My Experience with Spanking

After Barbie’s last post, some were asking, “Should you ever spank your kids?”  Well, I’m putting myself in the hot seat today to share how I have been guilty of doing it wrong and what the Lord has taught me as a result.

In the past, whenever my kids have done something wrong or disobeyed, and I thought they needed a spanking, I was usually angry. I figured that I had to respond somehow to their disobedience, misbehavior, etc. Of course, I knew that I shouldn’t be spanking in anger, but like it or not, I was still angry and I had to do something about their behavior.

Unfortunately, I was justifying my sin. As a result, my kids learned that I couldn’t be trusted to control my anger. It also became quite obvious that my anger never empowered them to change. In fact, it had the opposite effect. It always left my kids trapped in their self-centered ways, just as I felt trapped in my own unloving expression of anger towards them.

Yet I had always believed that my anger really was justified. After all, it was my children who made me angry. However, it wasn’t long before the Lord exposed my thinking as a lie, and I began to tell the truth about my sin: Nobody can make me angry. When I am angry, it is only because I choose to be angry. I always have the option of responding in love.

That sounds like such a simple answer, and yet I know what it feels like to be enslaved by my anger, feeling powerless to make a “simple” choice to love. Something just didn’t make sense. You see, I believed that the only power that my flesh (my anger) had over me was the power that I chose to give it. After all, Jesus already nailed my anger to the cross when He died for me, putting it to death once and for all. But if that was really true, then why wasn’t I experiencing the reality of His freedom?

I believed the Lord had the power to transform my heart if I would only cooperate with Him in that process. I could hear the Holy Spirit correcting me (“You are acting in anger towards your child.”) and instructing me (“Your correction needs to be motivated by love.”). I was listening, and I was trying my very best to obey, but my anger just wouldn’t go away. What was I missing?

Something was indeed missing. I was trying to obey without having first come to a point of repentance. I was trying to overcome my anger in my own strength, without tapping into the Lord for the only source of real power – the power of the cross. Attempting to obey in that stronghold of my life (my anger) without first repenting over it was an effort made in vain.

Up until that point, I hadn’t understood how much I was hurting my children through my anger. I didn’t see how I was a source of fear, how I was bringing death into our relationships, and how I was losing their hearts. Not simply because I was spanking them, but because I was spanking in anger.

In His kindness, the Lord opened my eyes to clearly see the pain that I was causing my kids. When He did, it broke my heart, and I finally experienced true repentance over what I had done. It wasn’t because I wanted to be a “better mom.” In fact, it wasn’t about me at all anymore. It was about my kids and how much I wanted them to experience my love. It was about how I didn’t want to keep on hurting them like that anymore.

I had been powerless to obey before my heart was broken before the Lord. Before I came to the place of repentance over my anger, I was indeed hearing His voice and trying to obey, but my motivation was not out of love for my kids. The Lord couldn’t do His work in my life – the transformation of my heart from one of anger to one of love – without me first repenting and crying out to Him in brokenness over the pain that I had caused my kids. It was then that the Lord could begin to do His miraculous work in my heart. It was then that the healing could begin as I began to rebuild the trust that I had broken with my kids for so many years.

I have come to believe that even repentance itself is a gift from the Lord. We must cry out to the Lord to reveal to us just how much we are hurting our kids. He wants to show us. He wants to break our hearts over it and to see us come to the point of repentance so that He can do what He has wanted to do in our hearts all along, but that we have been too stubborn to let Him do. It is time for us to cry out to Him: “Lord, show us the truth about our unloving ways! Break our hearts so that we can be changed from the inside out!”

So you may be wondering – do I still spank my kids? Yes, I do – the ones who need an immediate correction that they can understand because they are not yet able to govern themselves. You see, my kids always have the opportunity to govern themselves first – to choose to obey, to choose not to hit, to choose to… or not to. When they choose not listen to my words, they will get corrected in a way that makes an impression on them, and that may or may not be in the form of a spanking.

