Discipline or Death
“Discipline your son while there is hope. Don’t set your heart on being the cause of his death” (Prov 19:18).
Parenting is one of life’s most rewarding and challenging journeys. As parents, we work hard to raise, guide, and protect our children, hoping they grow up to be responsible and kind adults. The journey, however, often involves making difficult choices and showing tough love. The passage above, “Discipline your son while there is hope. Don’t set your heart on being the cause of his death,” reminds us how important it is to teach and correct our children.
In this blog, we will look at what this proverb means, why it’s important to discipline, and how setting rules can ultimately protect and improve our children’s lives.
Indiscipline and the Sin of Omission
Prov 19:18 says that if you do not discipline your child, you have set your heart on being the cause of his death. This is the sin of omission. It tells us that omission – the failure to do something – can lead to death. We tend to be open minded to the idea that the error of commission, something you did, can result in someone’s death.
However, even the laws of nations recognize that there is something called ‘criminal negligence’. For instance, you were not careful as a doctor and this resulted in the death of a patient. Even though it looked like you were helping the person, you accidentally left the scissors inside his belly, or you forgot a swab inside there and caused his death. You’re not allowed to do that; you cannot be that reckless. You cannot finish surgery and rush off after removing your scrubs and washing your hands. No, you must carefully assess your work and ensure that everything is in place. You must also be careful to pay the people who worked with you.
As a doctor, you cannot choose to keep all the money for yourself and refuse to employ the required number of nurses or doctors who will stand there, point out things to you, correct and remind you. The only reason you can go to prison for such a thing is to discourage others from thinking they can be careless while treating someone.
Another scenario is drunk driving. If you want to drink, take your drink home and get drunk at home. But do not go out, drink and then drive because too many people have killed others from drunk driving. Did you intend to kill anyone? No. Did you intend to harm the person you ran over? No. What did you then do that deserves going to prison? Oh, you didn’t care if you killed someone by being drunk while driving. One thing always leads to another.
So, the parent who does not discipline his child, does not shape them properly, and such a parent wants them to die.
Consequences of Discipline
A child who is not disciplined will die. It’s simple. If the child is not disciplined, corrected, and shaped properly, many bad things will happen; their future will die. They may be the one who will drop out of school, become a drug addict, become pregnant, join a bad gang, or resort to fraud. The way a parent acts with a child should tell you what the definition of discipline is. You caught him once, stealing or deceiving someone, and you reacted gently. Then you saw him do it again, still you reacted gently, and kept reacting in the same way. You are leading to that child’s death. His conscience will die in that area, if he does not die physically.
In many instances, he can get beaten to death or shot. And that is because he continued with that wrong act till he thought he could do it freely. But if he got a flogging that terrified him from stealing, or was deprived of benefits because of what he did, he would have had a godly fear reside in his heart. And whenever he got tempted to do wrong, he would remember his parents, the pain they caused him, how they overreacted, and he would not yield to his impulses. Because unchecked impulses lead to death down the road. The Bible tells you how death is arrived at. Evil desire brings forth sin. Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death (James 1:15).
How to Discipline Effectively
The parent who doesn’t deal with sin plans for their child’s death. You may not be able to deal with his evil desires that much, but you can control them a bit. For instance, you can stop him from watching certain things on TV, from listening to certain things, from reading certain books, and hanging out with people that stir up evil desires in him. You can change their school and warn them against such things. You can control all those things almost fully at 100% when they’re younger. But when they hit a certain age, you can’t have 100% control anymore. You wouldn’t know what they are reading on their phones and they can do all sorts of things with them.
You have up till their teenage years to control certain things. They do not really know that they can rebel at their tender years. But once they hit the higher teens and upwards you cannot do much. Then, whatever you did earlier will take hold – what you allowed, the discipline you put or did not put in will run with them.
If you didn’t put that discipline early, it will be almost impossible to do so once they’re 15 or 16 years up. In front of you, they may not dress the way you don’t like. But once they step out, they’ll put on those trousers. You may not like them watching certain things, and reading certain things, but they’ll do all of that and you can’t be there to stop them. The younger ones come home, eat your food, climb your bed and sleep. You are in control every minute and they don’t feel so offended. But you can’t do that with the older ones. It’s impossible.
So this is how discipline, or the absence of discipline works. You can control desire to a great degree in the early days. You can control sin to a degree by reacting very strongly. But if you were not reacting when they’re younger, it’s almost impossible to do it when they are older. How are you going to not flog them, make them kneel, cause them pain or discomfort of any kind in the early days and then, you want to start when they’re older? They’ll look at you and wonder at your new reaction. Their sense of independence and individuality will be too high for you to begin something on that level.
In fact, for many people, they wonder why their parents didn’t react strongly when they had been acting that way from when they were young. They are shocked that their parents even say anything to them at the older age. By this time, they can talk back to the father and mother, walk out on them, take their things out, insult them, be a terror and disregard them. It is obvious that the reason is that they are unable to change what was. Desire leads to sin. Sin leads to death. What many a parent tries to do most of their lives is to stop their child from encountering death.
Stop the Desire!
Parents! You are trying to stop him from continuing with drugs when he’s hooked, you’re trying to stop her from sleeping around when she’s hooked or trying to stop him from stealing when he’s hooked. If he does not steal physically and he finds out that there’s internet fraud, he will be doing that with his phone. It is a terrible error to try to stop your child from encountering death when you didn’t stop your child from countering evil desires. You didn’t stop him from committing sin, then you came to stage three, when he’s doing his Ph.D., to stop him from being educated. It cannot work. It is too late. This is why parents are to save their children from death by applying the first thing – discipline. Discipline controls desires. Discipline curtails sin. But discipline has no effect on death.
When death is decreed, what can discipline do? Through one man’s sin, death entered the world (Rom 5:17). Death is a consequence. You cannot stop the consequence of planting a mango tree. You can’t stop the consequence of planting a palm tree, except you cut down the palm tree. That means you remove the human or kill the person; remove him from circulation, cut him down. Therefore, discipline your son while there is hope – that is, at the early stage; at the level of evil desire and sin.
There is still hope there. You can discipline them then, when it is only evil desire at work or the possibility of evil desire. You can also discipline them after the evil desire, before it yields sin, or you discipline them when there’s sin. But the stage at which there is no more hope is the stage where death has come to collect its wages. Then you cannot stop death from taking its wages.
