Handing orphans over to sodomites

"Major Evangelical Adoption Agency Will Now Serve Gay Parents Nationwide"

Childlessness

It may not seem like it, but I think the message of our secular popular culture is a message more about death than life.

After all, is it not praiseworthy in our popular culture for a woman to choose to end her baby's life?

Is it not noble to end one's life if one sees fit to do so for almost any reason whatsoever?

What does popular culture think about the elderly? Is their wisdom valued? Why are the elderly more likely to be portrayed as out of touch more if not ready to be put out to pasture than they are to be portrayed as sagacious or at least worth giving a fair hearing to? (By contrast, why does popular culture all but worship youth?)

What does popular culture say about the environment and overpopulation? Isn't the fear that climage change is going to cause coastal cities to be flooded? Isn't the fear that overpopulation will mean scarce resources will be even more scarce (e.g. food)?

What about pets? Why does popular culture seem to care more about pets than children? Why are children often portrayed to be annoying? Why are pets often portrayed as acceptable in lieu of children? Why was there so much more of an outcry for Harambe than for "the boy" whom Harambe was dragging around like a ragdoll? Do most people even know the name of the 3 year old boy without having to search for it?

I could go on. But popular culture's message seems to me to be a message more conducive to death than to life.

By contrast, Christians have a message of life. We are pro-life. We value life. We are for life in all its glorious manifestations. We possess a life-giving and life-changing message. We love life. And we can hold forth life to a dying world.

With all this in mind, see this recent post: "The Other Pandemic Sweeping Across Our Globe" (Akos Balogh).

Was the nuclear family a mistake?

https://www.reformation21.org/blog/was-the-nuclear-family-a-mistake

A history of depression

Calvin has a reputation as a mean-spirited individual. However, this raises questions about the history of depression. I'm no expert, but it's my impression that depression must have been very widespread during much of human history. Many children were orphaned. Many mothers died in childbirth. Many fathers died young. Due to high infant mortality, many siblings watched their brothers and sisters die. Os Guinness watched his two younger brothers starve to death.

Some of the survivors were farmed out to older relatives. Among poorer families was the custom of apprenticing a young child to a stranger to teach him a trade. You can imagine the emotional alienation that caused. Even among the royalty and aristocracy, you had emotionally distant indifferent parents who used nannies until the boy was banished to boarding school at an early age. So many men must have been maladjusted due to deficient socialization.

Both Calvin's parents died when he was young. Descartes' mother died when he was two months old, and he had an absentee father. John Knox's mother died when he was young.

Racine was orphaned after both parents died when he was young. Pascal's mother died when he was three. Leibniz's father died when he was young. Swift's father died before his son was born. Isaac Newton's father died before his son was born. He had a checkered relationship with his own mother. Thomas Aquinas was farmed off to Monte Casino Abbey at the age of 5.

Dante was an orphan. His mother died when he was young. The father of Albert Camus died when he was young. Tolkien was an orphan. Catholic philosophers Peter Geach and Anthony Kenny were neglected children.

It's striking that although Newton, Leibniz, and Swift were very eligible bachelors, they never married. This despite the fact that Swift, for one, was very enamored with two women ("Stella", "Vanessa").

This is just skimming the surface. A random sample of famous men. When we assess the acerbic character of some famous men from the past, what this fails to take into account is that many famous individuals had emotionally deprived childhoods due to the death of one or both parents at an early age, not to mention watching their siblings die young. They were emotionally neglected, with lifelong insecurities. That's not to mention other factors like the gin craze, to cope with depression.

It's an interesting historical question to consider what percentage of the human race has suffered from clinical depression. A precarious, neglected childhood doesn't naturally foster generosity, but ruthless competition to survive and succeed. How many men and women stagger through life due to a miserable childhood.

Should we warn children about hell?

