Biblical Child Discipline in an Age of Therapeutic Goo #6

Child Discipline in Community

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. And one of the things we should conclude from this is that there is a very 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 should 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 informal 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 dispute 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. The Lord said that 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, and 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. We tend to wonder why the father was not arrested and charged.

A Feminist Ethos

Because a feminist ethos has captured our culture—including even the thinking of many conservative 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 or societal 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 a subculture does not have the same authority that a culture has. And other than a possible sub-cultural support, 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 could 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 else, 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 pry into whether they have ever had suicidal thoughts. Hospitals will call CPS if you took your kid to the ER after he fell off his bike. Security cameras will be used to determine whether you ever spanked your child in the car in the grocery store parking lot.

Most Needed

There are some families that are going to be a mess no matter what kind of culture they are in. There are a handful of families that are going to be strong and vibrant even if they have no outside support. In the kindness of God, they do have the requisite moral authority, and the necessary gifts.

But there are many families that could function well if they had outside support. They are not going to get that support from the broader culture. Forget about it.

An analogy could be the failed government school system. There are kids in there who can teach themselves phonics, and who can acquire an education for themselves if they are simply in the proximity of books. But average kids require a functional school system, and when they don’t have one, it destroys them. It is the same kind of thing here. You are the congregation of Christ, and when you are bringing up your kids, you should not be attempting it in isolation. You need one another because you need a broader web of shared assumptions. Your kids should not be allowed to conclude that these so-called “biblical standards” are just some personal quirks that mom has.  

This is also connected to the importance of entertainment standards. Too many Christian parents tend to think of the problematic areas of entertainment as being the violence or the sexual stuff. This can obviously be a problem, but the deeper problem is the insinuation of alien worldview assumptions, many of which Christian parents wouldn’t even notice. Like the valorization of being a feisty girl boss, to take just one example.    

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 troubled 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 of it.

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 your 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 therefore 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.