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“It is normal practice at church that children are beaten in
front of the entire congregation on Wednesday evenings,” the girl
told the police in the petition. She just celebrated her 11th birthday.
A twelve-year-old boy confirmed his sister’s statements and
gave police further details. He told police that the children had to
partially strip to receive their punishment.
If the parents do not bring their own punishment tool, the
church will furnish them with a white cord.
--Practices at a North side Baptist church in Milwaukee,
taken from juvenile court records and quoted in “The
Last ? Resort”, Spring, 1994 | | Many people sincerely believe that in forcing adolescents to assume obscene postures for “paddling,” and even in pulling children’s and adolescent’s underwear down for “spanking,” that they are somehow “disciplining the way God does.” We even find cases where adults beat adolescent's buttocks as part of a very twisted "worship service." I doubt any real or imagined “pagan Satan worship” service could be any less biblical, or more perverse, than these “church spanking sessions” with child and adolescent victims. Even a casual reading of Scripture shows that nothing could be further from God’s methods. | | The word “buttocks” occurs only three times in the King James Bible—all in the Old Testament. (2 Samuel 10:4, I Chronicles 19:4-5, Isaiah 20:4). Two of those refer to the same incident. Neither of them refer to child care or to “spanking. In each case an opposing army strips their conquered enemies buttocks as a way to [sexually] humiliate them. Never, however, is any child treated this way by parents in the Bible. Stripping the buttocks of anyone is, biblically speaking, an act of wartime brutality that fits in with rape and killing. It has no other “biblical application” whatsoever. The army stripping was never commanded by God or any prophet. Baring the buttocks was certainly never described as something to do to children or adolescents of any age for any reason. | | Many fundamentalist preachers, ignorantly or simplistically, distinguish the biblical concepts of “adultery” as “sex by a married person with someone other than the spouse,” and “fornication” as “sex between two unmarried people.” “Fornication,” i.e. the Greek “porneia,” actually describes a much larger class of activities, however, than “intercourse between unmarried people.” It is, in fact, the root that we get our word “porno” from, and it covers about the same broad class of behaviors as "porno" does to us today. Thus “spanking” someone, at least someone who is not your spouse, for sexual pleasure is “fornication,” or “porno,” just as much as having intercourse with them would be. Every single Bible verse that condemns fornication, and those who practice it, condemns just as strongly people who spank children or adolescents for sexual enjoyment as surely as if they were having intercourse with them. For those who want a very direct New Testament reference that condemns paddling, then this is it, if we but open our eyes and acknowledge the sexual abuse aspect that we all know, deep down, is inherent in “spanking” and “paddling.” Even if every perpetrator or witness involved in paddling doesn't "get a rush out of it" on some level, we know that a high percentage do, and we know that a secret videotape of the event would constitute first class child or adolescent pornography. | | The preacher who enjoys “paddling” teen girls or boys at a “Christian school” during the week, and then bellows out of the pulpit that kids who “commit fornication are going to hell,” has himself committed "fornication" hundreds of times more grievous than the kids could ever consider. His sins are greatly compounded, according to Jesus, because he is older, has been given more, and should know better. He has further, in a rape like sense, used his church position of power to systematically abuse the most helpless victims possible. He has committed far deeper sins, on far deeper levels, than the "little sins" he is bellowing about the kids committing. Worse even than any of the sinful, hypocrite Pharisees that Jesus so emphatically condemned, our modern, paddling preacher, "follower of Christ" is fully the snake, viper, hypocrite, and empty tomb that “looks good on the outside but is full of death inside” (Matthew 23). His fornications are not even consensual. They are forced or coerced upon helpless kids and adolescents, and are performed in a very coercive, brutal, and violent fashion. His spanking fornications are among the worst sins men may commit because they further cause "Jesus' little ones" to stumble spiritually. His infliction of pain and humiliation to helpless “little ones” is actually an infliction upon society, and even more so to true religion that his practices so deeply pervert. His spanking/paddling abuse is the direct cause, rather than a cure, of many sexual problems for the kids, as well as for himself and other adults. The devastation and morality problems the victims suffer and deal with are, in fact, many thousands of times worse than any “petting,” or experimental sexual acts the kids explore with willing, consensual, young partners. | | That does not mean that we are "promoting promiscuity" between children or teens. It is better for them if they can wait for marriage. I didn’t. Most of you readers didn’t either, regardless of your religious beliefs. As we put marriage off to older and older ages, fewer and fewer people will have their first sexual experience of any kind on their wedding night, if that were ever common. But at least philosophically it would be better in many ways to wait until marriage, or at least to have a monogamous partner if sex is engaged in without marriage. This is just as Jesus noted with the Pharisees as well: some of their advice is good. Kids, especially at young ages, are well advised to resist sexual urges or having sex too early when they can’t handle the consequences. As with the Pharisees, we might do well to heed some of the hypocrite abuser’s advice, but we should neither follow nor accept their sinful, child abusing deeds. | | Today’s paddle-whacking Pharisees are worse than any were in Jesus' day. They need first to get the paddle “out of their own eye” so that they might clearly see to help guide teens to sexual modesty (Matthew 7:5). The children and teen’s dignity is something which the child beating religionists (not followers of Christ by any means) themselves grossly violate every time they pick up their paddle toys that can literally only be purchased at S/M sex fetish suppliers. It is hardly surprising that the high paddling states have higher divorce rates and higher sexually transmitted disease rates than non-paddling states. The spanking and paddling of teens increases their sexual promiscuity--the very thing the preachers are verbally railing against from the pulpit. |
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