Looming large in many deconversion accounts are apostates who complain that their parents terrorized them by threatening them with hell. Their childhood was haunted by fear of God. Should Christian parents warn children about the danger of hell? 

i) Christian pedagogy, like pedagogy in general, needs to be age-appropriate, suited to the cognitive development of children. What we teach a 5-year-old and what we teach an 15-year old may be two different things. We may save some teachings for a later age.

ii) There's certainly a point at which the doctrine of hell should certainly be part of their instruction in the Christian faith. And they can also pick that up on their own when they're old enough to read an adult version of the Bible. 

iii) Is "warning" children about the danger of hell a euphemism for threatening children with hell when they misbehave? The whole issue of whether any children are in peril of hell is an open question in theology. I don't think we have sufficient revelation to answer that question with any degree of certainty. I don't think we should issue a warning unless we have good reason to think they're at risk. Threats should be credible threats, not empty threats. 

iv) It can also be just lazy parental disciple to threaten young children with hell. Especially for childish misbehavior that's quite unlikely to rise to the level of damnable offenses. How much of that is just an expression of parental exasperation, because it's so easy to threaten them with hell? 

v) What about adolescents and teenagers? Do they need to be warned about hell? One question is whether there's a distinction between teaching them about hell and warning them about hell. If they already understand the nature of hell, and the believe it, do they also need a personal parenting warning? I mean, just reading about hell in the Bible will acquaint them with warnings about hell.

vi) Apropos (v), do you need to be warned not to stick your fingers in a blender, then push the start button? If you know what a blender is, you don't need a warning over and above your understanding of the blender not to stick your fingers inside when it's running. 

vii) I think what young children need is not to fear God but to be taught to love and trust God. Taught that God is someone to turn to in time of need. Or pray to for the needs of others. Young children need a sense of security. 

viii) It might be objected that just as it's proper and necessary for young children to both love and fear their parents, the same holds true for God. But I think the comparison breaks down. Although God can manifest himself to children directly, I think God is ordinarily an abstraction for children in a way that parents are not. If, say, Christian parents must spank a misbehaving child, that will be followed by an act of reconciliation–reaffirming their love for the child. That's very tangible in a way that a child's relationship with God generally is not. 

Of course, above a certain age, children should cultivate a more complete and adult understanding of God and hell, which includes a God-fearing attitude, as well as love, trust, devotion. 

BTW, my parents never threatened me with hell, so my own position isn't in reaction to my childhood. 

Coming-of-age

In the modern west, coming-of-age is generally associated with adolescence. The physiological transition from childhood to adulthood. Sexual maturation, greater emotional independence from parents, developing alternative social relationships with age-mates (friends, boyfriends, girlfriends). Coming-of-age involves the assumption of adult risks and responsibilities, adult moral responsibility, and life-choices. 

The coming-of-age story is a stock genre, going back to the Epic of Gilgamesh (friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu) and the Odyssey (Telemachus). It's a topic of endless novels, short stories, movies, and teen dramas.  

There's distinction between chronological/physiological coming-of-age and moral/psychological/sociological coming-of-age. Some adults suffer from arrested development because they never experienced challenges that forced them to mature morally, emotionally, or socially. 

In his monograph on A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible, Leland Ryken's has an entry under coming-of-age story (p47), where he lists the following examples:

• Jacob fleeing from his ancestral home and going to Haran (Gen 28)

• Joseph sold into slavery (Gen 37)

• David and Goliath(1 Sam 17)

• Daniel going into exile (Dan 1:1-3)

• Esther as a harem girl

One preliminary question this raises is the age of the individuals when they came of age. Roughly what would have been their ages at the time? I asked an OT scholar who gave the following ages or estimates:

Jacob: 76

Joseph: 17 (Gen 37:2)

David: about 20

Daniel: unknown–probably late teens/early 20s???

Esther: unknown–perhaps late teens???

In some cases these are somewhat beyond the chronological range we associate with coming-of-age in the modern west. Most dramatically in the case of Jacob. The larger point is that all of them underwent a maturing experience. In a sense, they were forced to grow up fast, thrust into a situation where they had to make momentous decisions beyond their years inasmuch as that they didn't have the wisdom of seasoned experience. Jacob is something of an anomaly in this group.  

In distinction to chronological coming-of-age, marriage and children or the death of a parent are social and psychological coming-of-age experiences. Other examples include adolescents or even preadolescents who are forced to leave home and make it on their own. Take the dislocations of war. Or forced to assume a parental role if a mother or father dies. They must step into their place to take up the slack, raising younger siblings and helping out the surviving parent. 

