Spanking Is Illegal in My Country — Now What?
00:00:00.000 | Here's a question from an Ask Pastor John podcast listener in Norway who writes in,
00:00:09.080 | "Hello Pastor John, thank you for all that you have done for the kingdom and for this
00:00:12.280 | podcast.
00:00:13.280 | I have a question regarding child rearing.
00:00:15.800 | You have formerly said that you would go to jail over the issue of spanking.
00:00:19.400 | I agree with you that spanking is biblical, but in my home country, Norway, as well as
00:00:24.520 | in many other countries, spanking is illegal.
00:00:27.860 | The consequences would then not only be that one may have to go to jail, but that the government
00:00:32.800 | would take your children.
00:00:34.860 | This has now happened in the famous Boudinario case, where a couple in Norway lost their
00:00:39.660 | children after spanking them.
00:00:41.540 | In cases such as these, one may never get one's children back again because the government
00:00:46.320 | may not see you as a suitable parent because you spanked your children.
00:00:51.180 | What would you do as a Christian parent in Norway?
00:00:54.360 | Wouldn't it be better to not spank your children and be sure that your children will
00:00:57.740 | never be taken away from you?
00:00:59.460 | This is a big issue with huge consequences for us in Norway."
00:01:03.580 | Well, that's for sure.
00:01:05.380 | This is an important thing and has great consequence.
00:01:09.060 | And Norway is not the only country.
00:01:11.180 | You can go online and see a graph of the countries in Europe and around the world where it's
00:01:16.420 | illegal to spank, and that is only increasing.
00:01:21.900 | I read about the Boudinario case, or however it's pronounced in Norwegian.
00:01:28.060 | I'm sorry if I'm butchering it.
00:01:30.900 | I read about that case some time ago and came away from it.
00:01:37.660 | The government took away five children from this family with, in my judgment, it seemed
00:01:44.140 | no evidence of child abuse.
00:01:48.340 | I came away from that story feeling the way Jesus did in Mark 3, 5, where it says, "He
00:01:56.100 | looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart."
00:02:02.940 | Anger and grief, anger and grief, the mingling of those two emotions.
00:02:06.740 | You can't help but feel in this kind of situation.
00:02:10.260 | All five children seized by the Norwegian government, and as far as I can tell, no evidence
00:02:16.020 | of child abuse.
00:02:17.020 | It's an ideological difference about the best way to raise your kids.
00:02:22.660 | And yes, I have said that I would go to jail over this.
00:02:26.940 | In other words, if they wanted to put me in prison because I believe that the best way
00:02:31.860 | to love my children was to spank them, sometimes when they were disobedient, I wouldn't sacrifice
00:02:40.120 | that conviction or that behavior to stay out of jail.
00:02:46.620 | But of course, that kind of protest and threat is of no use when the person about to be put
00:02:53.780 | in jail is not yourself but your children.
00:02:56.900 | And yes, I know they're not being put in jail, but the point is it's similar.
00:03:03.300 | They're being legally kidnapped from the family and put in places they don't want to be.
00:03:11.740 | And so the willingness of the parents to go to jail is not the issue anymore.
00:03:17.220 | So probably when I said that, I wasn't thinking as realistically as is proving to be the case.
00:03:24.300 | So the question for our friend in Norway, and other countries I'm sure, should we risk
00:03:29.780 | losing our children to the high-handed tactics of the state, or should we relent in spanking
00:03:37.780 | our children?
00:03:39.460 | And of course, there are many related questions that Christians in Norway and other countries
00:03:45.260 | are facing, like what does a pastor preach?
00:03:49.460 | I don't know what the legal ramifications are if he preaches true biblical teaching.
00:03:54.740 | Does he tell the people what the Bible says and encourage them to obey, or does he just
00:03:59.640 | ignore parts of the Bible, or does he show them how to compromise?
00:04:05.300 | How do parents teach their children the scriptures?
00:04:08.740 | Do they skip those parts of the Bible in telling their children how to raise their children?
00:04:13.740 | And if they teach their children, what will they say if the children say, "Well, why don't
00:04:18.780 | you spank us since the Bible says you should?"
00:04:21.620 | Now, of course, the issues are far deeper than simply the nature of parental discipline.
00:04:30.180 | There is a view of human nature at work here that will have repercussions everywhere.
00:04:36.980 | There is a view of how to restrain bad behavior and get good behavior from children that the
00:04:43.340 | state evidently thinks is less psychologically damaging than simple, measured, loving spanking.
