agrees/disagrees about x, you should leave.” But hearing a minister use a passage so grossly over-literal, not caring about the context, leaves me wanting to say the same thing, “Find another church.” If a pastor is so lazy with following Jesus that he or she prefers to understand rod in Proverbs 10:24 as paddling a child for punishment, then ignore them, all of them.
There I said it.
Do not miss what I am NOT saying. There are times when a form of punishment is necessary. With apologies to my daughters, taking time with a form of punishment that points our children to greener pastures, though harder, is better. It is worth the effort.
Postscript: Take the time to email or call your State Representative. Tell them you read the Bible too. Nowhere does Jesus endorse corporal punishment for special needs students.