Respecting Fathers

The writer of Hebrews suggests this:
"Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them."
Of course it could go without saying that the parent who does not discipline gets no respect, either in the upper crust liberal whose enlightened approach to child rearing has rewarded him with children who hate him or the perennial example of the harried mom in WalMart threatening to count as little Cletus goes ballistic on the floor. We can write off the foolish who think they can do better than what ages of human experience has taught us. The can look forward to a future with an emo kid cutting herself at thirteen because of reasons she knows not or an absent wife working so the family can stay affluent AND afford the Ritalin for the boy . Odd, I said "it goes without saying" and then I proceeded to say it. I'd better let them be. They have sufficient crisis without me.

But what about the devout Christian family that lovingly disciplined and still got handed the adolescent from Hell? They did discipline (and we are talking spanking here) and yet no respect.
Look at the signals your child is getting. What is it about a larger person hitting them that will make the smaller respect the larger? Fear perhaps? Why would they resent such an action? And why, just about the time they get big enough to resist the discipline, their resistance increases like they were waiting for the advent of physical equalization?
If you are just bigger physically you are a tyrant and a bully. You get your way in the house because you are larger. The child is taught only one thing, that size matters because it is only size that defines the right of rule. But might does make right (not moral right but allowance). Why should a family be any different. It won't be. If a population conceives that they are being ruled by their equals, great force and consequently greater tyranny is need to maintain government. If successful in quashing all rebellion the citizens turn out to be servile. So it will be with your family. You will have to become more tyrannical and hope to crush the spirits of your children until they flinch fearfully at the possibilities of the broader world. If you fail to crush them, and with boys it is harder, prepare for a civil war about the time they can look you in the eye. All this unless you and they perceive that the rule comes down to them from their better. They are children, and by good and necessary consequent, idiots. You are adults, a powerful race of demigods wearing the wedding rings of Doom.

When law and discipline comes down on you from above, the ruled know that the betters are supposed to govern them. Equals are not "supposed" to do so. When equals try, all Hades breaks loose.