April 28, 2025 • 12 mins
A new Trojan horse took baby steps into the nursery and has now launched big steps into the church family—“Gentle Parenting.” It is likely this novel parenting philosophy has been adopted by families in your church body. But is there a not so loving side of gentle parenting? Pastor and author, Justin Miller, stopped by to remind us that we must raise our children, biblically, helping them understand that they have violated God’s law and that they need the gospel.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
Kurt and Kate mornings. Not just on the radio.
S2 (00:03):
It's a podcast too. Gentle parenting have you heard of it? Well,
it's in the church now and there's questions about it.
We spoke with Justin Miller, who is a pastor and
the author of the book The Not So Loving Side
of Gentle Parenting A Biblical Plea to Parents. Take a listen.
(00:27):
I heard that this really wasn't your idea to write
the book.
S3 (00:32):
I didn't want to write the book. I had a
pastor friend of mine reach out, and we were talking
about training pastors and seminary and these various things. He's
a president of a seminary and also the publisher of
free Grace press. The head of it. And he started
talking about gentle parenting. And we both were talking about
how this philosophy had come into the churches that we
(00:54):
knew and the, you know, the networks they were part of.
And he said, you know, someone needs to write a
book on this. And I told him, I don't really
want to write a book on that topic, per se.
And he and he was very persuasive. He's a dear
brother and a godly mentor. And so, after much prodding,
I wrote the book. And I'm glad I did. I
hope it's helpful to parents to really see the dangers
(01:15):
of the gentle parenting philosophy and the more biblical approach
that we have given to us in God's Holy Word.
S2 (01:22):
Okay. Well, let's talk about that first. What is gentle parenting?
S3 (01:26):
When I researched into gentle parenting, I was seeing the
fruit of it in in various churches. Gentle parenting is
a philosophy. It's hard to really nail down where it
came from. Um, but a lot of people believe it
came from Sarah Ockwell-smith. Um, Oprah, uh, put forth that
this idea of a gentle philosophy really began with her.
(01:47):
And she was a British author. She has about 13 books.
But the idea of the gentle parenting philosophy is that
you want to parent without punitive discipline. You want to
parent with empathy and respect. All that sounds great as
far as the empathy and respect. But it's this idea
of collaboration and partnership. It's kind of a redefinition or
redefining of authority in the family. You see that the
(02:11):
child has a democratic say in how they're parented. And
and so there are boundaries in gentle parenting. Most gentle
parenting advocates would be very quick to say that, and
rightly so. There are boundaries, but they try to enforce
them through redirection or positive speaking. And the idea is,
in gentle parenting, you really want the child to understand
(02:34):
their feelings, why they threw the tantrum, all those kind
of things with the intention that they will be the
best version of themselves.
S2 (02:42):
So what is wrong with that? What is wrong? What
a great question. Yeah, what makes that not so good?
S3 (02:50):
So when you when you think about the biblical paradigm
of parenting and you think about the underlying assumptions that
go into parenting from the scripture. Gentle parenting comes from
a worldview that assumes that children are positively sinful, meaning
they just lack certain qualities. And so the what a
parent needs to do is cultivate certain qualities. Where the
(03:11):
biblical paradigm says that children, all human beings, inherit a
sin nature from Adam are sinners, therefore they sin. And
so that's going to drive the different directions. Also, in
gentle parenting, the philosophy, the aim of parenting is really
for the child to be the self actualize the best
version of themselves. Well, the best version of a person
(03:34):
apart from Christ is just fully living out their sinful desires,
fully living out what they want to do in life.
You kind of hear the the serpents hiss in that
you'll be your own God. Where biblical parenting is the
goal of all parenting is for people, for their for
children to first and foremost know God through faith in
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then
(03:57):
also in that to live a life that glorifies God
and enjoys him forever. And the third thing with gentle
parenting is it redefines the biblical authority that God puts
forth in the family. Uh, it makes the child the
center of the authority structure, instead of the parent being
the one who's been given authority. Now, I do want
to say this. It there's a lot of people who
(04:20):
have seen unbiblical uses of authority in the family. Right.
Authoritarian type of parenting. And that's why gentle parenting seems
to appeal to them. And we can understand some of
the the aspects of gentle parenting that are good. Communication's good. Uh,
getting your children to understand why they do what they
do is good. But the objectives, the loss of authority
(04:40):
and the root view of humanity just doesn't coincide with
the the Bible.
