Watch Anderson Cooper Friday on ABC.
From our friend Laura Castle:
Anderson Cooper is doing a program on child abuse at 10:00 a.m. Friday on ABC. There is a horrible book on raising children called "To Train Up a Child" by Michael and Debi Pearl. They advocate whipping babies on their bare skin, using whips, belts and tree branches and they recommend whipping a child as young as three until he is "totally broken." The Pearls are fundamentalist Christians who live on a farm in Tennessee. Their book has been implicated in the deaths of three children whose parents followed its teachings. Anderson Cooper is bringing this horror to the public's awareness.
Planet of the Blind 
Thank you so much for this article. We’ve been vahing problems getting our school to accept that my son has been diagnoised with Asperger’s, a form of Autism. I presented with the doctor’s notes and diagnoises thinking that everything would be better. I couldn’t even get an ARD meeting. I’ve had to take care of all of my sons therapy and get my own training to be able to help him, myself and his teachers and I’m a single mom. No one was willing to tell me what was even available to my son to meet his needs. Thank you so much.Penny Webb
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Hey Laura, in this new bible, we’ll have proverbs that encourage those who feel the need to be violent to play football with other violence-oriented folks, rather than dropping bombs or wreaking other forms of havoc on women and children, or perhaps to punch punching bags or chop wood until they feel better.
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Hi Leslie! The Bible has great beauty and truth in it. Unfortunately, we have to wade through a lot of misogyny, child abuse and other violence to find it. I love your idea of a Bible that stresses cooperation,rather than violence.
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Laura, to people who object to “Big Government” (i.e. “us”) intervening when other more enigmatic moral codes might seem to advocate behaviors that harm defenseless others, I say, thank goodness that someone’s at least trying to look out for people who cannot look out for themselves.
My Jefferson Bible reading isn’t going as well as expected either. I’ve read up to Day 3 in the daily readings, which is about as far as I’ve gotten in any Bible, except for repeated and concerned viewings when I was five years old of the rather graphic picture in our family bible of Abraham about to slit his son’s throat — that taught me a thing or two about watching my back from an early age.
The great thing is that I feel somewhat more at ease voicing my objections to the pronouncements of Jesus Regular Guy from Nazareth, as this Jesus doesn’t have a lot of angels fussing over him — he’s just a large mound of chopped liver like the rest of us.
As an already overworked rehab specialist, I can’t help but object to references in the JB about self-mutilations like eye-plucking and hand-chopping. My beloved domestic partner, as he’s leaving for work this morn, says wearily, “It’s metaphorical.” Well, I say, “Jesus, ease up on those metaphors, why doncha?”
And he didn’t live past 30-ish. Bans on divorce probably seem do-able to an unmarried 30-something guy. But, as I told my miserable parents when I was 16, “Yes! Divorce, puh-leez!” The separation got at least one of them out of the house, and they both ended up being much happier, more amiable people as a result.
Is there a Bible that starts out with something like, “Look, you need society, and society needs you. Let’s try to work together so that we all can get what we need.” This is the sort of life guide that I’ve been looking for. Is that too much to ask?
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I watched “Anderson” yesterday and Michael Pearl’s callous sadism stunned me, as it did when I twice read his book . I don’t know which is worse- an angry child abuser who goes into rages as my father did or or a cold sadist who methodically beats his children. Please report anyone you know of who is raising a child according to “To Train Up a Child” to Child Protective Services. A child’s life may depend upon it!
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Hmmm, that link to the Jefferson Bible didn’t post very well. If I remember correctly, one of Jefferson’s original reasons for his cut-and-paste interpretation of biblical text was to have something more intelligible to give to the continent’s original inhabitants — as it were, an assimilation strategy within the traditional boundaries of the “resistance is futile” philosophy of Manifest Destiny. So saying, I suppose if beastliness is relative rather than absolute, we certainly could do a lot worse than Jefferson’s slant on the life of Jesus. Here’s a link that allows one to read one passage of the J.B. each day over the course of a month. Good December reading for inhabitants of the U.S. who’d like to get in touch with an interesting aspect of the nation’s origin.
Daily Readings from The Jefferson Bible
Bookmark the URL below for a different portion of The Jefferson Bible presented every day. The entire work is covered in thirty days. Be sure bookmark is to the jdaily.html file, not the final destination (which changes every day).
http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/jdaily.html
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There are Christians who say that “Spare the rod, spoil the child” is not in the Bible. But it does say something to the effect of: “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him*” as well as boatloads of other gobbledy-gook. I suppose that verse is a great reason for some true believers to beat the poop out of their poor kids. And the parents of the three dead children must have loved their children a lot more than all the deadbeats whose kids are still alive. Holy Moly. At least this verse is not in the Jefferson Bible. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?
* http://bible.cc/proverbs/13-24.htm New International Version (©1984)id=JefJesu.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all
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