Marcia, I do not want to get into a contest of wills here, but the phrase "spare the rod and spoil the child" is not in the Bible.
Even if it IS "just another way of saying the Proverbs" (which I don't believe it is), I do not believe that people citing it as Holy Scripture from the pulpit to the Sunday School room is the right thing.
I wasn't.
I was looking up "spare the rod and spoil the child" on Biblegateway because there was a discussion of that phrase.
To my utter amazement, it wasn't there.
So, I knew that everybody and his brother was using that phrase and claiming is as scripture, so I Googled it and found the poem.
Yes, I agree with you about the point of the passage, but I don't think it's an error to quote it to show that when believers die, we are with the Lord.
I am very much against misusing scripture,as I see it all the time (especially the oft-used "where 2 or 3 are gathered together" one).
I do not see this as a misuse of scripture, even if the the purpose of the passage is being disregarded, since it is saying we will be with the Lord when we die. The fact it's being quoted slightly off is not enough error to bother me, since it is not changing the meaning. I am concerned about so much worse than this one.
As for "spare the rod, spoil the child," it does express the sentiments of those verses in Proverbs. I do not think people are knowingly quoting Samuel Butler, and if I were a betting person, I would bet that probably less than 1 percent of the people who say the verse this way even know who Samuel Butler is. :smilewinkgrin:
Still, I commend your desire to be accurate with scripture. :thumbsup: Too many aren't.
I know that a preacher of the Word has to paraphrase and re-state, otherwise a sermon or a message would only be the length of the
actual scripture read. As long as the meaning is not changed, it
is fine with me.
For a Christian, to be absent from the body is INDEED to be present with the Lord!!! Hallelujah!
My Mother was a "cleanliness is next to Godliness" person, and she used that phrase to get us into the bathtub many many times. :tongue3:
My father definitely believed that sparing the rod would spoil the child, he quoted the spare the rod thing
:smilewinkgrin: before the rod was doled out. But neither of them ever said it was scripture.
I think women CAN be easier deceived. I mean, look at the fad diet scene. More often than not, the duped are women. And what about about the self-help gurus? More often than not, their book sales are to women.
As far as the unscriptural sayings, my least favorite is "God helps those who help themselves." ARGH!
If fad diets prove women are more easily deceived than men, what does drenching yourself in cow elk urine and sitting on a hill "whistling at the moon" prove about men?
anyone seen all those men's commercials, use this machine look like this guy, buy this pill and smile a lot, you need this new tool call this number, hair falling out use this new goop, well, apparently men get decieved everyday too or these people wouldn't be adverising to them.
it has nothing to do with what se* a person is.
Advertising is a good way to illustrate the differences in the way that men and women think—if it's analyzed correctly.
But go back to the first temptation. What worked against Eve? She believed the serpent when he suggested that God had not been wholly truthful with her. This rhetoric would have been vain against Adam. The serpent exploited Adam's regard for his wife.
I agree, Eve was deceived, whereas Adam wasn't.
I'm not saying this to put down women.
My wife happens to be one, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Before we men get to congratulating ourselves there are some things to consider.
First, Adam sinned deliberately.
I don't see this as strength.
After all, the implication is that Eve would not have deliberately sinned against God like Adam.
You might even say that Eve honored God more than Adam.
Then, when confronted by God, Adam bailed out on the woman and then blamed God, "The woman YOU gave me" shows that Adam didn't have the guts to take the blame.
I have seen women get all bent out of shape about the authority thing in church and feel like they were slighted by God, but I see it differently.
I believe God blessed the woman by not putting them is a place of authority.
I've been in churches where the men argue and fuss, and it's the women who show forth a godly demeanor and live for Christ.
In my landscape/turf business I have---I do work for a elderly man on the lake---he calls me up
"Can you help me today??"
"Sure can---I'll be there in a minute!"
I arrive---and he always wants me to "test out" the latest "gadget" he bought
"Here---try out these battery powered . . .! It came in the mail the other day----I couldn't get um to work good----maybe you can-----------Heck--I'm a sucker for info commercials late at nite!!!!"
That one is actually from the late Middle Ages to get people to take a bath. This was at the time when they finally made a connection between being filthy and disease. So the Church helped out with that slogan. It worked though......