S2 (04:47):
Okay. How would the biblical parenting that you're, you're advocating
look different to people? If you still want to talk
to the kids, you're not. You don't want to be that.
We all have that vision or seen it in a
movie of some awful human being, a, you know, abusing
kids and being awful. Nobody's advocating beating up kids or
(05:12):
being punitive about everything, right?
S3 (05:15):
No, no, as a matter of fact, if that's how
you're wielding your authority, you're you're not following the biblical paradigm. Amen. Um,
for example, God the Father does not treat his children
like that. God the father never abuses his authority, though
he clearly has it. And you think about what the
Bible says about how God disciplines us, the church, you know,
(05:36):
Hebrews 12 three through 11, he disciplines those whom he loves.
And the aim per verse ten and 11 is to
produce holiness in us. But then you also combine that
with the reality of Romans eight one there is no
wrath for us in Christ Jesus. So God the Father
never disciplines his church in anger. He never disciplines his
Plains Church in Roth. Roth is stored up for those
(05:58):
who don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Right? So
all of us who believe in Christ, there is no
wrath for us. God is not displeased with us in Christ,
so he disciplines us in love. And so if you
look at how the father disciplines us as his children,
he communicates to us. He gives us the law to
show us our sin, to drive us to Jesus. He
expounds to us the consequences of our actions, and then
(06:21):
he will correct us in life and time and space. Um,
though eternally our sins have been absolved. So gentle parenting
it removes that discipline aspect, truly, that God the Father
wields rightly. And so what we're advocating for in the
Bible is parenting with discipline. Yes, but always done in love,
always done with proper communication. Gentle parenting removes those authority
(06:45):
structures in response to what they have seen, probably in
authoritarian parenting.
S4 (06:50):
Thank you for taking some time to listen to this
episode of the Curtin Kate Mornings podcast. We always welcome
a review with your thoughts and comments, and please feel
free to subscribe and follow us as well.
S2 (07:02):
As you alluded to. Justin, just because you can read
the Bible doesn't mean you completely understand how to work
out your parenting style. And then, you know, kids, they
will throw you a curve ball every time. So what?
What is your best advice and how to really get
good at this?
S3 (07:23):
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, there's a
plethora of parenting books. When I wrote this, I didn't
want to write just another parenting book. I didn't want
to say, hey, this is the way to do it. Um, wholesale. Because,
like you said, every child is different. Every child has
different manifestations of their nature. Um, every child operates differently,
(07:45):
thinks differently. For example, I have one child who has
a really, really sensitive conscience, and I have another child
who can be very strong willed. And so you don't
treat those situations the same. You have to wield the
scripture and apply them wisely. You know we have to.
Wisdom is just truth righteously applied, truth rightly applied. And
so what I would encourage is for people to see
(08:08):
what the Bible says in places like Ephesians six one
through four, where verses one through three. Children, obey your
parents in the Lord, for this is right. And then
you see something said in verse four, that's wonderful. It's
it's Paul says in verse four, fathers, do not provoke
your children to anger. So he's basically conveying there that
as you discipline your children, as you set proper authority,
(08:30):
you don't want to do so in a way that
discourages and demeans them. So there's a way to to
do discipline. When your child transgresses a rule or breaks
a command that you can teach them. I always tell
our church, every discipline moment is a discipline. It's an
opportunity to share the gospel. And here's what I mean
by that. Whenever, let's say a child does something they're
(08:54):
not supposed to do. Communication is important. Not not communication
in the sense of redirection, but really getting to the
heart of why the child did it. And I would
advocate to our church using the law of God. I mean,
Paul says to Timothy, the law is good if it's
used lawfully. And Christ, when he would evangelize people, he
would use the Ten Commandments to help people to see
(09:15):
their their sin, their their heart. And so when like
a child, let's say they steal a cookie from the
plate and you say to them, why did you steal
the cookie? And you know, if your children are like
my children, they'll say, we didn't steal the cookie, but
they have crumbs on their cheeks, right? So you say, well,
you have crumbs on your cheek. You stole the cookie. Why?
Why did you why did you say you didn't steal
(09:35):
the cookie? And then you get down to it. You
get them to see that they've broken the commandment of
do not covet. Um, in that moment, they desired to
take the cookie more than they wanted to honor God.
