Tea in a Beer Mug

The purpose of this post is to add my voice to what I hope is, by now, the clamor of Christian voices speaking up against abuse in the name of our Savior.
This bit of news shook me to the core. A seven-year-old little girl is dead. The little girl had been adopted three years ago from Liberia. Apparently, she was repeatedly beaten with a length of 1/4-inch plumbing supply line, as Michael and Debi Pearl of No Greater Joy Ministries teach parents to do.

A swift swat with a light, flexible instrument will sting without bruising or causing internal damage. Many people are using a section of ¼ inch plumber’s supply line as a spanking instrument. It will fit in your purse or hang around you neck. You can buy them for under $1.00 at Home Depot or any hardware store. They come cheaper by the dozen and can be widely distributed in every room and vehicle. Just the high profile of their accessibility keeps the kids in line.

In the same article, we find that the number of “licks” they recommend to properly satisfy a child’s need to experiece payback is ten to fifteen. Pearl says that is being kind.

If you have trained properly, this may never happen to your child, but if it does come to this, you are not helpless. The soul of your child needs to be punished. He feels the need to suffer for his misdeeds. What I am telling you is well understood by the most reprobate of modern psychiatrists and psychologists. They call it a “guilt complex.” Children and adults in this state of mind often do harm to themselves. Their anger is turned inward because they hate the bad person they know themselves to be. Their soul is crying out for justice to be done to the self. They don’t know what is happening, and they will not voluntarily seek punishment, but their soul needs judgment. When your child is in the first throes of this debilitating condition, be kind enough to punish him. Care enough and love enough to pay the emotional sacrifice to give him ten to fifteen licks that will satisfy his need to experience payback.

If you don’t agree with him, you don’t love your children.

If you do not see the wisdom in what I have said, and you reject these concepts, you are not fit to be a parent. I pity your children. They will never experience the freedom of soul and conscience that mine do.

In another article, Michael encourages the mother of a four-year-old who runs away when she knows she’s in trouble, to sit on her if necessary, and to discipline until she gives in.
Yes, he emphasizes control, but he encourages to start with five licks, add two for the fit, and keep adding on until she gives in, threatening with more and harder blows.

The issue is not one of control, or not disciplining in anger. Nothing tells us that Lydia’s adoptive parents were angry at her, or disciplining her out of control. You don’t have to lose control to abuse a child.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of their teaching is that they claim it’s God’s way.

When is a marriage no longer worth fighting for?
When disrespect creeps in?
When one spouse is unfaithful once?
When unfaithfulness becomes the norm?
When one spouse wants out?
When one (or both) spouse(s) is not committed to the marriage?
When one spouse disregards the other spouse’s desires?
When the couple have no sexual life any more?

In Christian circles you’ll hear a lot about how God hates divorce. I believe he does. But I wonder, is divorce an event, like a wedding, or does it creep in slowly, as two people who promised to be one start drifting appart, or as one spouse sets something else above the marriage even if that something else is a threat to it; Or when both spouses lose respect for each other.
Sure, divorce papers, like a marriage license, are formalities that make something final. While people are not legally married or divorced until they sign the papers, the commitment to each other begins and ends before papers are signed.

One spouse may have left the marriage and be treating the other as a meal ticket or a servant. There’s no respect, no love, no commitment. I think that spouse needs a paper in the hand that legally frees him (and the abused spouse) to go on with life.

Some people will hang on to a defunct marriage for decades believing that not divorcing is what it’s all about. Like the engaged couple who don’t have sexual intercourse before marriage ( but indulge in everything else), believing that “abstinence” makes them sexually pure.

Sometimes it’s so hard…