00:04:53.360 | And of course, the issue here is not merely how kids behave in later life.
00:04:59.700 | Are they well-adjusted or maladjusted?
00:05:03.060 | That's not the main issue, but rather how they view the whole world, especially themselves
00:05:12.220 | and God.
00:05:14.100 | That's the great issue, which of course the Norwegian government does not take into account,
00:05:19.020 | but which is the most important issue in the world.
00:05:22.780 | God himself, according to Hebrews 12, uses corporal punishment, and treating kids differently
00:05:31.460 | will not serve well to help them know God and love God and believe in the God of Hebrews
00:05:38.540 | 12 and his holiness and his mercy.
00:05:42.300 | Of course, governments don't take into account these great issues.
00:05:46.140 | They're only thinking at a very narrow, natural, historical, societal level, not a cosmic level,
00:05:54.100 | not an eternal level that includes heaven and hell and salvation and obedience to God
00:05:59.780 | and eternal destinies and the exaltation of the glory of God.
00:06:03.540 | None of that matters to governments, but it should matter infinitely to Christian parents.
00:06:10.660 | So if I lived in Norway, what would I do?
00:06:13.460 | Well, I know I would pray earnestly for wisdom.
00:06:17.380 | I would not assume that this is a simple either/or situation.
00:06:24.020 | God is a God of wonders.
00:06:26.060 | God's a God of miracles.
00:06:28.260 | He has ways out of dilemmas that seem hopeless.
00:06:34.800 | We can't think of any alternatives, but he can.
00:06:37.240 | He splits the Red Sea.
00:06:38.980 | That was an alternative nobody thought of.
00:06:41.380 | He stopped the sun in the sky.
00:06:43.740 | That was an alternative nobody thought of.
00:06:45.860 | He raises the dead.
00:06:47.100 | He walks on water.
00:06:48.980 | All things are possible with God.
00:06:50.780 | So I would pray earnestly that God would show me a way to be obedient to God and keep, keep,
00:06:57.980 | keep my children.
00:07:00.060 | And if I really had to choose between spanking my children and losing them to the state,
00:07:05.780 | and I knew it was a necessary choice, of course, I would choose keeping my children over spanking
00:07:13.060 | them.
00:07:14.060 | That's the answer he was looking for, probably.
00:07:16.580 | This is not choosing disobedience over obedience, because it would be disobedient to surrender
00:07:25.820 | your children to the state.
00:07:27.540 | One thing is crystal clear in the Bible is that God holds parents accountable for the
00:07:32.860 | raising of their children, not the state, which leads to one other consideration, and
00:07:40.180 | that is leaving a country where you can't exercise your faith legally.
00:07:47.060 | America was founded by people who did that.
00:07:50.460 | They left their homelands so that they could exercise their faith in the way that they
00:07:56.540 | thought they should, and they were coming to an absolute wilderness, and half of them
00:08:02.300 | died in the process, which shows how important it was.
00:08:06.700 | And I have had people come to my church here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, from Europe,
00:08:14.660 | because they wanted to homeschool their children and weren't allowed to in the country they
00:08:19.420 | came from.
00:08:20.820 | So I know it's happening today.
00:08:22.800 | So I will pray, I will pray for my brothers and sisters in lands like Norway, where increasingly
00:08:30.300 | unjust and evil laws put the Christian between two terrible choices.
00:08:38.180 | And we're all moving toward that situation, and we will need great courage and great wisdom.
00:08:45.180 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:48.220 | These international questions are so very helpful.
00:08:50.540 | Please keep them coming in to us.
00:08:52.100 | Email us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:08:56.340 | And for parents who may not yet be convinced of spanking and what scripture teaches, I
00:09:00.220 | did an interview with Ted Tripp, the author of Shepherding a Child's Heart, the famous
00:09:04.900 | book.
00:09:05.900 | You can see episodes number 442 and 443 in the podcast archive.
00:09:10.580 | You can find those episodes and nearly 900 others at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:09:17.740 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:09:19.060 | Thanks for making the Ask Pastor John podcast a part of your daily routine.
00:09:22.580 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:09:23.180 | [END]
00:09:23.680 | "The Godfather" is a production of the Center for God's Reconciliation.
00:09:24.680 | The podcast is available as a podcast on iTunes, Apple Music, and Google Play.
00:09:24.680 | All rights reserved.
00:09:25.680 | Thank you for listening.
00:09:25.680 | [MUSIC]