And so they they broke the second commandment. And then
they dishonored mom and dad, who told them not to
take the cookie. And then also they lied. And so
you get them to see that they are lying and
(09:55):
they're and they're coveting, and they're making something in creation
higher than God that they want to they want in
that moment. And you get them to see their sin,
but then you give them the greatest news, and you
remind them that God so loved the world, that he
sent his only begotten son, and that whoever believes in
him should not perish. You remind them that God the
Son added humanity and lived a sinless life and died
(10:16):
on the cross for all who believe. And he rose
from dead on the third day, and that there's past, present,
and future. Sin can be removed before God because of Christ.
And so you've just taken that discipline moment and made
it an opportunity to share the gospel. And then you
do enact punitive discipline, but you always do it in love.
You let them see that you love them. You never
discipline them in anger or rage or or wrath. You
(10:39):
always discipline them in love and whatever discipline method you
use after you do it, you bring them in and
you hug them and you bring them tight and tell
them how much you you love them. Um, now that paradigm,
you can use those different aspects in various ways, but
that really is the simple biblical paradigm based on how
God the Father fathers his children and how what the
(10:59):
Bible says concerning how we're to instruct our children.
S2 (11:01):
Yeah. And I think that maybe it's some parents would
have a hard time because of how they were raised.
But I remember this some somebody said, you know, like
we should when we have a problem, we should run
to God. And if you're you can do that with
your parents, like, oh, dad, I blew this, you know,
and you can talk to be the people, the parents
(11:23):
that your kids can run to when something goes wrong.
You have to cultivate that just as as they will
then go to the father with when life falls on them.
S3 (11:36):
Yeah. I mean, the highest aim in parenting is I
can say, let me say it like this. It's okay. Um,
you know, our children can be the best educated, get
the best careers, um, have all the best opportunities in life.
And those things are great things. But if we fail
to pass to them the most important thing, we really
failed in our parenting with them in many aspects. Most aspects,
(11:59):
the most important aspect, because what we want for our
child ultimately, is for them to know God through Jesus Christ,
and that they would have a lifetime access to the
Heavenly Father through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
And the best way to do that when you're parenting
is to remind them that when they make a mistake,
the solution is not to try harder and do better.
(12:19):
That's moralism. The solution is I need God, I need Christ,
and in Christ I want to honor God. I want
to honor and obey his commands because I love God.
I mean, that's what the paradigm you want to teach
your children. That's the Christian worldview.
S2 (12:34):
Thanks for listening to Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. Please
take a minute to follow, subscribe and review us. And
no matter where in the world you are, you can
listen to us live from 6 to 9 a.m. weekdays
on the Moody Radio app.
Kurt and Kate mornings. Not just on the radio.
S2 (00:03):
It's a podcast too. Gentle parenting have you heard of it? Well,
it's in the church now and there's questions about it.
We spoke with Justin Miller, who is a pastor and
the author of the book The Not So Loving Side
of Gentle Parenting A Biblical Plea to Parents. Take a listen.
(00:27):
I heard that this really wasn't your idea to write
the book.
S3 (00:32):
I didn't want to write the book. I had a
pastor friend of mine reach out, and we were talking
about training pastors and seminary and these various things. He's
a president of a seminary and also the publisher of
free Grace press. The head of it. And he started
talking about gentle parenting. And we both were talking about
how this philosophy had come into the churches that we
(00:54):
knew and the, you know, the networks they were part of.
And he said, you know, someone needs to write a
book on this. And I told him, I don't really
want to write a book on that topic, per se.
And he and he was very persuasive. He's a dear
brother and a godly mentor. And so, after much prodding,
I wrote the book. And I'm glad I did. I
hope it's helpful to parents to really see the dangers
(01:15):
of the gentle parenting philosophy and the more biblical approach
that we have given to us in God's Holy Word.
S2 (01:22):
Okay. Well, let's talk about that first. What is gentle parenting?
S3 (01:26):
When I researched into gentle parenting, I was seeing the
fruit of it in in various churches. Gentle parenting is
a philosophy. It's hard to really nail down where it
came from. Um, but a lot of people believe it
came from Sarah Ockwell-smith. Um, Oprah, uh, put forth that
this idea of a gentle philosophy really began with her.
(01:47):
And she was a British author. She has about 13 books.
But the idea of the gentle parenting philosophy is that
you want to parent without punitive discipline. You want to
parent with empathy and respect. All that sounds great as
far as the empathy and respect. But it's this idea
of collaboration and partnership. It's kind of a redefinition or
redefining of authority in the family. You see that the
(02:11):
child has a democratic say in how they're parented. And
and so there are boundaries in gentle parenting. Most gentle
parenting advocates would be very quick to say that, and
rightly so. There are boundaries, but they try to enforce
them through redirection or positive speaking. And the idea is,
in gentle parenting, you really want the child to understand
(02:34):
their feelings, why they threw the tantrum, all those kind
of things with the intention that they will be the
best version of themselves.
