From Strong Families = Strong Churches (Wake Forest, Aug 28–29, 2026). Justin Miller on parental authority versus “gentle parenting.”

Colossians chapter 2 verse 8, we're going to look at a statement that Paul makes there that really sets a paradigm that's going to be the basis of our analysis of gentle parenting. And as is custom in the church I pastor, would you stand with me as I read God's holy word out of reverence for his word? Colossians chapter two verse eight, and thus says God's word. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy, an empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. Let's pray.

Father you are most kind, you are holy and sovereign. Father you created the heavens and the earth and all that fills it. Who are we father that you would think upon us? What is man that you would think upon us and make us a little lower than the angels? But Father, not only did you create us in your image, not only did you bestow upon us much grace, God the Father, you gave us your Son.

You gave your people your Son. The treasure of heaven, the glorious eternal Son who added humanity and bore in His body the sin of all who will ever believe and was buried and rose from the dead and is in the right hand of your power. And it's because of him your throne is now a throne of grace. He's our mediator, our high priest, our king. He's our full revelation of you to us.

And Father, we need your Spirit to see more of His glory from Your Word. We need your Spirit to see more of His ways and His commands with regards to parenting. For Father, much is at stake. Every child represented by every family here is a soul made in the image of God. And Father, what they need most of all, what we each need most of all, is to know Christ.

None of us here can save our children. None of us here can make them believe. But God, you have promised to bless the means of grace, the instruments that you have given your church and your people to wield to bring them to see Jesus and his glory and their sin and their need of him and to train them in him. Father, give us great wisdom in the moments ahead. Please bless this conference.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. With the rise of social media, TikTok, X, Instagram, information travels so fast now. Good information, helpful information.

I know of places in the world where they're watching gospel preaching that they'd have no access to because of these things, but also because of these avenues. Information like gentle parenting, or other philosophies, or wokeism, or what you name it, travels fast and far and wide. Now, it's fascinating when you look at this phenomenon about social media and how information just goes everywhere. We are influenced by the culture we live in. As a fish doesn't know it's wet, We oftentimes don't realize how influenced we are by the world we live in and the ideas that continually put before our minds The church is no different even though in God's true church and his beloved bride Christ bride there are people who are seeking to follow the Lord, but they don't realize some of the influences that have come in are leading them away from God's good word and his ways.

I remember when Jeff asked me to write the book on gentle parenting. I told him when he called me, absolutely not. Do I want to write a book on gentle parenting? See, I'm a reformed pastor in a place where there's no reformed pastors, hardly. There's more and more of us.

God is growing. Churches are being planted. Pastors are being trained. People are being sent out. But he asked me to write this book.

And I thought, Jeff, I'm already seen as a cult leader in rural Missouri. I'm already disliked by so many people. You want me to write a book on gentle parenting?" And he goes, well, I just wrote this book that made everyone else mad. So I think someone else needs to take the heat for a season. I said, okay.

So I prayed about it and I wrote the book and I'm glad I did because in the church I pastor, it had come in, this movement. And the churches that are affiliated with our church, because we have an in-house seminary and we send out all these pastors, the philosophy had come in through social media and other avenues. And so what I want to do very briefly is I want to look at why we as Christians should be on guard for false teaching, false ideologies, false philosophies, empty deceit as Paul calls it. What that means, and then I want to critique general parity and show what biblical parenting is in contrast very briefly. Now when we come to Colossians chapter two verse eight, It's one of my favorite texts in Paul's prison epistles, because Paul gives a principle in this text that's repeated over and over again in the New Testament.

I mean, how often does Jesus say, beware, beware? Watch out for the leaven of the scribes and the Pharisees. Beware of the Pharisees' teaching. Jesus had no qualms calling out bad doctrine, false teaching, wrong ideas. He'd go right at it.

That's why he was crucified. And do you remember, never forget this, he was crucified by religious people. Those who believe works and grace merited salvation. And so Paul has fallen up with the same mentality that Christ had, following Christ, being an example as Christ was an example to Paul, 1 Corinthians 11. And he rides to this church in Colossae, this church he had never actually been to.

He had never stepped foot in Colossae and saw this church planted. Matter of fact, this church was planted by a man named Epaphras, per Colossians 1, a man that Paul likely trained up in the Hall of Tyrannus, poured his life into and sent him out and this man of Paphos will plant Colossi and he'll plant Laodicea and maybe even Heropolis. There's some debate about that amongst scholars and commentators. But he hears of this church from his Roman imprisonment. He's in house arrest because of his preaching the gospel and his being arrested in Jerusalem, falsely charged.

