I certainly donвЂ™t want to be another polemical voice in the already overly opinionated milieu of Christian child-rearing. IвЂ™ve never written about this before and donвЂ™t plan to do it again. Yet this post isnвЂ™t part of my crusade to get you to spank your children. At one point, Chandler momentarily breaks from his story to say something like, вЂњI know you donвЂ™t spank your kids, but we do.вЂќ Apparently, IвЂ™m not the only one hanging onto a method of discipline thatвЂ™s going out of style-or one that has already long gone out of style. While he tells a story of disciplining his own children, you can almost feel how the congregation seems both humored and uncomfortable. The other thing that got me thinking about it was a humorous and somewhat odd sermon intro by pastor Matt Chandler (вЂњ That Which SatisfiesвЂќ on John 6:22вЂ“71, preached March 3, 2019). This trend has proved true for most of the last dozen engaged couples who have sat in our living room to talk about raising children (and budgeting and intimacy and for richer and for poorer). This year IвЂ™m officiating the weddings of five young couples, and during premarital counseling when we discuss the disciplining of children, itвЂ™s fair to say that most, if not all, seem moderately or strongly opposed to it. But IвЂ™ve especially been thinking about it over the last few weeks.

My wife and I have six children, so weвЂ™ve been thinking about this for a long time. I have never beat my children, and we have used many other methods of discipline in addition to spanking. And IвЂ™m going to assume that the reader knows when I say spank, I donвЂ™t mean itвЂ™s the only way to discipline or even the best in every circumstance. IвЂ™m just going to assume that the reader knows that when I say spank, I donвЂ™t mean beat.

IвЂ™ll say at the start of this that my wife and I spank our children.Д«ut in this post IвЂ™m not going to begin with 10 minutes of throat clearing-you know, all that introductory stuff to make sure we are all starting on the same page.

Wespank real punishment of children