S2 (02:42):
So what is wrong with that? What is wrong? What
a great question. Yeah, what makes that not so good?
S3 (02:50):
So when you when you think about the biblical paradigm
of parenting and you think about the underlying assumptions that
go into parenting from the scripture. Gentle parenting comes from
a worldview that assumes that children are positively sinful, meaning
they just lack certain qualities. And so the what a
parent needs to do is cultivate certain qualities. Where the
(03:11):
biblical paradigm says that children, all human beings, inherit a
sin nature from Adam are sinners, therefore they sin. And
so that's going to drive the different directions. Also, in
gentle parenting, the philosophy, the aim of parenting is really
for the child to be the self actualize the best
version of themselves. Well, the best version of a person
(03:34):
apart from Christ is just fully living out their sinful desires,
fully living out what they want to do in life.
You kind of hear the the serpents hiss in that
you'll be your own God. Where biblical parenting is the
goal of all parenting is for people, for their for
children to first and foremost know God through faith in
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then
(03:57):
also in that to live a life that glorifies God
and enjoys him forever. And the third thing with gentle
parenting is it redefines the biblical authority that God puts
forth in the family. Uh, it makes the child the
center of the authority structure, instead of the parent being
the one who's been given authority. Now, I do want
to say this. It there's a lot of people who
(04:20):
have seen unbiblical uses of authority in the family. Right.
Authoritarian type of parenting. And that's why gentle parenting seems
to appeal to them. And we can understand some of
the the aspects of gentle parenting that are good. Communication's good. Uh,
getting your children to understand why they do what they
do is good. But the objectives, the loss of authority
(04:40):
and the root view of humanity just doesn't coincide with
the the Bible.
S2 (04:47):
Okay. How would the biblical parenting that you're, you're advocating
look different to people? If you still want to talk
to the kids, you're not. You don't want to be that.
We all have that vision or seen it in a
movie of some awful human being, a, you know, abusing
kids and being awful. Nobody's advocating beating up kids or
(05:12):
being punitive about everything, right?
S3 (05:15):
No, no, as a matter of fact, if that's how
you're wielding your authority, you're you're not following the biblical paradigm. Amen. Um,
for example, God the Father does not treat his children
like that. God the father never abuses his authority, though
he clearly has it. And you think about what the
Bible says about how God disciplines us, the church, you know,
(05:36):
Hebrews 12 three through 11, he disciplines those whom he loves.
And the aim per verse ten and 11 is to
produce holiness in us. But then you also combine that
with the reality of Romans eight one there is no
wrath for us in Christ Jesus. So God the Father
never disciplines his church in anger. He never disciplines his
Plains Church in Roth. Roth is stored up for those
(05:58):
who don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Right? So
all of us who believe in Christ, there is no
wrath for us. God is not displeased with us in Christ,
so he disciplines us in love. And so if you
look at how the father disciplines us as his children,
he communicates to us. He gives us the law to
show us our sin, to drive us to Jesus. He
expounds to us the consequences of our actions, and then
(06:21):
he will correct us in life and time and space. Um,
though eternally our sins have been absolved. So gentle parenting
it removes that discipline aspect, truly, that God the Father
wields rightly. And so what we're advocating for in the
Bible is parenting with discipline. Yes, but always done in love,
always done with proper communication. Gentle parenting removes those authority
(06:45):
structures in response to what they have seen, probably in
authoritarian parenting.
S4 (06:50):
Thank you for taking some time to listen to this
episode of the Curtin Kate Mornings podcast. We always welcome
a review with your thoughts and comments, and please feel
free to subscribe and follow us as well.
S2 (07:02):
As you alluded to. Justin, just because you can read
the Bible doesn't mean you completely understand how to work
out your parenting style. And then, you know, kids, they
will throw you a curve ball every time. So what?
What is your best advice and how to really get
good at this?
S3 (07:23):
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, there's a
plethora of parenting books. When I wrote this, I didn't
want to write just another parenting book. I didn't want
to say, hey, this is the way to do it. Um, wholesale. Because,
like you said, every child is different. Every child has
different manifestations of their nature. Um, every child operates differently,
(07:45):
thinks differently. For example, I have one child who has
a really, really sensitive conscience, and I have another child
who can be very strong willed. And so you don't
treat those situations the same. You have to wield the
scripture and apply them wisely. You know we have to.
