A Christian Understanding of Discipline and Punishment

My wife and I recently received an information packet from our doctor. Often there is good material in these about how to stop the spread of germs or how to foster healthy development. To my surprise this mailing contained a long article on how to best discipline and punish children.

The advice found in this article could be reduced to three main ideas:

      (1) Children should be disciplined, not punished. (Discipline being defined as either a correction or consequence with the goal of bringing a child to a place of learning from their mistake; punishment being defined as a penalty for an act even when the child is sorry and has already come to understand that what he or she did was wrong.)

        (2) Discipline should consist primarily of positive reinforcement and encouragement, not correction. 

      (3) Parents should never spank a child or engage in any other form of corporal punishment.

In Plato’s Apology Socrates remarked how craftsmen tend to know their crafts really well, but as a result of knowing one thing well they often come to assume they know everything well. I couldn’t help thinking that as I read through this advice from the clinic.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful for modern medicine—without it I would have died years ago. But doctors specialize in the care of the body, not the soul and discipline and punishment are things that deal with the soul. To understand them we should look to those that understand the soul, not those that specialize in the body.

Who understands the soul? Only those who understand He that made our souls. There is a reason that medieval educators considered Theology the “Queen of the Sciences”—only in understanding God can we understand who we are and how we ought to live.

Given a Christian understanding of who God made people to be and how sin has corrupted mankind, it is clear the authors of that article made two primary errors: they assume that children (and people in general) are naturally and basically good and they assume that human beings are the highest value. Let me explain.

If children were basically good, then it would follow that simple correction and encouragement would be all they would need to bring out their natural goodness and equip them to live a good life. The problem with relying solely on positive reinforcement is that children are not good! Yes children are made in the image of God, but that image has been defiled and debased by sin. Even when a person comes to Christ he or she continues to be beset by temptation that flows out of his or her broken sinful condition. As one theologian put it, “In Christ sin no longer reigns, but it still remains.” Because people are not naturally good they need more than positive reinforcement to keep sin in check.

Think about it like this. Every good football coach will encourage his players. However, he will do more than encourage them if he wants them to be effective—he will correct them when they are wrong, he will force them to lift weights, run sprints, and practice plays, etc. He will do this because people are not naturally good at football; if they were, all he would need to do is to encourage their natural goodness to come out. No, to become good at football one needs to work hard and train. This will hurt one’s body, but it will help make one into an effective player. A team may not like their coach’s discipline, but without it they will be weak and will surely lose when they face another team.

In the same way we are called to discipline ourselves as Christians so that our faith will not be ineffectual. Paul wrote about “beating his body and making it his slave” so that he would not “run the race in vain.” Moreover, we are all called to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” Working to the point of trembling requires a high level of effort and self-discipline!

As parents our goal should be to raise children that will be self-disciplined; if we are passive and neglect the discipline of our children they will not develop self-discipline. Children are not naturally good; they are naturally sinful. Because of their inherited sinful condition, without our discipline, without negative reinforcements used as external restraints on their sinful condition, our children will not develop the character and self-discipline necessary to fruitfully live out their faith. If they were naturally good we could simply encourage their natural goodness to come out and develop all on its own. But because they are born into sin we must teach them to restrain, in Christ, the sin within them that wants so desperately to master them. 

Enough about discipline. Some of you may be thinking, “ok, I see the value of discipline, even in the form of negative reinforcement. After all, I want to show my child that this or that action is wrong and I want him or her to feel sorry when he or she sins. But what about when a child learns their lesson and knows that what he or she did was wrong, is it still appropriate to punish him or her by administering some sort of penalty?”

While I would not say that a child should be punished in every circumstance, good parenting does require discernment after all, punishment is still appropriate in some cases. This is because children are not the ultimate value; punishment, on behalf of greater things, shows them this fact.

My pastor used to put it like this, “God loves you, but He also loves other things. If you won’t live in God’s Truth, He is not going to send the Truth to Hell so you can go to Heaven; if you reject His glory He will not divest Himself of it and prefer you to it. No, God loves you, but He loves other things more than you.”

In the same way it is appropriate for us to punish a child on behalf of things of great value, like the truth. But how can it be appropriate to punish a child when he or she is already sorry and there is seemingly nothing more he or she can learn? In short, something like the truth is of value and we defend its value and show our children its value when we punish them. If children were of the highest or the only value, it would make sense to refrain from punishing them in cases when no other person was hurt and when they felt sorry for their mistake of their own accord. But since children are not the only thing of value it is just to punish them simply to show the value of the thing they have insulted by their sin. In this way we show them that God values other things besides them.  

If this is too abstract or unconvincing, consider this: all sins are ultimately against God and God is of ultimate value. In punishing kids in cases where they are sorry and no one else is hurt we can affirm the value of God and the fact that their sin is ultimately directed against Him. This is in turn will better help our children to live in reality. Conversely, if we think that punishment is unjust in cases where no one is hurt and our child has nothing to learn because he or she already feels bad, then we are treating our child as if he or she is the highest value. This is idolatrous and foolish. Teaching our children that their wrong choices are ultimately about them is false and it will lead them into pride and confusion. Punishment shows our children that they are not the most important things and that sin is wrong even if it doesn’t hurt anyone; God is the being of ultimate worth and sin is wrong because it is against Him.