Christian conversion is a coming-of-age experience, at whatever age. A maturing experience. 

Raising kids in a horror flick

I do wonder what the longterm psychological impact may be from the message we're sending younger kids during the pandemic. Don't go outside! It's dangerous outside! 

Beware of everybody you see. Everybody you see may be dangerous! Every adult may be the carrier of an invisible disease that will kill you if you get too close. 

Your playmates may be dangerous to you. They may be carriers. 

Your brothers and sisters may be dangerous to you. Be afraid of sleeping with your brother or sister. 

Your parents may be carriers of an invisible disease that will kill you. Be afraid of your parents touching you, hugging you, kissing you, bathing you, stroking your hair, holding you in their arms.  

Be afraid at home. Be afraid outside. Be afraid in the park and playground. Be afraid in the front yard and back yard. The invisible disease is stalking you everywhere. Watch your back! 

People aren't what they seem. They seem human on the outside, but there's a monster lurking on the inside, using their body as camouflage to ambush you. 

Will children shrug this off after the crisis has passed? Or will it seep into their psyche and bedevil their subconscious for years to come?  

Women, children, and Christianity

Between 31-38 minutes

Dr. Masson discusses how Christianity and the chivalric tradition transformed and upgraded the value of women and children compared to pagan cultures.

Films for boys

1. Some Christian parents have lists of books for kids to read. Classics which every boy or girl should read by the time they reach adulthood. Cliche examples include The Chronicles of Narnia. 

However, I haven't seen comparable lists for movies. I mean, there are lists of "safe" movies for kids. Bubble-gummy G-rated fare. But I mean something more intelligent and growup, parallel to serious literature. 

Due to the overwhelming dominance of the cinematic artform in contemporary culture, it's useful to make a list. At the same time it's a daunting task due to the thousands of films. This post will focus on male-oriented movies because that's what I naturally relate to. 

There are films by categories, like sports, horror, science fiction, Western, war. Sports movies about an underdog athlete or team that defies the odds are popular, and there are movies on that theme which represent different sports:

• Friday Night Lights (football)

• Goal! (soccer)

• Miracle (hockey) 

• Hoosiers (basketball)

• Vision Quest (wrestling) 

There are popular Westerns like the Lonesome Dove series. 

Although it may not be a technical genre, wildness films set in the high country, Yukon, or safaris (African savanna, Amazon jungle) are naturally appealing to guys. 

There's a large category of war films. This can include Arthurian tales which model the virtues of chivalry.

2. From the standpoint of Christian parenting, what interests me more than genre are memorable films that can provide a frame of reference to illustrate and stimulate thinking about philosophy, theology, and ethics. 

3. There are films that explore the relationship between appearance or illusion and reality:

• Harsh Realm

• The Matrix (1999)

• Dark City

• The Prisoner (2009)

4. There are existential films that explore the meaning of life:

• Last Holiday (1950)

• Tuck Everlasting

5. Some films probe moral issues, like Strangers on a Train

6. Final Destination (2000) is a convenient illustration of fatalism. 

7. There are time-travel/parallel universe films that compare and contrast tradeoffs involving alternate life choices: 

• Mr. Nobody

• The Butterfly Effect

8. October Sky is good coming-of-age film

9. An important plot motif, that's not unique to any particular genre, is the story of "friends" or comrades who are thrust into a group survival situation. This can take place in different settings: wilderness, battlefield, island, POW camp. 

This becomes a test of friendship. Will they be altruistic? Will they takes risks for each other? Or will they turn on each other, double-cross one other, leave the sick and injured behind to die? Theme of loyalty, deception, betrayal, revenge, and/or reconciliation. A winnowing process. 

That theme is sometimes explored in war films, wilderness films, and spring break teen films. I don't have any particular titles in mind.

Just as certain books like The Pilgrim's Progress, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Flies, and Perelandra can function as a lifelong frame of reference which grown children continue to reflect on and refer back to, it would be good for Christian parents to select a dozen or so films which can serve the same purpose. For instance, fathers and sons can watch the same film together, then talk about the significance of the film. Some films may raise important questions but lack the Christian resources to give good answers. 

Puberty blockers

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/01/59422/

Tips on parenting

Generally good advice, although, in the age of film and TV drama, we have to strike a balance. It can't all be literary fiction. Film is not an inferior art form to the novel. Also, he has a Catholic bias. 

