Never Violence!

Several months ago, I received an email from a rather conservative Catholic group. They were organising a weekend event on the theme of family and the Church and asked me to give a talk. It was only then that I realised what the topic was to be: »Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but whoever loves him disciplines him in due time«. I declined the invitation that very same day.

This verse comes from the Old Testament. We find it in Proverbs 13:24. I heard it often during my childhood, including at school. In my school days, it was still customary to send pupils to the headteacher for corporal punishment.

But Astrid Lindgren also quoted this sentence once, in her speech when she accepted the German Book Trade Peace Prize in 1978. She referred to this phrase and then went on to tell the following story.

»But to those who are now calling so loudly for stricter discipline and tighter reins, I would like to recount what an elderly lady once told me. She was a young mother at a time when people still believed in that biblical saying: “Spare the rod and spoil the child”.

Deep down, she probably didn’t believe it at all, but one day her little son had done something for which, in her opinion, he deserved a good thrashing – the first of his life. She told him to go into the garden and look for a stick himself, which he was then to bring to her. The little boy went off and was away for a long time. At last he came back in tears and said, “I couldn’t find a stick, but here’s a stone for you – you can throw that at me.”

But then the mother began to cry too, for suddenly she saw everything through her child’s eyes. The child must have thought, “My mother really wants to hurt me, and she can do that with a stone too.”

She took her little son in her arms, and they both cried together for a while. Then she placed the stone on a shelf in the kitchen, where it remained as a constant reminder of the promise she had made to herself at that very moment: “NEVER VIOLENCE!”«

Astrid Lindgren herself grew up in a world where »Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but whoever loves him disciplines him in due time« was the norm, not the exception to the rule. Yet this remarkable woman posed two fundamental questions to herself: What kind of stories will I tell? What kind of storyteller will I be. Her choices are well known. The statement by the jury of the German Book Trade Peace Prize puts it well and succinctly: »Astrid Lindgren’s work does not represent a turning away from reality, nor does it tempt us to escape into dreams. She does not present her readers with an idealised world, but rather a world in which we can laugh and cry, dream, but also live. Her books convey love and warmth; they charm and enchant.«

Words create worlds. And Astrid Lindgren thought very carefully about what kind of worlds she wanted to create with her words. And what about us? What sort of story do we want to tell? What sort of storyteller do we want to be? What sort of worlds would we have our stories create?

I answer this question for myself with the closing words from Astrid Lindgren’s speech:

»Perhaps it would be good if we all placed a small stone on the kitchen worktop as a reminder for ourselves and for the children:

NEVER VIOLENCE!

Despite everything, over time it might make a tiny contribution to world peace.«

Erik Riechers SAC

Vallendar, November 12th, 2026