"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 1:7).

"I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him" (Luke12:4,5)

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As a child, I had a healthy fear of my parents, and my father, in particular. You see, to my ultimate benefit, my parents were not avid readers and surely did not read Dr. Benjamin Spock's "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care" (1946). They raised me as they had been raised, adhering as they did to Samuel Butler's "Hudibras" which includes the lines:

Love is a boy by poets styl'd;
Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.

Though I am a "Baby Boomer," my parents surely did not "spare the rod" and most assuredly did not "spoil the child." I recall with vivid details several monumental "spankings." I put spanking in quotes because it seems like a inappropriately mild descriptor for what my father thought was sufficient disciplining. Also, I will be the first to admit that I gave him many opportunities to not spare any available rod.

My parents divorced when I was 9 or 10 and my father had custody of his only son. We lived with my paternal grandmother for a stretch and, then, in 1961 my father remarried. My new little family, the three of us, moved into their new home soon after. I mention all this for a point, so bear with me. My new mother (and she truly fulfilled that role over the next 47 years) was, in the beginning, a little wary of how to deal with me, her new responsibility. I, on the other hand, thought I knew exactly what to do with this interloper. My 11 year old cockiness culminated in two concurrent lessons:

Lesson #1: I learned that parents, biological or not, deserved and demanded respect, and

Lesson #2: My father was a World Class instructor of Lesson #1.

The course in family pecking order began with a seemingly innocuous remark I made, probably as a test of my newly-developed adolescent wit. One evening, I was particularly full of myself (not a unusual state of affairs) and was not particularly pleased with what was being offered up for my evening meal. My newly-reconstituted parents were a 3-jobs-to-make-ends-meet couple. My new mother had hurried from her 20 mile commute after a hard days work and proceeded, as she alone always did, to prepare dinner for her two males. This particular evening she chose TV dinners. Now, remember, TV dinners in the 60s had to be oven-cooked. There were no microwave ovens then, so even though they were pre-cooked, they still required significant time and trouble. She was harried, even more than usual, and prepared what she could. So, sensitive child that I was, as I walked away from the table on my way outside to play football in the street, I made a sarcastic "Thanks for supper!" and ambled outside. As I left, I probably smirked with satisfaction over the true genius of my barbed tongue. Big mistake!

Well, it just so happened that my new mother had suffered through a particularly bad day and was PMS'ing at the time. [I only learned this recently as she recalled the incident for me from her view] In my defense, I ask you: How was I to know? She started quietly crying (she was not one for histrionics) and Dad came by and noticed the tears. Inquiring about what was wrong, he heard the story of his smartalecky son's remark. I distinctly remember the unusually urgent tone of voice he had when he called for me to come back into the house. To make a painful story as brief as possible, Dad went all "Raging Bull" on me and I received - politely described - the beating ("spanking" would never begin to describe the ferocity of the encounter) of my young life. The two-inch wide Post Office-belt kind. I think my mother, herself, had to call the old bull off the backside of the younger bull.

I learned two additional things from this touching "Father-Son Moment." First, as if from a Chinese fortune cookie: "Be happy with what you get" whether it is a TV dinner or a 16 ounce sirloin steak. And, more importantly, I understood where I stood within my new little family. That would be, for those keeping score, dead last. I may have pouted for days afterwards but, in retrospect, I certainly deserved what I got. I found out who was the functioning head of the newly family unit and it was not my father. And it was assuredly not me. Valuable lessons, learned early, may be painful but they are well-learned. From then on, I knew to tread lightly.

I do not feel particularly "scarred" psychologically from my disciplining, even the near-death experience over the TV dinners. I developed a healthy and constructive fear - yes, FEAR - of the potential destructiveness my father could wreck on me if I disrespected either parent. I was able, in very short order, to restructure my behavior in order to avoid such encounters again. Since this period of rapid learning, I have never had nightmares of my father actually succeeding in beating me to death. Further, I consider myself, for the most part, a functional, contributing member of society. To this day, I love and respect my parents and would never say anything disrespectful to them even though, physically, my father can no longer instill any sense of fear in me as I carried in my youth.

