Happy Friday everyone. We're back once more to close out the week with parenting expert Ted Tripp. He's been with us all week. And Dr. Tripp, yesterday you explained the importance of physical discipline in training young children and your early reluctance to embrace the practice as a young parent. Scripture's not silent here, of course, but many Christian parents simply say, "You know what?

I'm not going to do it. For whatever reason, we're not going to spank our kids." And you said last time you felt like this has been a losing battle for you over the last 40 years in America as fewer and fewer Christian families are willing to embrace this. So from your perspective, among faithful, church-going parents who love Jesus, love their Bibles, love their kids, what are the most common hurdles that prevent parents from using physical discipline in child training?

You know, I think there are, I guess I have two answers to that question. One answer is that a lot of people are very influenced by the thought forms of the culture. I mean, the world of ideas is like the world of fashion. Things are going out of style.

The idea of physical discipline is not in style in our culture. So it's hard for people because in our culture, a parent who does physical discipline is regarded as kind of a simple-minded person who's not too creative and can't think of better ways to deal with children and occasionally gets upset and just hits their kids out of frustration.

That's the image of physical discipline. So people think if you're in favor of spanking, what you're in favor of is this very capricious, arbitrary thing where a parent gets angry and when he's had it up to his eyeballs, he starts flailing his kids. And people think, "I don't want to be that kind of parent.

I'm smarter than that. I want to do something more intelligent, more sensitive, and something that would be better for my kids." So that's one set of problems. I think also, Tony, we have to acknowledge that there are many people, young people who are parents today who are in their 20s and 30s who were raised by Christian people who spanked them in anger.

And they were abused. They were struck when their parents were angry and frustrated and out of sorts. And so the parents, when they struck them excessively, struck them capriciously, something they might get away with one day, another day they would be spanked for. Spanking wasn't always an orderly process.

Sometimes they would just get hit. And it was all under the rubric of "Spare the rod, spoil the child," which, by the way, is not in the Bible anywhere. And they promised themselves, "I will never do that to my kids. I hated that. I'm not going to be that kind of a parent." And I want to say to young couples who have had that life experience, I want to commend you.

I want to stand in solidarity with you and say, "You must not do that. That was wrong. It was wrong." However well-intentioned your parents might have been, it was wrong for them to discipline you in that way. But I want to offer to you something that is very, very different than that.

So I think that a huge problem is that there are people who were abused. I think it's also important to make a distinction, and I've been doing this increasingly when I do seminars. I make a distinction between correction and discipline, especially with little children. There are a lot of things that require correction that do not necessarily require discipline.

And sometimes when parents embrace the idea of spanking and they say, "Okay, the Bible says I should do this. I'm going to do it," then they start spanking for everything. It's kind of like that old adage, you know, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." And so I think parents need to make a distinction.

There are a lot of things that children do that are wrong, that require correction, that are not necessarily defiant. The only thing I want to discipline for is defiant behavior. Failure to honor, failure to obey mom and dad. Defiance I'm going to discipline. But there are a lot of other things that kids do that require correction.

"No, no, honey, you can't hit your sister." And I can talk to that child about the fact that you may not hit your sister. Now, if the hitting persists, obviously we're going to have to deal with that as disobedience, as discipline. But there are a lot of things or an illustration I gave in one of these earlier podcasts, the child that bowls over his younger sister and takes her toy, that's impulsive behavior on the part of the child.

He's a three-year-old. He's impulsive. He grabs, he sees something he wants, he grabs it, especially if he can overpower the person that has it. That's impulsive behavior. That's not defiant behavior. Now, does it require correction? Sure. "Honey, no, you can't do that. You must give that toy back to your sister." But it does not require discipline.

If I can have an intervention that solves the problem without discipline, by correcting, that's going to be my first approach to wrong behavior. Defiant behavior I'm going to discipline. There's a whole range of other behavior that is inappropriate and requires correction that is not defiant. And I don't want to use spanking for everything a toddler does that is wrong, because then that kid's going to be getting spanked way too many times in a day.

So I want to reserve spanking for those types of defiant behavior where the child refuses to submit to mom and dad's authority. That is some seasoned advice. Thank you, Dr. Tripp. And thank you for joining us this week. This is a topic worthy of careful examination. And I know there's a lot more to say and address than we had time to cover in this short podcast today and yesterday.

And for more details on spanking, see chapter 11 of Dr. Tripp's bestselling book, Shepherding a Child's Heart. There he addresses key biblical principles and common objections. And we really appreciate Ted's time on this podcast this week, filling in for John Piper. Ted Tripp is the author of the bestselling books, Shepherding a Child's Heart and Instructing a Child's Heart.

And whenever we talk about physical discipline, I'm reminded that this topic has bigger ramifications. And it makes us ask, how do I, as an adult, know if I'm being disciplined by God right now? Pastor John addressed that question back in episode number 45 of this podcast. Be sure to check out that episode in the podcast archive, most easily navigated in the Ask Pastor John app for the iPhone and the Android.

And speaking of Pastor John, he will be back on Monday to field a question from North Africa. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a wonderful weekend. 1 Page 1 of 4