According to a Tennessee preacher, children and mules are the same. Or at least they should be treated as such.
After the media frenzy surrounding a Texas judge whipping his daughter, people began looking into this issue and found three child deaths had been reported due to the practices described in the book “To Train Up a Child,” written by Michael Pearl, the same preacher who likens children to mules.
In this book, emphasis is placed on the importance of training children through abuse and beatings. Parents are instructed to begin abuse as early as six months of age to discourage bad behavior, and are provided descriptions on which kind of pipe makes the best whipping tool. The winner is a quarter-inch flexible plumbing line — because it can be rolled up and carried around in your pocket.
While everything about Pearl and his book is mortifying, the fact that people follow his advice is almost worse.
If one person has severely misguided beliefs, they can be written off and children can be kept away from them. But Pearl has followers. More than 670,000 copies of his book have been sold, and are especially popular among Christian homeschooling families, according to the New York Times.
It is common knowledge that physical and mental abuse is detrimental to a child’s welfare, but some people put too much faith into what they read.
While the irony in this statement is clear, people need to realize that just because something is in print or online does not mean it’s true. With today’s technology anyone can put anything online, and self-publishing has become easier. Those who follow a religion may be used to accepting what their leaders say as fact without questioning it. But there are times when questioning is necessary. If people had questioned the morality of Pearl’s book, there would be significantly fewer children whose parents are abusing them because a book told them it was OK, and at least three children would still be alive.
The issue at hand should be one that everyone understands, but some seem to have missed this life lesson.
Don’t believe everything you read, and don’t follow someone blindly, for they can lead you down a path that is far less than righteous.