Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child

Life is a maze of mirrors, yet not all mirrors are equal.
Only one type of mirror is capable of reflecting reality.
All the others are warped and show a distorted image of reality.

Some people spend an entire lifetime gazing at their image in a warped mirror, because they prefer the reflection of the false image of themselves over the reflection of their true image.
They look away from YHWH's mirror and seek validation and support in the mirrors reflecting a false image of themselves.

'Spare the rod, spoil the child' means you deprive your children of seeing their reflection in the mirror of YHWH's reality.
Instead, they see themselves reflected in the corrupt mirror you hold up to them, and they learn to relate to that image as their reality, their true identity.
The image becomes a straightjacket shaping their walk through life, obstructing them wherever they go.

When the Bible speaks of 'sparing the rod, spoiling the child', it refers to withholding YHWH's standard of truth.
It does not mean corporeal punishment, as if by beating your child you are automatically doing the right thing.
The rod is the standard of YHWH by means of which He defines, affects and shapes our reality.

Wherever YHWH's mirror of reality is withheld a corrupt mirror takes its place.
This corrupt mirror is held up by you, the parent, and the corruption comes in the form of either omission, or commission.

There are two ways of sparing the rod.
The first way is when you replace YHWH's mirror with the mirror of permissiveness.
You do this by not informing your child of what is right and good according to YHWH's standard, or by not disciplining your child when it has done wrong.

The lack of correction when it is required holds up a corrupt mirror of your own standard to your child.
The child sees a reflection of itself in your mirror which states that the evil the child committed is right, because it did not have to face the consequences in the form of discipline.

Spoiled children grow up with an unrestrained ego which is rooted in the corruption of the mirror they are looking at, as well as a set of false values.
When YHWH's mirror comes on their path in life, the conflict between the corrupt mirror they believe in and YHWH's mirror produces a conflict, and they have difficulty in coming to terms with it.
They may even end up hating their parents because they set them up to fail in life by not allowing them experience the truth of the mirror of existence.

The parents in turn may not have intended any harm to their child, and simply wanted to protect their child from any negative influence and harm.
Yet if their protection meant that they did not confront their children with the consequences of behaving contrary to YHWH's standard, which is the act of withholding the true mirror of existence, they have done their children a lot of harm in spite of their good intentions.

Loving your children also means correcting them when it is so required of you to do so.
Anything less than that means a dire lack of true love on the part of the parents.

Sparing the rod and thereby spoiling the child implies that you teach a child that he can do evil, and expect good in return.
That is the corrupt mirror you hold up to them.
You do not provide your children with a mirror of truth, but instead you show them a mirror which lies.

The second way of sparing the rod is by forcefully applying your own self-righteous rod in place of YHWH's rod.
This happens when your child has done wrong, and instead of disciplining your child in the right way, your form of discipline is distorted by for instance your anger and frustration, or by your games of manipulation through guilt or otherwise.
What you did was that you took away the reflection of your child in YHWH's mirror, and substituted it with the reflection in your own mirror, which has its roots in your corruption.

Your child may have lied about something and therefore applying the standard of YHWH's mirror requires correction.
The self-righteous parent decides to use pent up anger and frustration to 'apply correction', which really is a way to vent the anger by appointing the child as the recipient of the brunt of your anger.
You put your own mirror in front of YHWH's mirror and as a result your child is not corrected, but victimized and confused.
Furthermore, you defiled YHWH's mirror by pretending to act in the authority of His standard.

The stripes of discipline you apply the wrong way to your child cause wounds which go much deeper than the skin alone.
The marks of the wounds will cripple your child's soul so that he grows up crooked in the image of your crooked mirror.
You forced a corrupt image of your self-righteous anger on your child, and you damaged a soul which was entrusted into your care.

You will have to answer for that to YHWH when He holds up His own mirror to you.
If you have children you carry the responsibility for the way you affect and burden them with your own sins.
Nothing is hidden, not even our most inward thoughts, and you will not get away with your hidden motives and the things you do in secret.

