No Place for the State in Families of the Nation
LORNA DUECK
June 30, 2008
I am one of those traumatized Canadians who actually was grounded,
forbidden by my parents, from attending my class trip to the nation's
capital. This was before the days of Canada's Senate tabling bills to
affect family discipline, and before Globe editorial writers were
pronouncing a Quebec court correct to overturn a dad's decision to
ground his daughter from the class trip.
I could write a book about my childhood - a lot of us could - but
here's the baffling truth: We're born with sin in our genes and it
takes a lifetime to evolve to good.
Teaching ourselves how to get there is the role of discipline and, done
correctly, it's a profoundly spiritual encounter. Sin has no limit of
age and if there is any reason to involve the state over family
discipline issues, it happens because we are spiritually sick. This is
not a frightening diagnosis; it's just the reality we have to deal with
as things in the nation spiral so absurdly out of control on family
life. The big stuff makes the news, like the recent case of the
12-year-old Gatineau girl who disagreed with her father who had
grounded her from the Grade 6 year-end camping trip. So, on a
Wednesday, she sued him, and by the following Friday the court ruled
she could go on the trip. Stunning speed on usurping a custodial dad's
authority and, while he appeals and she lives with her mother, Solomon
will be needed to clean up the mess.
At about the same time as this court case, wise sages in the Senate
took steps to interfere with family discipline by proposing Bill S-209,
which would make it illegal for parents to spank their children.
We already have the legal guidelines of never spanking with an object
or a closed hand and, as recently as 2004, the Supreme Court upheld
Section 43 of Canada's Criminal Code that allows parents and teachers
to use reasonable force to discipline a child and correct his or her
behaviour.
Now Liberal Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette, who introduced Bill S 209,
seems charmed by 60 elementary school students who sat in Senate seats
and debated the issue with her - they unanimously voted to repeal
parents' right to spank.
"I've got rights" is a wonderful rallying cry to the individual, as
kids now call 911 to report disciplining parents, or threaten to call
Family Services when a mom removes a protesting child from his or her
school. I know a rather sweet 10-year-old who just left her mother a
note asking her to wash all her clothes so they would be ready for her
to run away the next day. The point is, kids are really confused about
their rights and what it means to be taken care of.
We've given them reason to doubt adult care. Just days ago,
nine-year-old Gabriel Poirier suffocated after teachers wrapped the
autistic boy too tightly in a buckwheat-stuffed blanket. Then, the
father of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez was charged with first-degree murder
(she's the child who was strangled, allegedly by her father for
refusing to wear a hijab), and then the mother of 12-year-old Karissa
Boudreau was charged with first-degree murder (the Nova Scotia girl was
allegedly last seen alive arguing with her mother).
Every parent has had times we fear the monster within ourselves, our
temper a fickle tool of sin. It's no accident that there are, at last
count, 76,000 children in foster care, 22,000 of them waiting for a
permanent, loving adoptive home, according to the Adoption Council of
Canada.
I'm stunned at that tragedy - most of those awaiting adoption are over
the age of 4, their birth family having proven they were woefully
unable to be good.
We're on tender ground, Canada, our kids really need us to help them.
The state can never fix what's spiritually wrong here; how so many of
us have missed the mark of what God hoped for our lives. Each family
has its own intimate record with that truth, but we've stopped
understanding that there is a source for new beginnings on disciplining
ourselves for the best we can be.
We source everything else we need in parenting: groceries, school,
soccer ... what about our soul? Religion and its teachings still stands
as a gathering of the broken and its doctrine of forgiveness is there
for each one of us who has had to reconstruct what it means to care for
those we want to love so deeply.
It's not the state that's needed, its not even religion, it's just me knowing what to do with the sin.
Lorna
Dueck
is the Executive Producer of Listen Up TV www.listenuptv.com
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On April 30, 2005 Lorna was privileged to receive an honorary Doctorate of Christian Ministries from Canada's largest Christian university, Trinity Western University. Lorna was recognized for the witness and leadership that Listen Up TV has provided in public messaging: "a leader in the voice of evangelical life in Canada."
