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First: Adrian Peterson did not “spank” his child, he beat him bloody. This is not a matter of a “judgement call.” This isn’t “well some people think differently.” He beat him up. Look it up. There isn’t room for debate here.
Second: Prominent evangelicals as well as Adrian Peterson himself defend this type of action because of the Bible and the faulty belief that somehow God is pleased when parents beat their children on the back, buttocks and scrotum, with a tree branch. I’m not making this up.
Third: The phrase “spare the rod, spoil the child” does not appear in the Bible, though there is an entire industry and collective consciousness built around it.*
These are the reasons I’m unable to be silent about this. It’s not that I want to jump in on a current news story about a professional sports player behaving badly (which would be a full time job right now, it seems.) I wrote a book on Christian parenting and many other books on Christian parenting advise spanking as a legitimate form of “discipline.” I’m ashamed to be a part of this genre of work if that’s the connection people are going to make.
You wanna know who the loudest proponents of hitting your kids are? Christian Pastors. I’m ashamed to be a part of this profession if that’s the connection people are going to make.
Adrian Peterson’s little boy was beaten bloody with a stick because his dad thought God told him to. This is not ok.
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* Proponents of hitting children as a valid form of Christian parenting often use two verses: Proverbs 13:24 and Proverbs 23:13. I’m not going to engage this debate in this post because it’s an example of what is called “prooftexting” which is “is the practice of using isolated quotations from a document to establish a proposition.” I will engage anyone on this question using a debate from either of these two verses if that person is willing to say that disobedient children should also be stoned to death. (Also in the Bible: see Deuteronomy 21:18-21)