Tony Esolen

Enchanting the world ...

Or rather, allowing the world, which is an enchanted place, to be present to your children in all its wonder ...

Or again, how to scrub away the grime of DISENCHANTMENT, which grime is the stock in trade of our schools ...

I've gotten some requests recently about what to do to work against the grime. Here are my recommendations:

1. Get your kids the hell out of the schools.

2. Find the list of the Thousand Good Books, by John Senior. A very fine list it is. I might have a couple of quibbles here and there, but in general it is terrific.

https://d2y1pz2y630308.cloudfront.net/15750/documents/2017/10/John%20Senior%20The%20Thousand%20Good%20Books%20List.pdf

3. Get your kids outdoors. Do things. Make things. Play games. Visit people. Find food and cook it.

4. Teach your boys to chop wood, hunt, fish, find their way in the woods, etc.; if your girls are interested, take them too.

5. Learn to play a musical instrument. Learn the stars in the sky. Get a pair of binoculars and use them. Get a small telescope. Things like those ....

6. As for BOOKS: Anything by Charles Dickens -- or rather EVERYTHING. Dickens is the greatest creator of literary characters this side of Shakespeare. For that one capacity, he can even stand the comparison with the Bard. Nobody else can, with the possible exception of Dante -- for characterization, I mean. Dickens is a comic genius, and is underrated, because anybody can read him. Read the other great novelists of the 19th century: Jane Austen, Alexandre Dumas, George Eliot, Walter Scott, Anthony Trollope, Victor Hugo, Alessandro Manzoni, Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathanael Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol ...

7. Don't ignore art, music, and poetry. Get the 19th century, before the 20th century meltdown in poetry: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, etc. Poetry delivers a lot in a small space: it is TNT. Read Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Read Browning's dramatic monologues: "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb etc.", "The Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "An Epistle of Karshish," "Andrea del Sarto," "Caliban Upon Setebos," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "How It Strikes a Contemporary," "Cleon," ....

8. Don't go down the Lord of the Flies route, for starters. Lord of the Flies is a great work of art and thought. But it is not for beginners. It is not for your disillusioned young people, nor is Walker Percy, nor is Fitzgerald, nor is Orwell ... Not for starters. They come later ...

Anne Georgulas

(Anne Georgulas, above, is James Younger's mother.)

We've already made a few posts on James Younger: first post, second post, third post, fourth post. I believe this is our fifth post on the case.

James Younger update

BREAKING: the judge in the #ProtectJamesYounger case has ruled that the father will have a say over medical decisions, including the "transition" of his son. This is the best outcome we could hope for in a horrible situation all around. I think our outcry made a real difference.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 24, 2019

I'm less sanguine about this development. It may well be that the judge was caught off-guard by the scale of the backlash, both popular and by other segments of the TX political establishment. But the judge has the final say, and to my knowledge the judge has consistently sided with the mother.

My suspicion is that the judge's action is a ruse to preempt the state investigation (by the TX Attorney General's office and the Texas dept. of Family & Protective Services). It takes some pressure off the judge. The story dies down. The judge might then side with the mother on puberty blocks and cross-hormone "therapy". While that would instigate a new campaign and might launch a new state investigation, it buys the mother time to press ahead with her plans to chemically castrate the boy. 

Keep in mind, too, that you can't count on having social conservatives in the TX political establishment in years to come. The balance of power might shift. 

BTW, the judge is up for reelection. Hopefully voters will turn her out of office.  

So I'm inclined to be cynical about the judge's latest ruling. The only outcome that matters is what actually happens to the boy. It would be fatally naive for social conservatives to assume we "won", that's safely behind us, and it's time to move on to other issues. Don't take your eyes of this case. Keep monitoring developments. 

Sign petition to protect James Younger

https://lifepetitions.com/petition/i-support-the-father-of-6-year-old-boy-being-forced-to-live-as-a-girl

Halloween's creation and recreation

https://calvinistinternational.com/2013/10/30/halloween-creation-recreation/

The ethics of spanking

This is the final installment. The first two were:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/10/child-discipline.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/10/scientific-studies-on-spanking.html

I'm going to quote and comment on some representative arguments against spanking in this article: A Grogan-Kaylor, J Ma, & SA Graham-Bermann, "The Case Against Physical Punishment," Current Opinion in Psychology 19 (2018).