Wisdom is just truth righteously applied, truth rightly applied. And
so what I would encourage is for people to see
(08:08):
what the Bible says in places like Ephesians six one
through four, where verses one through three. Children, obey your
parents in the Lord, for this is right. And then
you see something said in verse four, that's wonderful. It's
it's Paul says in verse four, fathers, do not provoke
your children to anger. So he's basically conveying there that
as you discipline your children, as you set proper authority,
(08:30):
you don't want to do so in a way that
discourages and demeans them. So there's a way to to
do discipline. When your child transgresses a rule or breaks
a command that you can teach them. I always tell
our church, every discipline moment is a discipline. It's an
opportunity to share the gospel. And here's what I mean
by that. Whenever, let's say a child does something they're
(08:54):
not supposed to do. Communication is important. Not not communication
in the sense of redirection, but really getting to the
heart of why the child did it. And I would
advocate to our church using the law of God. I mean,
Paul says to Timothy, the law is good if it's
used lawfully. And Christ, when he would evangelize people, he
would use the Ten Commandments to help people to see
(09:15):
their their sin, their their heart. And so when like
a child, let's say they steal a cookie from the
plate and you say to them, why did you steal
the cookie? And you know, if your children are like
my children, they'll say, we didn't steal the cookie, but
they have crumbs on their cheeks, right? So you say, well,
you have crumbs on your cheek. You stole the cookie. Why?
Why did you why did you say you didn't steal
(09:35):
the cookie? And then you get down to it. You
get them to see that they've broken the commandment of
do not covet. Um, in that moment, they desired to
take the cookie more than they wanted to honor God.
And so they they broke the second commandment. And then
they dishonored mom and dad, who told them not to
take the cookie. And then also they lied. And so
you get them to see that they are lying and
(09:55):
they're and they're coveting, and they're making something in creation
higher than God that they want to they want in
that moment. And you get them to see their sin,
but then you give them the greatest news, and you
remind them that God so loved the world, that he
sent his only begotten son, and that whoever believes in
him should not perish. You remind them that God the
Son added humanity and lived a sinless life and died
(10:16):
on the cross for all who believe. And he rose
from dead on the third day, and that there's past, present,
and future. Sin can be removed before God because of Christ.
And so you've just taken that discipline moment and made
it an opportunity to share the gospel. And then you
do enact punitive discipline, but you always do it in love.
You let them see that you love them. You never
discipline them in anger or rage or or wrath. You
(10:39):
always discipline them in love and whatever discipline method you
use after you do it, you bring them in and
you hug them and you bring them tight and tell
them how much you you love them. Um, now that paradigm,
you can use those different aspects in various ways, but
that really is the simple biblical paradigm based on how
God the Father fathers his children and how what the
(10:59):
Bible says concerning how we're to instruct our children.
S2 (11:01):
Yeah. And I think that maybe it's some parents would
have a hard time because of how they were raised.
But I remember this some somebody said, you know, like
we should when we have a problem, we should run
to God. And if you're you can do that with
your parents, like, oh, dad, I blew this, you know,
and you can talk to be the people, the parents
(11:23):
that your kids can run to when something goes wrong.
You have to cultivate that just as as they will
then go to the father with when life falls on them.
S3 (11:36):
Yeah. I mean, the highest aim in parenting is I
can say, let me say it like this. It's okay. Um,
you know, our children can be the best educated, get
the best careers, um, have all the best opportunities in life.
And those things are great things. But if we fail
to pass to them the most important thing, we really
failed in our parenting with them in many aspects. Most aspects,
(11:59):
the most important aspect, because what we want for our
child ultimately, is for them to know God through Jesus Christ,
and that they would have a lifetime access to the
Heavenly Father through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
And the best way to do that when you're parenting
is to remind them that when they make a mistake,
the solution is not to try harder and do better.
(12:19):
That's moralism. The solution is I need God, I need Christ,
and in Christ I want to honor God. I want
to honor and obey his commands because I love God.
I mean, that's what the paradigm you want to teach
your children. That's the Christian worldview.
S2 (12:34):
Thanks for listening to Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. Please
take a minute to follow, subscribe and review us. And
no matter where in the world you are, you can
listen to us live from 6 to 9 a.m. weekdays
on the Moody Radio app.
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