Teenage Delinquents Should Be Publicly Beaten With a Rod
In a more sane society, the teenager would be flogged or beaten with a rod, released, and then made to pay restitution.
In Douglas Wilson’s own words: 2 quotes from 2018, from Why Children Matter, each cited to the source.
Proverbs is talking about corporal punishment for some eighteen-year-old teenage delinquent, the kind of kid that wrecks someone’s car. In a more sane society, the teenager would be flogged or beaten with a rod, released, and then made to pay restitution.
One of the great errors of our day is that we have tried to have the civil magistrate take over the job of discipline. Why do we have penitentiaries? That is where you go to become penitent. The whole system of the penitentiary was built by the state to do the familial work of discipline, which the civil magistrate is not competent to do. The civil magistrate is assigned the sword (Rom. 13), not the spanking spoon.