In general, it suffers from the same methodological flaws and oversights I noted in another study (second link). Moving along:

Attachment theory highlights the beneficial role of a secure attachment in the parent-child relationship [12]. A plethora of research has found that parental empathy and sensitivity towards children’s needs foster trust, safety, and emotional security in children [13]. However, when parents respond to their child’s need for attention, comfort, and care with physical punishment, the child easily feels rejected and degraded and the much-needed secure attachment in the parent-child relationship is likely to be eroded [14]. Thus, children who were physically punished are at risk of developing a sense of unworthiness and maladaptive developmental pathways such as anxiety and depression.

i) Parents have more than one role to play in child-rearing. It's true that there's an element of emotional/psychological tension between their role as disciplinarians and other roles. Spanking provokes temporary alienation. But a child's mood can change within a few minutes. 

ii) Children need boundaries. That's essential to their sense of security. They need to know there are consequences for crossing boundaries. It's because the prospect of spanking is unpleasant that it has deterrent value. The parent/child bond is part of what makes that effective. 

Social learning theory underlines observation and reinforcement as mechanisms through which physical punishment affects externalizing problems such as aggression [16]. When parents physically punish their children for unacceptable behaviors, children observe their parents endorsing the use of violence, and unintentionally, are modeled and taught the legitimacy of violent behaviors to correct the misconduct of others. In addition, by observing that parental physical punishment resulted in successfully stopping their own misbehaviors in the short term, children are reinforced in the idea of the effectiveness of violence in controlling and resolving social and interpersonal conflicts.

That's not a scientific claim. It reflects the utopian outlook of the writers. They act like any kind of "violence" is intrinsically wrong. Do they think a propensity for violence or aggression is conditioned rather than hardwired? 

But there are situations where violence is required to combat violence. It takes a gun to stop a sniper or house-burglar. Violence has a legitimate and indispensable role in social dynamics. That's a necessity evil in a fallen world. 

A recent longitudinal study examined the relationships of parental spanking of 1-year-old children, and subsequent involvement of that family with Child Protective Services between child’s age 1 and age 5 [37]. This study found that reports of spanking of a child when child was one year old were associated with a 33% increase in the chances that a family would become involved with Child Protective Services.

i) That's just circular. If you outlaw spanking, that puts neighbors in a position to rat out parents who spank their misbehaving kids. But that's hardly a justification for outlawing the practice. You can't appeal to a law to justify the law. 

ii) Because the writers oppose spanking in principle, they don't bother to explore the appropriate age-range for spanking. How old should the child be before spanking is constructive? What's the cutoff when the child is too old for that to be constructive? 

"Scientific studies" on spanking

I'm going to quote some representative excerpts of "scientific study" on spanking and corporal punishment:

However, this perspective began to change as studies found links between “normative” physical punishment and child aggression, delinquency and spousal assault in later life...Physical punishment is associated with a range of mental health problems in children, youth and adults, including depression, unhappiness, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, use of drugs and alcohol, and general psychological maladjustment.26–29 These relationships may be mediated by disruptions in parent–child attachment resulting from pain inflicted by a caregiver...

75% of substantiated physical abuse of children occurred during episodes of physical punishment. This finding was replicated in the second cycle of the study (CIS 2003).40 Another large Canadian study41 found that children who were spanked by their parents were seven times more likely to be severely assaulted by their parents (e.g., punched or kicked) than children who were not spanked. In an American study,42 infants in their first year of life who had been spanked by their parents in the previous month were 2.3 times more likely to suffer an injury requiring medical attention than infants who had not been spanked. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/

1. There's been a highly successful movement by secular progressives (cheered on by "progressive Christians") to use the totalitarian power of the state to deny parental authority and Christian ethics, even in the private sphere of the family.  

