Proper application of the rod is essential to communicating the Christian world-view.
During the developing years, from birth through six or seven, the rod is an indispensable aid in providing the child with a controlled learning experience that will prepare him to make proper decisions when he is older.
The rod mirrors the laws of nature.
Nature is controlled by fixed laws. If a child violates them he may break bones, get burned, drown, poison his body, or suffer harm in a thousand ways. The laws of nature must be discovered and respected. In the natural world all actions have consequences. Nature never forgives. If parents allow a child to break the laws of nature, but somehow protect him from suffering any consequences, they would be communicating a false sense of reality.
You can tell a child not to touch medicines and poisons, not to play with fire or gasoline, not to get in the road, not to play under parked automobiles, not to climb the stairs, the ladder, or the 100-foot electrical tower. Then when he disobeys and doesn’t immediately suffer ill effects, he stops trusting your word. When he eventually meets with disaster, you can then stand and cry and tell the authorities how he was strong-willed and would not obey you. You can stand over his broken body and wish you had watched him more closely. Or, before tragedy falls on the unknowing child, you can enforce your words with painful consequences that mirror the real world. Your consequences can be immediate and consistent, thus conditioning him to respect commands. You can teach the two-year-old that “no” means no, and it means no every time. You can guarantee that the child learns about cause and effect, about the certain danger of doing your own thing without regard to the consequences.
The real world is a place of potential pain. The stakes are too high to allow a child to hopefully stumble upon reality before suffering serious damage. How old will he have to be, or how much will he have to suffer before he learns? Or will he ever learn? Will he grow up with a love of defying the odds and throwing it all to the wind? Will tragedy fall later in life because his parents caused him to believe that he could get away with anything? When a child is not old enough to understand the danger of playing in the street, he is able to understand that leaving the yard today will cause him to meet with the same painful switching he received yesterday when he crawled out of the yard. The rod is a little pain of inoculation against a more painful and deadly disease of getting hit by a car. The properly applied rod will teach your child to safely navigate through the dangers of his environment.