Remember the expression 'If you live by the sword, you shall die by the sword'?
This expression is the embodiment of the mirror of reality as YHWH created it.
The principle is simply this: if you put out evil, evil will be done unto you, so with your evil intent you ultimately end up hurting yourself.

By perverting the meaning of the principle of 'sparing the rod and spoiling the child' you end up damaging them with your anger and self-righteousness.
The result will be that the abused child does not feel corrected, but he feels victimized, and rightly so.

The abuse can come in the form of angrily beating up a child, but it also comes in the guise of psychological abuse.
Whereas the first is easy to detect, the psychological abuse can be difficult to detect and perhaps is the most deadly form of abuse since it avails itself of the use of guilt and manipulation.
Once the guilt force is set in motion and channelled through manipulation it tends to become a perpetuum mobile, changing the psychological profile of the victim through the seed of manipulation based on the guilt.

Whenever the guilt game of manipulation is played, children tend to project their anger and hatred towards themselves, leading to devastating destructive outcomes for their lives.
Psychological abuse sows seeds of destruction in the heart of the child which will grow up to produce fruit after their character, capable of bringing the life of the child to complete ruin.

Too often correction become a license for abuse.
When the principle of 'sparing the rod, spoiling the child' is abused to vent frustration and anger, beating the child into submission and destroying a child's character in the name of correction, then this principle takes on very dark overtones and turns into a sword which destroys instead of a rod which corrects.

Taking correction as a license for abuse causes the evil you put out to be replicated in the next generation.
Your child, suffering under the injustice and responding with an inner anger and resentment towards your hypocrisy, now has to deal with the presence of your demons in his heart, and your evil is visited upon him.

The same is true for psychological abuse.
The child may harbor a deep grudge against you for your manipulation and your insincerity, and how you try to destroy the independent character of your child with your tactics and your unspoken hidden intentions.
This child may feel like the most worthless person in the world because of the guilt over resenting you, not knowing how to deal with it because you have plastered this child's mouth shut with your sly games of manipulation.
Here too your demons have found their way into the child's heart through the secret anger in the child. 

In the case of abuse, whether it is by means of corporeal punishment or psychological games of manipulation, you do not provide your child with the mirror of YHWH's reality.
Instead, you broke that mirror and held up your own corrupt mirror in its place when you vented your own frustration and abused your child.
Your self-righteous abuse broke YHWH's mirror, and held up a corrupted mirror, one which reflects an image of your evil back at the child.
You become a devourer of the souls of your children as you destroy them with your hypocrisy.

Sometimes I see preachers promoting the principle of 'sparing the rod' with a little bit too much enthusiasm and too little understanding. 
Perhaps you have heard them preach about the good old days when  'Johnny was taken behind the barn for a thrashing with the belt'.
Words like that can easily lend themselves as a religious legitimization for abuse, and the preacher promoting this is equally responsible.

All too often the self-righteous parents love to beat up their 'wicked child' so that in the end 'no evil is left in that child', and it can grow up into a perfectly conformed oak of righteousness just like THEY are, applying the same principle of 'correction' in the name of 'sparing the rod, spoiling the child' to the next generation.
They just LOVE to sway the rod to the beat of their fuming anger in the name of righteousness, venting all their pent up frustration on that 'wicked' child.

I have seen the broken spirits of individuals raised in an environment under the rule of a hypocritical fear-based religion where the abuse of the rod of correction is standard practise and turned into a destructive mental hammer beating the children into cog-conformity.
It robs people of their character and their identity, replacing it with a pseudo-identity in the image of the hypocrite parents.
It destroys the spirit of a child, and if by some miracle of YHWH such a kid survives this chamber of horrors he has to deal with the wounds for the rest of his natural life.

Children grow up in that environment, and after a while nobody seems to be at home in their body any longer.
Instead you look into the eyes of a shell repeating the words of their parents, attending the same church, following the same routine, robots.
Ironically, although having a religious veneer of believing in Jesus or Yahshua as the Messiah, these environments are the complete opposite of walking in faith in Yahshua, because they lead people to guilt, fear and doubt instead of peace, confidence and faith.

