Christ Church

Child Discipline in Community (Biblical Child Discipline in an Age of Therapeutic Goo #6)


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INTRODUCTION

When we baptize a child, one of the things we do is ask the congregation to take a vow together with the parents of the child. “Do you as a congregation undertake the responsibility of assisting these parents in the Christian nurture of this child? If so, then signify by saying amen.” There is a very real sense in which we are all in this together. While each of us should make sure we are carrying our own load (Gal. 6:5), at the same time we should also be careful to carry one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), thus fulfilling the law of Christ. One of the things we should conclude from this is that there is a strong social component to child rearing.  

THE TEXT

“And the Lord said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again. And Miriam was shut out from the camp seven days: and the people journeyed not till Miriam was brought in again” (Numbers 12:14–15). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

I grant at the outset that this is an odd stand-alone text to use for a sermon, but bear with me—the point will become apparent shortly. The story begins at the top of the chapter, where the introduction of a Cushite woman as a wife to Moses destabilized the leadership structure of Israel. We don’t know very much about her from Scripture, but according to Josephus, this was a woman who had been married to Moses back in the days of Egypt. She had been the queen of a city named Saba that Moses, an Egyptian prince and general, was besieging. She fell in love with him from the city wall, and offered to surrender the city if Moses would marry her, which he did. She was a Cushite, an Ethiopian, which meant she was black. But the only thing Scripture says about it is that Moses had married this woman, and it resulted in Miriam and Aaron challenging Moses’ leadership position. The Lord came down to adjudicate the challenge and as a consequence struck Miriam with leprosy. She hadn’t liked the black wife, so God gave her a little bit of extra whiteness. Aaron repented for the two of them and asked for mercy. Moses pleaded with the Lord for his brother and sister and our text contains His response.

If a father had but spit in his daughter’s face, she would be isolated for seven days. Miriam should at least bear that level of punishment (v. 14). And so that is what happened. Miriam was set apart for seven days, and Israel did not move until her confinement was completed (v. 15).  

SOCIETAL REINFORCEMENT

To get one thing out of the way immediately, we can all acknowledge that a father spitting in his daughter’s face is not something we would identify with great moments in child rearing. This is obviously a family with some serious dysfunction going on, and nobody here should want to be that dad. So don’t be that dad. Not ever.

The thing that is interesting, however, is that even in such a grim scenario, all the social pressure was applied to the daughter, not to the father. She was the one who was isolated from the camp for seven days, not the father. This default assumption seems almost inconceivable to us. 

A FEMINIST ETHOS

Because a feminist ethos has captured our culture—including even the thinking of many Christians—the end result has been an abandonment of society’s obligation to back up the authority of husbands, in the first instance, fathers in the second, and parents in the third. This means that husbands and fathers are on their own, and so they need to pull it off with moral authority, and not with any kind of recognized legal authority. Husbands and fathers have no back up anymore. 

This situation can be ameliorated somewhat when Christian families find a solid church that provides the kind of support a subculture can provide. But other than that, familial authority has no backing. And even when the church is solid, an apostatizing family member can just leave the church, and the church has no back up. This is very different from how it used to be. Consider what how the Westminster Confession describes about lawful divorce in cases of desertion—“such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church, or civil magistrate” (WCF 24.6). There used to be a time when a spouse deserted, and the sheriff would just fetch them back.  

The problem is that many Christian husbands and fathers really need that kind of external support. Once a strong-willed child discovers that dad is no match for him, and that no reinforcements are coming from anywhere, he can assume his dictatorship of the home. 

And not only does our outside society not support godly parents who are seeking to bring their children up properly in the Lord, they are overtly hostile to the idea. Pediatricians will seek to speak to your child alone so they can ask if they have had suicidal thoughts. Hospitals will call CPS if you took your kids to the ER when he fell off his bike. Security cameras will be used to determine whether you spanked your child in the car in the grocery store parking lot.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

If Christian parents are cast upon their moral authority alone, then one of the things they need to do is shore up their moral authority. We live in trouble times. Dedicate yourself to Christ anew. Remove all idols from your home—money, entertainment, athletics, whatever. Throw yourself into the Scriptures. Worship God faithfully with your family.

And our congregation, as a Christian community, should be making it a point to establish a strong network of shared biblical assumptions about marriage, family, education, and child rearing. We cannot supply all the support needed, but we can supply some.

And last, do not leave Christ out of the question. Jesu, defend us. This is part of the challenge of bringing the gospel of Christ to an unbelieving culture. They are going to assume that children are owned by the state, but you know better. Your children have the image of God on them, and so they may not be rendered to Caesar. “To God the things that are God’s.” And on top of that, they also have the mark of Christ on them, the water of baptism. The task of Christian parenting is the task of realizing that biblical child rearing is a custody battle between Christ and the state. 

So look to Him. Lean on Him. Trust in Him. He is the Christ, after all. 

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Compassion and Its Counterfeits

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THE TEXT

12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:12-14)

6 “If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which neither you nor your fathers have known, 7 some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, 8 you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. 9 But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. (Deuteronomy 13:6-9)

INTRODUCTION

These two passages display the complexity of the biblical witness on compassion. In the first, we are to clothe ourselves in compassion (literally: bowels of mercy), which leads us to bear with each other and forgive each other as love binds us all together. Elsewhere Paul “yearns for the Philippians with the affection of Christ” (Phil. 1:8). Affection and sympathy are bonding agents (Phil. 2:1), enabling us to be single-minded and in full accord. The Lord, who is compassionate and merciful, is our ultimate model for compassion, and he has given us the fathers and mothers as images of his compassion (Isa 49:15; 1 Kings 3; Psalm 103).