And there he is and he likely hears of what's going on in Colossians, so he writes one of his four prison epistles that we have. He writes this letter to them to encourage them because what's come in is this. Jesus is not the mediator between God and man. They were seeing that angels now could be mediators and that Christ in his person really wasn't the supreme meter between God and man. They began to water down the gospel of Christ.

These false teachers coming in and then add on to that They were mingling that with judistic practices, holy days, punishing the flesh as a means to earn holiness before God and righteousness. And so Paul responds in kind to all of this by giving one of the greatest expositions in all of the New Testament on the person of Christ, the firstfruits, the preeminent one, the one who's the head over the church, the one who bore his body the debt, who made a mockery of all darkness. I mean, you see all these wonderful passages about the person of Christ and what he has done to bring sinners, his church, onto himself as the true mediator between God and man. But in Colossians chapter 2 verse 8, he gives a principle in the form of an imperative, a command, that all Christians who believe in the sufficiency of scripture are called to obey. In essence, this is a call to base your life, your doctrine, your practice, your life before God, and your worship to God on the word of God.

Look what Paul says and look what he says about false teaching. Again, it's applied to Christ and the false teaching has come in about him with these teachers and the judistic practices that have come in. But He says, see, which means watch out, this is a command that no one takes you captive. Do you see what false teaching Pro Paul does there? It takes you captive.

It brings authentic professors of Christ into practices and captivity of the world. It brings them back into something that they've been redeemed out of. He says, don't be taken captive, Clausey, see to it. And all false teaching does that. Ideas have consequences.

What you believe matters. A lot of people say, I believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, but you can always tell by how they live, speak, and act. We have a saying where I'm from, prove it. You say it, prove it. Show you believe it.

Or as James would say, some say they have faith, I show my faith by works. That's my paraphrase. See to it no one takes you captive. Now notice how he describes false teaching. Again, this is about Christ and the judistic practices, but the principle that Paul gives applies to all teaching that's false, and it's intended by Paul to be applied in every aspect that way.

He says, see to it that no one takes you captive. He calls it by philosophy, empty the seat, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. So one, false teaching takes you captive and makes you a slave. Two, It's philosophy. It's fallen man's thinking.

It's fallen man's way of figuring out the world and how to live in it. Philosophy there actually is the word that means hollow speculation in the original. That's what it means. Speculation. He's saying, don't let anyone take you captive by human speculation.

It goes on and says, and empty to see, He calls this teaching that's come in empty and the picture here is a hand that promises something in it but when it opens there's nothing there. It's empty and he says deceit. It's a lie. It's not truth. It's not real.

It's not right. It's deception. So false teaching up to this point, it takes you captive. It's human speculation. It does not come from God.

It's not inspired by God or given by God or for the good of man. And it's empty. It promises much, delivers nothing, and it's lies, it's deceit. And he goes on, because Paul, when you look at his epistles, he really presses all these matters to their greatest conclusion, doesn't he? He calls it human tradition, human practices.

This word tradition is what's often used by Christ to describe the teaching of the Pharisees, which were all these commands that were extra biblical so they could fence in the law, make it stricter. They had all these human traditions which by the way when you look at Jesus of Nazareth do you know so often he healed someone on the Sabbath day? It was not wrong to heal on the Sabbath day or do good on the Sabbath day. Why would Christ do that? He broke their human traditions because their human traditions contradicted the intent and the very explicit commands of God's law.

He was the sinless Savior who would not be bound by human tradition, human teachings, human practices, and he says not according to elemental spirits of the world. There's some debate about what this means. Some say just fallen man's teaching. Some say this means demonic. That this false teaching is demonic in the sense that 1 Corinthians, where Paul says, how can you share the table of the Lord with the table of demons?

But we do know this. In some sense, all false teaching is demonic, dark, untrue, not from God's spirit. And then this is the most important part, not according to Christ. Here Paul puts in the clearest terms that anything that you would believe or practice that is not according to Christ is not good for your soul or your family. That Christ is the King of the church and it's his commands were called to follow.

Our brothers said that love for Christ drives us. I think we forget that love moves us to obedience. Jesus said, if you love me, you will obey me. There's a movie I love and a book series called The Hobbit, Tolkien, Lord of the Rings. There's a part in this third movie which sort of captures the book, but it's powerful when you really think about what it means.