The question asked today by psychologists and parents as well is whether or not spanking is justified. "Experts" hang their hats on several behavioral studies comparing mental illness and behavior in of adults who were spanked and those who were not. A study from Ontario, Canada study (results below) showed a linkage between spanking and anxiety, depression and addictive behavior in adults. A more recent study (2002) concluded that "Children become aggressive, delinquent, and have mental health problems, both in childhood and in adulthood. Elizabeth Gershoff, of Columbia University's National Center for Children in Poverty remarked "Americans need to re-evaluate why we believe it is reasonable to hit young, vulnerable children, when it is against the law to hit other adults, prisoners, and even animals."

Ontario Study (1995) 

Adult disorder	Never spanked	Rarely spanked	Sometimes/often spanked
Anxiety	16.3%	18.8%	21.3%
Major depression	4.6%	4.8%	6.9%
Alcohol abuse or addiction	5.8%	10.2%	13.2%
More than one disorder *	7.5%	12.6%	16.7%

Physical punishment has been banned in the educational systems of all Western European countries and most of the United States. I think this dim view of corporal punishment has been to the detriment of our society and is a direct cause of the rampant misbehavior that parents, teachers, and police face from "Generation Next" or whatever label given to describe the youth of this nation today.

If the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the healthy fear of one's parents is the beginning of discipline and self-control and respect - for self and authority. What I believe is going on in contemporary society is that the overindulgence of the children of today has brought about a complete disregard for authority. We have even transformed what once was the most fearful authoritarian entity for centuries past - God - into a Santa Claus-like figure that is cuddly and forgiving. Moses feared the vengeance and power of God but laughed in the face of the most powerful mortal in ancient Egypt, Pharaoh. The Christian world was tamed and converted from barbarism not by the power of nations and armies but by the threat of immortality in the pits of fire and brimstone.

The taming of the parent by pop psychology with the endpoint being "I want to be my child's friend" has also been perpetrated by those who would make the most awe-inspiring, fearsome entity of our heritage, God, less imposing. Roosevelt was vocalizing the ultimate demagoguery when he intoned "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Without a healthy fear, man is neutered. As Russell Kirk sagely observes: "Fear lacking, hope and aspiration fall."

Just as the "parent-as-friend" movement has undermined discipline and other positive aspects of human behavior in our young, the transformation of the fearsome God of Moses to the cuddly father figure of the "God is Love" movement has knocked away the underpinning of Christian (e.g. American) society. Without fear of Divine Retribution and eternal damnation facing those who sin against man and God, we are loosed from the restraints necessary for order and advancement of our culture.

And, with it, the emotion of fear and dread find unsatisfying substitutes in culture through grotesque cinema "horror movies" and the perverse and degrading in all things. Our youth, devoid of the salutary fear derived from both parents who discipline and God who promises eternal retribution, seek the replacements of the human need for fear and awe in increasingly perverse outlets. And we are, despite the myriad sources of entertainment we have available, bored to death. All primitive thoughts of fear removed, we cannot seem to fill the vacuum of what is a really very human need. The pathology runs deep, as reported by Tom Kuntz in the New York Times:

''We are bored despite living in remarkable times,'' concludes a recent annual survey of consumer attitudes by the market research concern Yankelovich Partners, which notes that last year 71 percent of roughly 2,500 respondents yearned for more novelty in their lives, up from 67 percent just a year earlier. The study calls the paradox the ''boredom boom...Just as a drug user develops a tolerance and needs larger doses to achieve the same effect, so too have we developed a tolerance to amazing events." [Emphasis mine]

And with the "boredom boom" has come more anti-social behavior, delinquency, and criminality. "Yearning for more novelty" in the absence of anything to dread, young people seek out and participate in extreme sports, drugs, promiscuity and deviancy. The Creator, reduced to being "best buddies," is pointed to after home runs, touchdowns and after successful 7 second rides on a bull as if God sanctioned and encouraged such trivialities. We, encouraged by the clergy, imagine God with an invisible hand on our shoulders and encouraging us like a cheering fan. In the minds of those who do not respect much less fear the Creator, He becomes our father sitting in his easy chair reading the Sunday comics, eager to comfort us and bunce us on His knee.

Generation Next respects and fears nothing of importance. Not parents. Not the God of our Forefathers. Not death. And without these essential ingredients, an entire generation has been unleashed on our venerable culture. Bored, disinterested and perpetually searching for meaning, the young of today are destined for (as Thoreau observed) "lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with their song still in them." Delivered from the healthy fear of authority (from parents and God), all lives become neutered, materialistic and self-centered.

Such is the age we live in.