My generation was brought up on these principles. I think we all know that the succeeding generation or two have loosened the reins a bit. Parents today are told never to rebuke, challenge, or punish their children, because “correction,” as described in the Bible, is cruel. Thus many parents have rejected the value of parental discipline because they are afraid of offending their children. Discipline requires pain, and pain does not seem loving. So parents adopt the attitude of the grandfather in Lewis’s illustration and allow their children to do just about whatever they want as long as it makes them happy. The result is that more and more children are exhibiting disrespect, self-centeredness, rudeness, irresponsibility, and resentment toward authority. Fewer parents today are forming their children into what they ought to be—loving and responsible humans.

Recently, I read a disturbing article in the New York Times titled “For Some Parents, Shouting Is the New Spanking.” The author, Hilary Stout, points out that parents are “friending” their children—using the terminology of the Facebook generation—rather than guiding and leading them. We cheer for our children in team sports; we congratulate their every tiny achievement; and we shout rather than spank. Quoting a prominent parenting expert, Stout shows how this approach generates an endless cycle of frustration:

“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. “This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.”14

In the Bible there is no absence of “tools that really work.” Discipline, offered with abiding love, builds children into strong adults. God’s principles are universal. If we can lovingly chasten our children in order to instruct them, He can lovingly chasten us for the same reason.

The Rationale for God’s Discipline

Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.

—HEBREWS 12:9–10