Spare the Rod

I've been thinking about the question of how we decide what is right and wrong in our daily lives, with and without god. I think a good example that I'm familiar with is the child smacking debate. In recent years we have seen changes in the law in the UK and these were preceded by much debate on the home education lists and groups. You can now only hit a child as long as you do not leave a mark where as before the change it was ok to leave bruises or wounds provided a judge felt that the force you had used was 'reasonable'. The (often repeated) argument would go something like this...

Fundamentalist Christians 'The bible clearly states 'spare the rod and spoil the child', children must be physically disciplined so they grow up godly and good and obedient.'

Moderate Christians 'Spare the rod does not mean hitting children, Jesus would never hit a child, the rod refers to a stick used by shepherds to guide their sheep, it means you must guide your children not hit them, it means exactly the opposite to what you say.'

Atheists and/or Pagans 'Hitting children is just revolting and is child abuse. Adults are protected by law from being hit so children should be too'.

I'm not sure where Muslim parents stand on the issue or those of other faiths, I know at least one Muslim parent who thinks hitting children is wrong but I don't know if there is a similar argument in Islam about what the Koran says on the subject.

The argument once developed along these lines...

Someone against smacking 'There are much better ways to discipline children, reasoning with them, sanctions, being grounded, time out etc'

Fundamentalist Christian, 'those ways are humiliating and destroy your argument that children should have the same protections as adults, we don't do any of those things to adults do we?'

Someone else 'errr, yes, of course we do. Adult bad behaviour sanctions include fines (taking pocket money away), prison (grounded), losing a job/relationship etc (consequences of actions) etc'

The fundamentalist would then go on to argue that it is religious discrimination that he cannot hit his child with a 'rod' (yes you can actually buy ones that god approves of for hitting your children - special feature, they wont hurt the parents hand while inflicting pain on the errant child) as the bible clearly tells him he must.

Someone will then post the link to stop the rod where moderate Christians campaign for the end to the revolting practice of using the bible as an excuse for beating children.

Personally, I am against hitting children for the simple reason that children learn by example. I do not want my children to learn that if someone doesn't do as they ask they should hit them until they do - that's called bullying. I disagree that hitting children 'doesn't work anyway'. I think that probably if my children were afraid of me they wouldn't do some of the things they have done. When they were much younger, one of mine was quite rude to me in front of a friend who had grown up in a large family in the Bahamas. After I had told him not to speak to me in that way as it was rude and he'd apologised, she said to him 'If I had talked to my father in that way, he would have sent me down the garden to cut a switch from the bush, then when I bought it back to him he would have hit me with it until my legs were bleeding'. Needless to say, they were all obedient children, but were now scattered throughout the world, having very little to do with their father who they all agreed was a 'right bastard'.

My point is that I am not parenting children in order for them to be obedient, or for parenting to be made as easy as possible. For me the goal is for them to reach their potential as thinking, independent, capable human beings who can make a positive contribution to society and have a fulfilled life. And quite often I would very much like to give them a clip round the ear, just as quite often I would like to ram my car into the person who just pulled out in front of me. I don't think either option is morally justifiable.

So, the question of how we decide what is right or wrong. It seems pretty clear to me in these online 'debates' about this and many other topics, that everyone is deciding for his or her self what is right or wrong whether influenced by a holy book or not. If you want to hit your child, you can find justification in the bible. If you think hitting children is wrong you can find that the bible agrees with you. If you do not use the bible to decide your moral code, you must think the issue through and decide from experience, reading about child psychology and following your parental instincts (or deciding not to). In the end, the decision is a personal one and god is simply used to back up the decision you personally make.

There are questions that arise from this. Without the bible, I would conjecture that those against smacking would still be against smacking, but what of those who use the bible to justify their violence towards children? What justification would they find for their actions without religion? Could it be that they would come to a different conclusion based on compassion and the human instinct to protect our young?

I think inevitably this leads me to put the same question about suicide bombers, stoners, death penalty fans and oppressors of women and children in the name of religion. Those who can find it in their interpretation of their holy book to condemn all these things would surely still condemn them without the holy book because they are decent human beings. But could it be that all those doing terrible things are just terrible people anyway or does religion make decent people do terrible things?

Incidentally, I've not yet met an atheist who believes hitting children is morally justifiable. They probably do exist, but maybe they just don't feel the need to join in the argument.