So, I cringe when I see preachers reminiscing the 'good old days' when little Johnny was taken behind the barn to make acquaintance with the rod of correction, which all too often was nothing but the rod of pent-up frustration and anger, the magic wand of demons to shape the recipient of the lashes in the image of the demons applying the lashes.

To apply the rod means that you discipline your child in love, without venting any frustration.
To do this correctly you must be business-like in your approach, and use a measure of correction in accordance with the severity of the transgression.

Applying the rod does NOT equal corporeal punishment.
It stands for disciplining someone by confronting them with the consequences of the evil they are guilty of.

If it is standard practise in your home to apply correction through corporeal punishment you really should ask yourself what is wrong with YOU that you feel the need to hit your children, which basically is a very dumb method of 'correction'.
Surely if you love your children you want them to be smart and intelligent?
Then correct them intelligently with a right spirit whenever necessary.

The important thing is that you do this with love, and not out of anger or frustration.
When you get yourself out of the way, children can see their reflection in YHWH's mirror which you uphold very clearly, and it confronts them with what they have done wrong in the clearest way.
YOUR responsibility as a parent is to make sure you hold up an undefiled mirror of YHWH, and NOT your own mirror which has been corrupted by either anger or other negative emotions, or by a wrong concept of good and evil, right and wrong.

Surely it is not difficult to see that although 'sparing the rod' may corrupt your child, disciplining your child in the wrong way can harm them to an even greater extent?
Both sparing the rod and applying the rod the wrong way have in common that they are expressions of the absence of true love.
And true love is what a child needs most.

So if you love your child, give him a true mirror of existence, with love.
A mirror which reflects back at the child his wrong, and a mirror which affirms the true image of the child.

Discipline carrying the motivation of true love is the way of giving your child the reflection of his image in YHWH's mirror.
Abuse in the name of correction carries the signature of evil, and it gives your child the reflection of his image in the corrupted image of evil.

Life is a maze of mirrors, mirrors of corruption and a mirror of reality.
As we move through the maze, we chose which mirrors we identify with.

Don't you know that there are mirrors all around you, and that you will find mirrors of yourself also in your children?

The conformist child will show you a reflection of your veneer, and because you like this image, you will reward the child who upholds this image to you.

Yet the rebellious child which will show you a reflection of the very thing you wish to bury beneath a contrasting veneer, will be rejected, all too often ending up on the receiving end of the brunt of your anger because the child reflects back at you the very thing you are in denial of.

So, if you have this mix of conformist and rebellious children, perhaps it is time for introspection.
For if you persist in your denial, punishing the one who reflects the elements of your denial, ultimately you will be confronted with the rod you used to beat your child when YHWH will hold up His mirror to you, and you seen your evil coming back at you.

Both the ones who refused to give their child the mirror of existence and spoiled them rotten, and the ones who use the principle of 'sparing the rod, spoiling the child' as an excuse for unleashing anger and beating up the child, are individuals who end up destroying their children.
Both will ultimately be forced to look in YHWH's mirror and acknowledge who they really are.

So if you secretly love to beat up your child because it feels good to relieve your anger and feel justified about doing it: know that if you do not return from your ways you will meet in YHWH the one who will use the rod of your self-righteous anger against you so that you will be destroyed as you have destroyed.

And if you spoiled your child and thereby fostered evil in your child, withholding YHWH's mirror of existence from that child so that this child grows up crooked in the image of your mirror, you will find in YHWH the destruction of the wickedness of your heart.

Life is a maze of mirrors, with one mirror of truth among many mirrors of lies.
The image you choose to identify with may be the reflection of either truth or a lie.

Depending on your choice you will find either a confirmation of truth upon leaving this maze as you venture into the real life of the spirit, or the shock of gazing into the reality of what you truly are will send you off into the great abyss.