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The smacking debate: Christianity confronts paganism

Recent media discussion has been dominated by the debate around whether parents should be banned from smacking their children.

The rights and wrongs of smacking have been discussed in countless articles and debates. What is often missed by Christians is that the crusade to ban smacking by Britain's liberal elite is the inevitable outworking of a world and life view that now underpins almost all debate and discussion. For Christians it is this world and life view that we must confront and oppose.

Pre-Christian world

In recent decades the last vestiges of our biblical heritage have unravelled and we have reverted to the pagan worldview which dominated the pre-Christian world. The dominant themes of this prevailing worldview are freedom and self-expression: life is about the realisation of all the potential that lies dormant within the human spirit. According to this creed, human beings are essentially good and left to their own inclinations and desires will find themselves and their freedom. Everyone has the right to construct his/her version of reality for themselves based on their own experience. What stands in the way of human beings finding themselves? According to this creed it is centuries of traditions, taboos, self-serving hierarchies and authorities, most of these the legacy of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Society has become aware of the errors of previous generations and can finally liberate itself from such repressive ideas. Traditional, conservative or Christian perspectives are seen as a brake on the road to a better world and liberation for the human spirit. Opponents are labelled as dangerous heretics who must be ridiculed and marginalised.

God has the right

Those of us who are Christians will inevitably be seen as the implacable enemy of this version of reality. Not only do we come at the world from a completely different perspective, but we have the tools to unpack the spirit of the age and expose it for the sham that it is. Behind this world there is a God who has created human beings and has the right to define what we are and how we live. Human beings have not fallen from themselves as the philosopher Camus thought; rather human beings have fallen from God. Due to God creating human beings in his image, he invested in them great capacities for good.

In rejecting God's rule and seeking to live in autonomy from him, the human race has enormous ability for self-centred and sinful living. Instead of worshipping God, the human race has substituted him for false gods - in the Western world this is the god of self. The human being replaces God and puts him/herself at the centre of reality and seeks personal expression, self-realisation and pleasure. This is to be achieved through expressing oneself through mediums such as fashion, sexuality, or a career. To the Christian this is sheer idolatry and is the outworking of the temptation which first came to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to 'be as God'. The Christian's response is that we do not find ourselves through the intensification of life but rather through its transformation. Although anathema to the pagans of our society, God judges all self-centred living and is implacably opposed to the creed of the self-assertive individualism of our age. Through the death of Jesus on the cross there is forgiveness and the possibility to begin a new life based on God's authority and priorities of love and service.

Because we love them

We seem to be a long way from the smacking debate: actually we have come to the heart of the issue. To the pagan worldview of our age, punishing children contradicts the creed of self-expression and reinforces harmful authority structures in the home. Moreover, it assumes that one person (the parent) is able to impose on another (the child) their view of what is right and wrong, when ultimately all such things are a matter of opinion and preference. For the Christian this view of reality is erroneous and a contradiction of everything we stand for. As fallen human beings, left to their own devices children will inevitably end up following their sinful desire to reject God and rebel against him and their parents (his delegated means of authority). Smacking is a biblical principle that gives parents a tool to teach children that some things are wrong and must not be allowed. Moreover, sinful acts matter. The wages of sin are death. There are far bigger things at stake than a child having a stinging bottom. As Christians we have a reason to punish bad behaviour because we believe that certain things are wrong and cannot be tolerated. We must train our children to follow the way of life rather than death, not because we have lost control or are lazy parents, but because we love them.

Andrew Carter
attends All Souls, Langham Place, London