You see what's happening in this third book, in this third movie, the book, is the dwarf king's in his palace and around him are the orcs and his army is being decimated. And as the army approaches towards the dwarf king and his army, he's there comfortable in the house. His army is literally being slaughtered. But then you hear a horn call and his name heralded and the gate crashes down and he marches out at the head of his army going before them with no thought or care of his own life or well-being. He charges right into the darkness and the call goes out to the king, to the King.

That's the Christian life and that is parenting. What drives us to do the things we do and to follow our King is that he is charged in the darkness, he went to the cross, he bore in his body our wrath, he was raised and he's ascended and he rules and he's supreme and he's worthy of our hearts, life and worship and he's worthy of our families to the king and the king has given commands and his word is sufficient. You don't need psychologists, you don't need counselors, you need the word of God to govern and guide your parenting for the glory of God. To the King. That's what Paul's saying in Colossians 2a.

Now, in light of this, the principles clear were to be on guard, watch out, know about false teaching that's come in to influence our hearts and minds in this context as Christ, but the principle can be applied to family as well. And so for the rest of this message, I wanna look at what's come into the church. And the tragic thing is this truly has come into the church. Right now, gentle parenting is the rave not only in America but in Latin America across the world. I read an article before I came here on August 10th that there was this Canadian flight that had to de-embark because there was a dad who would not make his child sit down and put their seatbelt on.

The child didn't want to sit down. The child was scared. The child was anxious. The child was hyper. Most of our children are like that in some sense.

But the dad, instead of discipling the child in the midst of a fit, reasoned with the child, tried to redirect the child, tried to excuse the child's behavior. One of the child to understand his feelings. So what happened was a whole plane had to de-embark because the child wouldn't put on a seat belt or safety belt. That's the world we live in. I mean, even commentators, secular commentators begin to say this gentle parenting philosophy is wrecking havoc.

So what is it? Where did it come from? Why has it affected the church? Well, when you hear the word gentle, isn't your heart kind of strangely warmed by that term? Because Jesus is called gentle.

He is gentle and lowly of heart. He says, come to me all who you're weary and heavy-leavened and I will give you rest. But the gentle of gentle parenting is not Jesus gentle. It's not Christ humble and lowly heart, it's something altogether different. And what false teaching often does is it takes our terms and it redefines them.

It will take what we say we believe, and they will attach new definitions to them. So this word, gentle, and this gentle parenting movement comes from, per Oprah, you know, Oprah's always right. That's a joke. For those who... Sometimes you have to really express that because people may not know you're joking.

So don't walk away thinking, one of the speakers said, listen to Oprah. Oprah, though, promoted this philosophy, and she's one of the ones that made it popular, but she attributes this philosophy to Sarah Aquil Smith, who was not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. She's just a mom of four, and she wrote 13 books on this general philosophy. And here's the focal point. It's about co-parenting.

It's a parenting style that enforces boundaries through redirection, communication, and empathy, and respect. There's no punitive discipline. As a matter of fact, when you read most gentle parenting advocates, they will say things like this, that spanking, if you do this, shows that you weren't raised right. That it's harmful and abusive to the child. So they have boundaries, they have rules, but they want to enforce them through communication and redirection and empathy.

And we look at the communication piece, and we can say, yeah, we believe in communication. We want to communicate with our children, don't we? We should. Communication and discipline goes hand in hand, but you can't separate the two. Otherwise, you have no authority by which to uphold a standard or a rule when it's transgressed.

I love this section about one part about how to handle tantrums that Sarah Aquil Smith puts forth. This is what she says about tantrums and how you're to handle in general parenting. And you see this all the time in churches, let's be honest, a child throws a tantrum and the parent instead of lovingly taking the child a private place to discipline them, the parent pleads with the child, redirects the child, asks the child how he or she feels. All the while, the child's thrown a tantrum till she gets or he gets what they want. This is what Sarah Smith says, life is difficult, confusing.

We all have a lot to deal with on a daily basis. And if we as adults don't navigate the journey perfectly at times, then we shouldn't demand that of our children. So accepting that your child will have meltdowns and tantrums, just as you do, sometimes, is perhaps the best way forward. Reset your expectations. Start on the baseline that everyone misbehaves from time to time is a great starting point.

She goes on and the advocates go on to say this is how you handle tantrums. When the child throws a tantrum you want to be a safe distance away or safe place so that they know They're comfortable with you and they're in a safe sphere. That word safe shoes a lot. And then after they get down through tantrum, you need to get on their eye level and ask them how they feel. Why this made them do this?

What was wrong with them that they they had this tantrum and help them to understand their emotions better and how to regulate them? I remember when I saw this firsthand with a true Christian. This was a true Christian family. We were on vacation together, and I was in the car. I was sitting in the back of this car, and this couple, this Christian couple, who truly loves Christ, but this philosophy had come in through various means.

