The Bible is not meant to be read literally!
Question:
Jesus never once hit a child to teach his lessons about love. The absence of true love for your child is the reason you hit them! Open your eyes to the fact that most Christians don't know how to read the Holy Bible correctly. The Bible is not meant to be read literally! The rod is a symbol, and not an actual rod to hit the children with! May I suggest you read several of [promotion of a false teacher removed] books with clear explanations on how to properly read and interpret Its messages! Hint: The true answer is beneath the allegory and symbolism. Educate yourself as a "right" and not an ignorant Christian who doesn't understand how the Bible was written and how it is to be properly read! One book and you will be ashamed at your stupidity!
Answer:
When people can't face simple facts one response is to remove objectionable material by declaring it to be figurative speech. But where do you stop? You claim that Jesus never hit a child. How do you know that Jesus actually existed and wasn't just an allegory for some concept? How do you know that some statement ascribed to him isn't an allegory for hitting?
When a person declares something to be figurative, not because the text indicates it is figurative but because the person objects to what the text teaches, then an unsolvable nest of problems is opened up. You can claim one teaching to be an allegory while another person with a different belief system can declare a different teaching. "Professing to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22).
The core of your false belief system is that you make man the determiner of what God meant to say. You don't trust God's book, thus you decide what to accept and what you find unacceptable you declare to be a figure of speech that can be ignored or changed to suit your decision. Thus, you make man higher than God because man becomes the determiner of truth.
God's word, the Holy Bible, is simply declared to be the truth. "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth" (John 17:17). That truth was presented in an understandable form. "Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is" (Ephesians 5:17). Such understanding is gained by reading what God said. "How that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)" (Ephesians 3:3-4). From that understanding comes trust or faith in God. "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17).
It has never taken the writings of a false prophet, living 1,900 years after the Bible was written to give people an understanding of God's ways. The Bible is understandable as presented. It doesn't take a man to decide what God meant to say. God knows His mind very well and is quite capable of talking to His creation on His own.
"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:7-11).
You illustrate a second way of avoiding truth and that is by artificially narrowing the scope of what you allow for proof. Because no recorded words of Jesus talk in detail about the methods of raising children, you conclude that the absence contradicts what God revealed in the rest of His Word. David pointed out, "The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever" (Psalm 119:160). Jesus fulfilled God's teachings. He did not contradict His Father. "I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me" (John 5:30). The conclusion must be then that even what wasn't recorded still lined up with what God had revealed. As Jesus declared, "I and My Father are one" (John 10:30).
The conclusion is your arguments are without merit. Your teaching contradicts God: "He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly" (Proverbs 13:24). John warned Christians to be wary of people like you, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world" (I John 4:1).