To be honest, I have been surprised that the more I have come to recognize and understand the voice of the Holy Spirit, the less I have spanked. That is not to say that my kids do not continue to need my correction and instruction. They are still very immature and have a long ways to go in developing Christlike character. But the Lord has been impressing me with His wisdom in addressing their self-centeredness in specific ways so that more often than not, their correction does not include a spanking at all.

I began by saying that I would share about my own experience with spanking, but as it turns out, the real issue that needed to be addressed was the one in my heart. The Lord is in the business of changing hearts. There is nothing that He finds more pleasure in than leading us into victory over our specific unloving ways of relating. Thank you, Jesus, for loving us so much that you want to come beside us and make a way for us to taste that victory that you gave us so long ago through your work on the cross.

~ Christi Faagau

You can find the third part of this series here.

10 comments

  1. I’m constantly inspired by your humility and honesty, Christi. Thank you for this excellent post, I’ll probably refer back to it often as I love your description of your repentance.

  2. Excellent example of the need for repentance in order to truly change. Repentance is just that ….a turning around in direction of our heart. Thank you for sharing from your heart!

    1. Hi Susan, you are always welcome to share any LOL blog posts on your wall or to pass them on to others. 🙂 Thanks for checking!
      ~ Christi

  3. I can relate to realizing that spanking in anger is wrong… heck, making any parenting decision out of anger or frustration is always going to be the wrong choice. In my own experience, I have found that spanking is a poor way of setting boundaries for children. Using pain to make someone do or stop doing something is not how God teaches his own children. God has never hit me in my life, no matter how horribly I have behaved. If an adult who should know better can experience the correction of God without the need to be inflicted with physical pain, why should I hold my child to a different standard? I was a spanking parent for many years, but I have found spanking to be incompatible with what I understand of the character of God. It’s not the worst thing you can do, but it’s not a reflection of how God treats his own children.

    1. I would disagree with you that we don’t experience pain in our lives when we walk in disobedience to God. I have personally witnessed many parents being in excessive pain and anguish when the unloving seeds they have sown into their relationships blossoms into very hurtful broken relationships and rebellious children. God uses such circumstances to get people’s attention toward turning to Him for correction and instruction— toward coming to Him to know how to do things differently. I am not saying that all difficult circumstances are caused by God, but that He certainly allows them, and sometimes they serve the purpose of getting our attention turned toward Him, causing us to fear the Lord. A sting lovingly delivered to a young child, who is not yet old enough to listen to reason, in order to get their attention accomplishes the same thing. This post is about spanking in anger, which is ALWAYS wrong.

    2. I have experienced firsthand the pain of willfully choosing to ignore the correction and instruction of the Lord. For many years, I made the choice to habitually disobey the Lord in the ways that I selfishly related with my family. As a direct result of my rebellion, I lost the hearts of the very individuals that I claimed to love the most, bringing death to my relationships with my husband and children. The Lord loved me enough to use these extremely painful relational consequences in my own life to bring me to a place of brokenness and repentance. Not once did he punish me in anger. But He did allow consequences that were motivated by His love for me to draw me back to Him.
      ~ Christi

  4. I have found that spanking usually drives a wedge between parent and child relationship and shuts down communication. What you said is so true, that when listening to the Holy Spirit, spanking does not seem to happen as much, and for me, there are so many more creative ways to teach your children to make better choices. I agree with the other comment that God does not discipline us in this way. I have personally never been able to justify telling our kids not to “hit” each other, but we can “hit” them if we have a good reason. Doesn’t make sense. Anyway, just encouraging all the moms to think about how spanking may be affecting your relationships with your kids and if it is bringing you all under the Holy Spirit’s direction, and to think of better ways to creatively correct our kids.

  5. This was so good for me to read today, Christi. I want to be free of anger and offensiveness. I have been able to control my actions somewhat, but my attitude, motivation and intentions is another thing entirely. I want to be free of this and I am praying God breaks my heart over this. Thank you for this post!

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