Their daughter begins to throw this gigantic tantrum because she wants some sort of toy sitting next to her. And so the mother turns around and says, you can't have the toy. And the tantrum goes nuclear. I mean, she starts throwing food everywhere, screaming at the top of her lungs. I thought, surely this won't last very long.

For 10 minutes, this goes on. 10 minutes, and then the mom looks back and says, well, don't you want this toy instead? This would be a better toy to play with. And the kid says, no, I don't want that toy! And I'm not exaggerating, this is what's going on in this car ride, now we're about 10, 15 minutes in, and finally the mom looks back and says, no, tell me why you're so upset, how do you feel?

I'm mad at this point, I'm thinking, What? No one's asking me how I feel. They didn't care how I felt. And so, now it moved to negotiations. Now they started negotiating.

Well, like, if you just, you know, settle down. You know, when we stop, we're gonna go by the ice cream shop you like. That didn't work, so it moved to like maybe a Build-A-Bear type toy thing. I'm not sure what it was exactly. After an hour, they gave her the toy.

And I looked at this thought, they just taught this child that if they threw a hard enough fit and screamed loud enough that she can get what she wants. They taught this child that their desires were the chief end of life. And we see elements of this ideology coming into the church. And you know why it's come into the church? It's a reaction to authoritarian parenting.

Have you seen that sort of parenting where you have this distant, cold dad, and he never – he doesn't discipline in love. It's his way or the highway. There's no communication. When he uses the rod, it's an anger. He violates Ephesians 6, 4.

Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. And so there are people who remember that form of parenting in the church and how it was cruel and heartless and they don't want anything to do with it, so they swing to this other form of parenting where we're going to Co-parent and our children don't have a say in how they parent and they call it child-led parenting because it's a partnership. And we're going to really focus on communication and understanding of feelings so they can feel safe and loved. Both of these two forms of parenting are unbiblical. And they both produce and bring forth disastrous fruit.

Think about it, the example I gave that child who got her way after She threw a long enough fit and was taught to, her feelings had so much weight to them instead of being told that your feelings, who can trust them, your heart's deceitful above all things. That what matters not is how you feel but what God has said. Think about that child's now going to grow up. What kind of spouse is she gonna be? What kind of mother?

Would she be sacrificial and selfless? When she thinks the world revolves around her. So this comes to now from Clausen's 2A, we have to be on guard against these philosophies. Now let's critique this for parenting. I wish I had more time because I'd have quote after quote, I could show you all the things that this parenting style is.

But essentially, gentle parenting is partnership parenting with your children that focuses on empathy, feelings, and redirection. And It does not enforce boundaries through punitive discipline. And it does not communicate in a way that's authoritative. So three problems we have with this form of parenting that we have to address and have to identify to see it rightly. One, it rejects biblical authority.

Inherent in the fifth commandment, children obey your parents, honor your father and mother, is the assumption that mom and dad are willing to authority that they have to obey. Ephesians 6, 1 through 3, children obey your parents and the Lord. By the way, he addresses that to the children of the church. This is the first commandment with the promise that it may go well with you in the land. Bringing that promise in the Old Testament terms to New Testament life.

In essence, if children are raised under authority, they'll have all the means and tools they can ever need to do well in life. As they learn to submit to authority, They can live under authority and flourish in the church, in the family, in the workplace. Calvin says what Paul is doing brilliantly there is bringing that Old Testament promise forth into New Testament terms in the church. But dear parents, you're an ambassador of God with your children, and you're called to wield authority for his word. You're called to give his commands and his rules to your children and teach him what it means to submit because that's part of the fabric of society.

Family was created for the good of man. To reject authority, to go to co-parenting, child-led parenting, is to reject biblical parenting. Two, general parenting has the wrong root problem. This philosophy is driven by a view of mankind that mankind, they're not positively bad. They have some qualities that are bad, but they have some good qualities.

And so therefore what they need is to be encouraged in the good qualities and to put away the bad ones. That's not biblical. Genesis 6, 5, our hearts only evil continuously. Romans 3, Romans 5, we are born in sin. We inherit Adam's sin nature, in guilt.

Your child's greatest need is not that they'll, they have these things that are hindering them becoming the best version of themselves. Your child's greatest need is that they are a sinner under the wrath of God and they need Christ. They need salvation. If you raise them up to become all these things in life that successful, powerful, influential, wealthy, and you give them the world, all you've done is fulfill what Jesus said. Is it really worth to gain the whole world and lose your soul?

