When you believe that you are a vile, filthy piece of scum and that you are unworthy of God's love, could this perhaps transfer to how you view your children? And to how you discipline them?
In my fundamentalist upbringing, children were viewed as little more than wretched sinners who must be spanked into submission. And although we would have certainly protested against that characterization, our actions proved otherwise.
Our perspective of "child-training" ran very similar to the systematic chastisement espoused by Michael & Debi Pearl. Thankfully, none of our "training sessions" ever ended in death or hospitalization.
But many of us often went around with bruised behinds. And in my case, a kind of chronic heartache. It was like always living in a parched state, nearly dying of thirst for love. My husband says I was so needy when he first met me and that I required copious amounts of attention and affirmation.
In fact, it wasn't until our 7th wedding anniversary that I finally started believing he loved me.
Of course, there were many reasons for this but one of them was that, as a child, I'd been trained and programed quite systematically. It was a form of mental conditioning that was often achieved through corporeal punishment.
Sometimes I wonder what motivated such harsh discipline. Was part of it the rigorous meeting schedule that required all children to sit through 5 hours of meetings on Sundays? I mean, how else do you get a 2 year old to sit quietly through 5 hours of meeting? Lots of spankings, of course.
But I wonder if the other part, the part that gets to the deeper root of why there was so much harsh discipline was due to our deeply ingrained assumptions about who we were. We believed in the inherent evil of all humans.
Isn't it easier to repeatedly spank your child when you believe she's inherently evil? In our group, parents started spanking their babies when they were around 6 months old because this was when babies started trying to "manipulate" their parents by exerting their "rebellious will."
Looking back, it seems blindingly obvious that spanking a 6 month old is ridiculously abusive. But that's the power of peer pressure. When all the parents are attending the same meetings and reading the same "child-training" books, there arises a definitively creepy ability to quash the natural protective, parental instincts.
Suddenly, your greatest concern is not your child's best interest but how you appear to the group. You don't want to look like the lazy, bad parent who doesn't have "control" of her child. So, it becomes easier and easier to tell yourself that you're spanking your child for "his/her own good."
And when you truly believe that you, yourself are unworthy of God's love that you, yourself are a wicked, vile, piece of scum...well....the unflagging certainty of your belief motivates you to discipline your child likewise--to save his/her soul from Hell, of course.
I realize that my experience in fundamentalism is the extreme exception. However, the idea of total depravity and/or inherent human wickedness is prevalent through out many modern Christian churches. And I often wonder if any of them pause to examine how this belief affects the way they view their children.
Some people say that my experience has clouded my objectivity and has rendered me incapable of understanding these doctrines. I get emails and comments from folks saying that my past is preventing me from seeing clearly.
In fact, when I wrote about the horrific abusive "child-training" practice of Michael and Debi Pearl, I got all kinds of emails from people asserting that I was simply reacting negatively as a result of my own bad experience.
Also, they argued, they had used the Pearls' methods and it had worked for them! They had reared wonderful, awesome, God-fearing servants of the Lord!
Perhaps there's a measure of truth to the idea that my bad experience affects my ability to approach these topics in an unbiased way. I guess when you've suffered actual trauma as a result of aberrant religious belief you do become a tad allergic to, say, "proof texts" being pulled out of context to supposedly prove that a child ought to be "beaten with rods" to save her soul from Hell.
Still, even with my allergic reaction to proof texts, the dismissive attitudes towards my ability to think through these issues strikes me as flat-out patronization.
Yes, my experience was extreme but I think it's actually enabled me to identify some of the root errors that led to the inevitable craziness and abuse.
Which is to say, when you believe in total depravity, is it entirely out of the realm of possibility to suggest that this belief can lead to abusive discipline of children? I'd say it's entirely plausible, actually.
In fact, I may go so far as to suggest that it's one of the primary motivating factors.
To sum up, I really enjoyed one of the last comments to my post about the inherent nature of humans. I agree with Aimee that my mothering heart is being healed, too. Here's what Aimee wrote:
The only thing that I wanted to say is I know that having been brainwashed with "people inherently evil" mindset, it really affects our view of children. I have been in Christian parenting circles that dehumanize children and always look at them through that lens of "they are evil...they are manipulating you"...and these people can't/don't truly enjoy their kids when they view them as evil! (And truthfully, I still struggle with not viewing my own children this way, b/c teaching like this runs deep) I started believing a few years ago that we are a mixture of both with propensity for both...it not only gave me a love/compassion/grace for my fellow man and made me feel "one with humanity", but also it healed my mothering heart in many ways.
What do you think? Does belief in the inherent wickedness of children
make parents more susceptible to abusive disciplinary practices?