2. I don't concede the premise that you need a scientific study to be justified in many of your common sense beliefs. 

3. I'm of two minds about scientific studies. On the one hand, there's a need for scientific studies on many topics. On the other hand, many scientific studies are unreliable. Many influential studies, which became the received wisdom in academia and certain professions, studies which became the basis for law or public policy, have been debunked over the years. Consider the replication crisis in the social and life sciences. So just quoting a study or studies has no particular cachet with me. It's an unfortunate dilemma. We need studies, but which studies can be trusted, given their checkered track-record? It's not possible to endorse scientific studies in general. 

4. In addition, some studies are like the professional expert witness hired by defense attorneys. You can hire someone with impressive credentials to defend both sides of any position. 

5. A basic flaw in the study is the equivocal use of "physical punishment". Needless to say, that ranges along a very wide continuum. You can't lump all forms of physical punishment, then tar a light spanking with the same consequences. There are degrees of physical punishment, from slight to severe. It's willfully methodologically irresponsible not to draw necessary distinctions. 

Take the difference between swatting a child on the backside with your hand 1-3 times and whipping him on the backside with a belt or ruler. Those just aren't comparable. 

6. Likewise, I doubt pain is the primary factor in the efficacy of spanking. Breaking your arm when you fall from a tree or scraping your knees when you fall off your bike is far more painful then getting swatted on the backside by hand. Do scientific studies which hype the psychological harm of spanking say the same thing about painful childhood accidents? 

I suspect the impact of spanking is primarily psychological rather than physical. Because young children are so emotionally dependent on their parents, to be physically rebuffed by a parent is (temporarily) traumatic. It's easy to reduce a child to tears. 

7. Apropos (6), in biblical anthropology, mothers and fathers play different roles. They have overlapping roles, but there are differences as well as commonalities. In a qualified sense, it's not bad for kids to be afraid of their fathers. I don't mean they should live in a state of fear. But it's good for them to fear the paternal reaction if they cross certain lines. To take a comparison, although a lion protects his cubs, cubs must be more respectful to the lion than the lioness. You don't mess with the lion! 

8. The studies need to be far more selective. For instance, what's the long-term impact of spanking an extroverted, strong-willed boy? Children vary in temperament. Likewise, there are stereotypical psychological differences between boys and girls. What's effective discipline for one child may be ineffective for another.   

9. Do the studies screen out other variables for delinquency, depression, self-harm, domestic abuse, substance abuse, incarceration, and suicide? What about kids from high-crime areas? Kids from broken homes? Fatherless boys (due to divorce and maternal custody)? Kids with stepdads? Kids where mom has a live-in boyfriend, or string of boyfriends? 

10. How do rates of delinquency, depression, self-harm, domestic abuse, substance abuse, incarceration, and suicide for kids who experience moderate spanking compare with their counterparts in secularized nations where spanking is illegal? What's the comparative data? 

11. Do psychologists and sociologists who deplore spanking think a propensity for violence is innate–or the result of social conditioning? Do they think a violence-free society is possible with different socialization?

12. What's their model of a socially well-adjusted or maladjusted male? Consider the faddish misdiagnosis/overmedication for attention deficit syndrome for rambunctious boys. Do they think an aggressive streak is "toxic masculinity"? 

Suppose an aggressive streak or potential for violence is a necessary trait in males who take the initiative. What if the nature of boys to be adventurous, inventive, competitive, and take a risk is inseparable from an aggressive streak or potential for violence?  

13. Is there any correlation between declining crime rates and declining levels of testosterone? Is there any correlation between declining crime rates and a graying population? During the baby boom, young males were a larger percentage of the population. 

Child discipline

https://www.academia.edu/40552793/In_Defense_of_Spanking

1. I agree with Hsiao that spanking is morally justifiable, and I salute his courage in defending an unfashionable but biblical practice. 

2. I'm not a child psychologist, but I doubt that the effectiveness of spanking is primarily due to physical pain. Indeed, that view can lead to excessive punishment. In my observation, the impact is more psychological than physical. 

3. I agree with him that punishment should be defined in terms of wrongdoing, guilt, retribution, and just desert. To classify deterrent, corrective, or remedial action as punitive sows confusion by using the same label for different kinds of actions that may operate from opposing assumptions. It's best to reserve the term "punishment" from retributive justice. 

4. One problem with the classification is that it begs the question of whether spanking is fundamentally punitive. If you define punishment in retributive terms, and you classify spanking as corporal punishment, then by definition, the nature, aim, and justification of spanking lies within that moral framework.