What do you want most for your kids? You have to see the greatest problem for every child is that they are a sinner and they need salvation. They need to be born again. And How does God promise to bring forth the fruit of regeneration through the means of grace? So you bring the means of grace to bear upon them in discipline, in family worship, in the church.

Their greatest need is their sinners and they need a savior. Never forget that. Yes, they're made in the image of God, but they're under the wrath of God in their sin. They're enslaved to sin. They need a Savior.

And this brings us to the third problem with gentle parenting. It has a terrible aim and goal. One gentle parenting advocate says this, all parenting and gentle parenting aims to raise happy, confident, independent children. They go on to say they're happier, healthier, more fully themselves. They want to raise children that are more fully their sinful, unrestrained selves.

The whole self-esteem movement brought the self-actualization movement. We told kids they can be anything they want to be. So if a person wanted to be, who's a girl wants to be a boy, in our culture they can be a boy. Where does that come from? The idea, the way of thinking.

This aim that we want our children to be the best versions of themselves, but the best version of an unrepentant, unregenerated, sinful human being is someone who pursues their natural lust without hindrance. So General Parenting misses the aim. We were made to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And we want our kids, We want our kids to know God, just not know about Him, but to know God and enjoy Him. That's our aim in parenting.

We want them to use all their gifts and abilities, but for the end of glorifying God and enjoying Him, not to be the best version of themselves. We want them to deny themselves and follow Christ. We want them to know the King. This way of thinking, it comes with all its ideas and philosophy. So if you begin to adopt any of these practices, you're bringing in a worldview that's not consistent with scripture.

So the question really, as we close this session is, are you willing to parent believing that God's word is sufficient and that God has given you authority as an ambassador of his to train your children in truth and righteousness. This became really even more greatly impressed in my heart. See, I have four children. My oldest is 24. He's getting ready to have his first baby.

I'm gonna be a grandparent. It's awesome. I raised him in the truth. He came with some issues. We did family worship, all the things, And we had to excommunicate him when he was 18 because he dated an unbeliever.

And then for the next three years, I spent in just despair, looking at everything I did, elders look at everything I did. Was I faithful, was I seeking the Lord, did I do all the things as he went wild in the world. But you know what happened? After one week we had a very serious conversation where he realized he was not a Christian and it really sunk in and he came to our conference where Dr. Beeke was speaking on soul love.

And after hearing Dr. Beeke speak on soul love, you could just see he was convicted of his sin. And he said, Dad, will you walk me out? And so he has me walk him out, And he's getting towards his car, he looks at me, he says, you were never impressed with the material accomplishments, and he was a very gifted kid, of my life, but you loved my soul. And he started crying, and he got in the car and left.

I just didn't know how to take that. I thought, well, I probably should have cared more about these other things, but you know, as a parent, we're not perfect, are we? I need Christ. The next day he calls me. It was one of the greatest moments of my young life.

And he said, I heard Dr. Beke's second sermon, dad. He said, it was like lightning struck my soul. I went to Christ above everything. I broke up with my girlfriend and I'm going to follow him no matter what.

Dad, thank you for raising me in the truth and loving my soul. I realized then I can't save my children, but I'm going to be faithful to the word knowing that God can, and God often does. He's faithful to His promises. He's kind in His means of grace. May we be parents who see with our hearts to the King.

Don't be captured by worldly philosophy like general Parenting. Forsake it. Watch out for it. The word is sufficient. May we prove it with our parenting.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for everyone here. I pray that they would see and I would see that the word of God is sufficient. It does not matter who communicates to us, whether they have a million PhDs behind their name. God, you created us.

You know what's best for us. You made us in your image. You have given us your word. You've given us your law, your gospel, your promises, your precepts. Oh God, your word is a balm and a blessing.

Father please, may we seek to be faithful to the one who charged into the darkness, who went to the cross to bear in His body our sin for all who believe to remove our guilt. May we see His worth and His loveliness and His glory and that drive us forward. O God, do not let us be captured and made slaves of false teaching and bad ideologies. Teaching that really comes from elemental spirits. May we see the word is sufficient, that Christ is good, and he's worthy of our faithfulness in parenting.

May we stay away from gentle parenting, oh God, and may we stay away from authoritarian parenting, but wield discipline and communication and truth all in love for your glory and for your name. Father bless every family here save their children save the rest of my children oh God please will you not for your glory Grant hearts of flesh or move hearts of stone through the means of grace. We ask all this in Jesus name, amen.