In the second, we are forbidden to show pity or compassion on those who would entice us to idolatry. Similar commands are given with respect to first degree murder and lying in court (Deuteronomy 7:16, 19:13, and 19:21). In such cases, God is adamant that “your eye shall not pity them.” And again, in doing so, we are to follow God as our model, who executes his judgment without pity or compassion (Jer. 13:14; Lam. 2:17; Ezek. 5:11; 7:4, 9; 8:18).

So how should we make sense of this?

DEFINING COMPASSION AND ITS VICES

The virtue of compassion (or sympathy) is habitual inclination to share the suffering and pain of the hurting which moves us to relieve their suffering and pursue their ultimate good. As Lewis writes, “Pity is meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery.” The biblical imperative is to weep with those who weep, to clothe ourselves with “bowels of mercy,” to relieve suffering because, like Christ, we are “moved with compassion.”

Virtues go wrong through defect or excess; a defect of compassion is apathy, a callous refusal to identify with and share the pain and suffering of others. On the other hand, (untethered) empathy is an excess of compassion, when our identification and sharing of the emotions of others overwhelms our minds and sweeps us off our feet. Empathy loses sight of the ultimate good, both for ourselves and for the hurting.

And this is precisely our challenge. As Chesterton put it, “The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

THE PASSION OF PITY

We live in a sentimental age, one that is drowning in a sea of feelings. And thus we are more susceptible to the manipulation of empathy. C.S. Lewis helps us to see ways that empathy or pity goes wrong. In The Great Divorce, Lewis describes the problems with the Passion of Pity. In the final interaction between Sarah Smith and her husband Frank, Sarah describes Frank’s besetting sin, the sin that he must turn away from if he is to be saved.

[Stop] using pity, other people’s pity, in the wrong way. We have all done it a bit on earth, you know. Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.

You see, I know now. Even as a child you did it. Instead of saying you were sorry, you went and sulked in the attic . . . because you knew that sooner or later one of your sisters would say, “I can’t bear to think of him sitting up there alone, crying.” You used their pity to blackmail them, and they gave in in the end. And afterwards, when we were married . . . oh, it doesn’t matter, if only you will stop it. (131–132)

The passion of pity (or the sin of empathy) makes us vulnerable to emotional blackmail.

Emotional blackmail happens when a person equates his or her emotional pain with another person’s failure to love. They aren’t the same. A person may love well and the beloved still feel hurt. They may then use their felt pain to blackmail the lover into admitting guilt he or she does not have. Emotional blackmail says, “If I feel hurt by you, you are guilty.” There is no defense. The hurt person has become God. His emotion has become judge and jury. Truth does not matter. All that matters is the sovereign suffering of the aggrieved. (Piper)

Empathy, because it is myopic, can lead to great cruelty. “Even a good emotion, pity, if not controlled by charity and justice, leads through anger to cruelty. Most atrocities are stimulated by accounts of the enemy’s atrocities; and pity for the oppressed classes, when separated from the moral law as a whole, leads by a very natural process to the unremitting brutalities of a reign of terror” (Lewis). 

THE ANTIDOTE

So how should we live? First, we must repent of the Sulks. We must refuse to wield our afflictions (especially our minor afflictions) as tools of manipulation. It’s easy to magnify our inconveniences in order to elicit sympathy from those who love us, to make martyrs out of ourselves and send our loved ones on a guilt trip. The Sulks are not only a danger for children.

Second, we must refuse to wield the suffering of others in the same manner. Compassion is a great good, a spur to joy to help those who are suffering. But the line between spurring joy to help misery and using the misery of others to steer the merciful is not always easy to see. In their empathetic zeal, advocates can often overthrow other virtues, such as honesty and justice, in their zeal to help the hurting.

Third, we must be aware of the link between feminism and toxic empathy. By God’s design, women are the more empathetic sex. It’s why women are the glue that holds communities together. Crucially, however, what is a blessing in one place is a curse in another. The same impulse that leads a woman to move toward the hurting with comfort becomes a major liability when it comes to guarding the doctrine and worship of the church. Like in Deuteronomy, there are times–usually involving grave error or gross sin–when God forbids empathy and pity. It’s one reason why the empathetic sex is ill-suited to the ministerial office.

Fourth, refuse to concede what cannot be conceded. Don’t embrace the lie. Biblical compassion reserves the right not to blaspheme. This is especially true in an age of gay “weddings” and other celebrations of wickedness. Be willing to be labeled “heartless” as you seek the ultimate good of other people by refusing to join them in the Lie (even under pressure from other soft-hearted Christians). 

Finally, we must labor to be faithfully compassionate, weeping with those who weep, considering both their immediate feelings and their ultimate good. In compassion, we meet people in suffering and say, “This is hard. I know you feel that way. I’m with you in this, and I have hope.”

At the same time, we refuse to be totally immersed in the feelings of another. We refuse to allow other people to steer our emotional vehicles. We resist attempts to subordinate truth to the feelings and sensitivities of the most reactive and immature members of a community. We move deliberately deliberately and intentionally into the pain of others while clinging to Jesus for dear life. 

As Christians, we must have deep feeling for the hurting, the broken, and the suffering. We are, after all, called to clothe ourselves with “bowels of mercies.” But our feelings, and our sharing in the feelings of others, must be tethered to Truth, to Reality, to Christ. God help us. 

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