This is not to deny that spanking is sometimes punitive. But it prejudges the nature, aim, and justification of spanking to classify it as corporal punishment. I think we should drop that classification as the umbrella under which we analyze spanking since wrongdoing and culpability are not always the salient consideration. Rather, we should classify spanking under the broader, generic rubric of corporal discipline. This isn't a euphemism, but allows us to avoid a reductionistic understanding of its nature, aim, and justification. 

5. We might differentiate between two objectives for child discipline:

i) Moral conditioning

ii) Deterrence conditioning

Everything is not about morality; some things are about prudence. Teaching kids to be prudent. To avoid hazardous activities when they're too young to appreciate the danger. Where children are concerned, retributive punishment isn't the only justification. When you swat a little child who plays around the stove, that's not about just desert or exacting retribution but deterrence, and that's due to the cognitive immaturity of the child. Due to his condition of diminished responsibility, his hazardous action in that situation can't be blameworthy. It doesn't merit blame. He doesn't deserve punishment. 

Don't automatically shoehorn the warrant for spanking into a retributive paradigm. The warrant for the corporal discipline of children does not require guilt or wrongdoing on their part as a necessary precondition. Although children can do willfully malicious things, that's not the only motivation for their misconduct, and so it's an overgeneralization to assume the only defense of spanking is just desert for wrongdoing. In some cases, spanking conditions a child to avoid risky behavior when he's too young to appreciate the danger. It teaches him to associate the behavior with unpleasant, memorable consequences–spanking! Although he's too young to perceive and fear the danger of the action, he's not to young to fear discipline. That provides a disincentive until he's mature enough to appreciate the risk. He's too young to directly gauge the danger, but he's not too young to indirectly associate the forbidden action with discipline. 

It's that time of year again

Every time Halloween season rolls around, there's a perennial Christian debate about letting your kids celebrate Halloween. 

i) The history of a custom has no particular bearing on its contemporary significance. The past significance of a custom doesn't determine its contemporary significance. 

ii) A boy could wear could wear the costume of an exorcist. That way he's symbolically combatting the dark side.

iii) Wise parents pick their fights. This is not a hill to die on. Parents should avoid making their kids unnecessarily resentful. Save that for real moral issues. A classic mistake many well-meaning, but over-scrupulous Christian parents make is to alienate their kids from the faith by drawing the line over penny-ante issues. There will be real issues like Smartphone usage, social media usage, &c. Drawn the battle lines on serious issues like that.

Raising Christian children

1. A friend asked how I'd raise a child in the Christian faith. This post will have an emphasis on catechesis. In addition, because I naturally have a more direct understanding of how a boy's mind works, it will have a masculine bias. At the end of the post I'll paste some material from Lydia McGrew which will offset the masculine bias with a complementary feminine perspective. 

There are whole books written about raising boys from a Christian or traditional perspective, viz. Douglas Wilson: Future Men; Anthony Esolen, Defending Boyhood; Iggulden, The Dangerous Book for Boys.

Due to ever-evolving technology, my technological references may quickly become dated, but they can be translated into their next-generation technological counterparts. By the same token, discussions of science or biblical archeology need to be updated periodically. 

My recommendations depend on a child's cognitive aptitude. A precocious child can absorb things at an earlier age than a normal child. Assigned reading varies with the stages of cognitive development.

When it comes to assigned reading, parents shouldn't simply assign a reading, but be able to discuss it with their kids after the kids read it. What did it mean to the child? What did they understand or not understand? 

2. Nowadays it's important for parents not to let Smartphones and the Internet devour their children's lives. I wouldn't give my kid a cellphone unless it was a very primitive phone for emergencies. And I'd probably banish the TV from home. That doesn't mean they couldn't watch any TV fare, but it would be very selective, DVD/Netflix shows selected by their parents. They'd have computers and Internet access, but with restrictions on both time and content. Same thing with video games. 

3. One of the most important things a Christian parent can do is to give their child a happy childhood. That may give them a livelong momentum.

In addition, as Vern Poythress has noted, parents are placeholders for God in the lives of young kids, so at that age the Christian faith is instilled by showing more than telling.