Tough Love

Proverbs 13: Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.

Back in September, God inspired a devotion I called Loving Correctly in which I raged against the outrage over the Adrian Peterson issue with his kids (obviously I'm not supporting child abuse, but several Dr's raged against spanking as abuse).  To me, scripture is clear that in order to love someone correctly, discipline is required.  Today's society disagrees not with me, but with scripture.  Let me illustrate:
A loving parent will not let his child play in a busy street for their own protection.  If a child chases a ball into that street a loving parent will warn the child and tell them to look both ways before entering the street.  In my experience, this first offense is usually a teaching moment because the child simply doesn't know about the dangers involved in their behavior.  A repeat offense brings about discipline because now they clearly know better and we are simply looking out for what's best for our child.  No one argues the point (unless the second offense results in a spanking).  Yet in today's society, adults refuse to be held accountable for their childish and self-centered actions in spite of the fact that they know better.  We've become masters at justification and rationalization.  We can twist, contort, extract information out of context, and just downright ignore clear direction and rationalize it or make excuses for our behavior.  We even label our behavior with all kinds of medical excuses, with names that don't matter as long as it cannot be clearly defined as our own fault.  We live in a no-fault society.
Yet we know from the outset that to properly care for our children, discipline is required no matter how hard it might be.  Somehow we as adults think we've outgrown the need for discipline just like so many think they've outgrown the need for Sunday School.  Clearly this is a false teaching and why I think Christ told us we're to have a child-like faith.  Children will believe anything their parents tell them because they have a trust relationship with that parent from the outset.  In my experience children also respond well to discipline, at least after they're done with the tears of pain.  We would do well to have a child-like faith that trusts God completely and understands that correction is required for our well-being.