Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. In this episode, I want to highlight an article which I found very powerful in regard to disciplining and raising children. The article will be linked in the show notes. If you haven't already checked out the two episodes that I did on Spanking in the Means and Ends season, you should maybe go and listen to those first because we discussed how I started to take a look at what discipline should look like if I adhere to nonviolence. And so we took a look at what my thoughts were towards pro spanking, and then a case, we made a case for not spanking.

And this is sort of a continuation of that. This is an article which discusses spanking, discipline more in general, and how as individuals who are committed to non violence, what that means for our discipline. I don't know that this author was a Christian, but as Christian parents, and our commitment is not to non violence, our commitment is to Jesus. That being said, Jesus is a model for us in how we are supposed to act and love. And therefore, if Jesus would be against violence, then that's going to be important for us to understand.

And when we talk about violence in our spanking episodes, we discussed what violence actually means. And there are lots of different interpretations in the nonviolent community. One of the things I like about the interpretation of violence in the nonviolent community is that violence tends to have a broader range of meaning in many ways than it does in people who are pro violence in some ways. So for example, in the nonviolent community, there's a lot of weight placed on emotional violence or verbal violence. We can do violence in other ways.

We could do economic violence to somebody. So for instance, sanctions or blockades on a country could be violence because we could cause people to be harmed or ultimately to die through starvation through those actions. So you don't get off the hook for being non violent if you just refuse to hit somebody. There are lots and lots of ways to do violence, and I think that gets at the heart of what Jesus talks about when He says that you've murdered somebody even if you've been angry at them, you've hated them. So yes, our commitment is to Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ has a certain ethic.

The way that He lived His life was very particular, and we believe that that encompasses nonviolence. Now how you define violence will determine some specific actions, but nevertheless, this article is going to get at some very insightful things I believe in regard to disciplining children. The article starts off with a very good question: Why are we violent but not illiterate? One answer that I gave was that it's because we're taught to read. Right?

We're taught to read. We're not taught to be non violent. I mean, not really. All humans are born with the willingness and desire to do violence to others and we believe in, well, in reformed circles, total depravity, but all of us, all Christians believe that humanity is fallen. We are sinners.

Violence then is a natural outpouring of who we are when we do it. And we all do violence in some form or another at some points in our lives. We want to domineer and control others. But at the same time, while violence is natural, so is being illiterate. All of us are born with an inability to read and not even an ability to speak either, right?

But we can't read. However, most of us are taught to read throughout our lifetime. In fact, great care is taken to read us many books and to spend a lot of time forming our ability to read, not only through teaching us, but also through influence, through reading having parents read books to children is strongly emphasized in our culture. Of course, we are taught to control our violence to a certain extent, but most of us are only taught this in degrees. And some parents might be okay with fighting back against a bully or standing up for oneself.

Some parents might teach others to avoid physical violence while not verbal violence. Many parents may not really demonstrate non violence to their children, and a lot of homes are going to have activities or especially media that has violence in it. We don't do a great job of teaching or demonstrating non violence to our children. If we bring anger into the picture as a form of violence, as a form of murder, I mean, it just goes downhill from there. And I don't think that's really straining at gnats there because I was reading through one of the Catechisms the other day, probably the Westminster, I don't remember.

But the Catechism equated many different sins with violence like hatred and covetousness were two sins in particular that were equated with violence. And I was like, Oh, that's really interesting. I mean, it is, you covet somebody's property and before you know it, you're harming them to get it, right? Hatred, of course, that one's kind of obvious. But there are clear, clear connections in some of the catechisms to violence alongside of other sins because objectifying other people or being materialistic and wanting things ends up leading to violence.

But a lot of times we're not really taught that connection, and we're not taught to think of some of these domineering attitudes as violence. We are only taught nonviolence in degrees. Beyond that, we are often only taught not to be negatively violent. We are not taught how to be positively nonviolent. Don't hit your brother is different than let's make things right with your brother, or how could you prevent your brother from feeling that way so that he would want to hit you?

We are taught to and we teach the suppression and avoidance of violence, not the pursuit of Shalom, peace and reconciliation. And that's what this article ahead of us really talks about, and I'll read an extended quote right here. Teaching kids to be not violent may achieve some level of peace, but it actually perpetuates violence. Confused? The main way most of us teach children to be not violent is through the use of punishment or the threat of punishment, which means the natural violent reaction is suppressed by the fear of punishment.

If there's little chance of being caught, the fear of punishment is taken away and a child is more likely to use violence. And this goes right back into the series that we did on means and ends. Means are concomitant with their ends. If non violence and peace is the end, then they must also be present in the means. The ends are the means in the process of becoming.

This article goes on to make the following statement, One of the great advantages of non violent discipline in the home, school, or workplace is the distinction it makes between punishment and consequences, allowing restorative action to be taken instead of imposing punishment. This is not just spin because taking restorative action and imposing a punishment are mutually exclusive opposites. All of us are capable of thinking in both ways because most of us take restorative action depending on the circumstances of the situation, but we cannot think in both ways at the same time, end quote. I have found this to be very true. I can choose to spank my kid, which might make me feel good and then get a consequence, but it doesn't of itself really teach anything.

On the other hand, if my child says something mean to a sibling, I might take away some privileges which will be restored upon the child making say five compliments to the offended sibling. Obviously, we could talk about issues of the offender just going through the motions of making up five nice things to say and not really meaning it, yeah. That's possible. But we make our kids say please and thank you all the time. All disciplines, including spiritual disciplines, often require that we practice the forms before we ever begin to desire the real deal or to engage meaningfully.

And surely doing something which aims towards restoration and involves the declaring of kind words is more formative than spanking. The child becomes not just the recipient of some negative punishment, but they become an actor in restoring Shalom, an actor of positive justice. And in that way, the means towards the ends are planted. The ends are planted within the means that we're using. Not only does this make sense to me logically, but it makes sense to me as a parent who has begun using this and as a former teacher.

Schools are starting to incorporate programs like PBIS, if you've ever heard of it, maybe at your school, which are positive programs rather than punitive. And data shows that these programs are having some pretty big successes in some difficult schools. And that's because, like we talked about the means and the ends, the ends look like the means developed and matured with time. So that's a short episode here today, but I think it was a really powerful one. It was very convicting to me in terms of recognizing my anger and the ways that I do violence that aren't physical.

And it is also convicting as a parent when so many times my discipline isn't really formative, but it's summative. It's something where I punish a kid just so they have a consequence rather than try to form them and shape them. So I thought this would be a good short article that that you guys could use as well. As Christ seeks the restoration of all things, it seems like we should desire the same thing and attempt to achieve it using the means that He gave to us and the example that He gave to us. Let's make sure that we are using means which align themselves with the ultimate goal: to be like Christ.

That's all for now, so peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.