Bill S-209, often called the anti-spanking law, has once again passed first reading in the Canadian Senate.

This Bill would allow state intervention in our homes should we spank our children. According to studies published in the United States, in 1993, and quoted in a Health Canada publication, "The Invisible Boy: Revisioning the Victimization of Male Children and Teens", 90% of adults use corporal punishment to discipline their children and correct the child's behaviour.

Discipline by loving parents has included spanking for millennia. Yet, Canadian parents now face the wrath of the government should they use this traditional form of discipline to correct their children's behaviour: this in spite of the past successes of corporal punishment in training future generations and the failure of current methods of discipline to curb errant children.

But the real questions have to be: Whose children are they? What right has the government to interfere in the discipline of loving parents? Should Canadian parents be disciplined for doing their best to ensure they raise responsible citizens using God approved methods?

Scripture describes four realms of government: self government, familial government, church government, and civil government. Each level of government is granted its own realm of authority.

We have heard often that Pierre Elliott Trudeau spoke about the state entering the bedrooms of the nation. But, this Bill grants authority for the government to enter not only our bedrooms but our family. They have usurped the order instituted by God. They have disturbed the order of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which, in its preamble, places God as supreme over this nation.

Whose children are they? Without the parents, who created the child, the state is barren to produce children. The parents were responsible for producing the children and they stand before God to account for their raising of their children. Should a parent decide to immigrate to a different country, the children would also go along. This is a parent's prerogative to choose where their family lives. The Canadian government does not have the right to take a child from its home and remove it to another country. Parents are responsible for their children, the state is not!

This leads us to the second question. If a parent, who is with the child and able to see them dash out into the street, sees them disrespect other people, sees them steal from a store, corrects the child's behaviour then what right has the state, who was not present for the behaviour, and has no love for the child, to decide that the form of discipline was inappropriate? Absolutely none!

Is the state responsible for disciplining parents for using the parents God given authority? Certainly not! Parents have not broken a moral law by training their children to be responsible adults using time honoured methods of discipline.

The only moral law broken would be the child's refusal to submit to parental authority. "Honour your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you." It is important to remember that this is the first Commandment with a promise attached to it.

Perhaps we need to be reminded of the sphere of civil government. It is God's instrument to do us good. When government opposes God's order, it is no longer an instrument to do us good. The Christians of Biblical times were told by government to revere Caesar as a god. They were unable to obey because what was commanded contravened the authority of God. Similarly, when our government usurps the God given authority of parents, we are wise to voice our resistance prior to its becoming a law we cannot obey.

Today is a good day to lobby a Senator and your MP to remind them that their authority is not supreme.