Admired Pastor Condemned My Parenting Advice In a Bible Teaching I Attended

I was sitting on my day off, listening to a teacher I deeply respect. By the end of the hour, he had preached the exact opposite of everything I just published. I couldn't stop smiling.

The Teaching

I have a pastor I've listened to for years. Serious student of scripture. Unbiased, deep, earned his credibility the hard way — by living it. He runs a school by Biblical principles. I admire him genuinely.

On my day off, fresh off publishing a post about fraternal love — about talking to your kids like friends, about dude you're being gross and bedtime whispers and the forgiving room — I sat down to hear his weekly teaching.

The topic: choices and their consequences. Exactly what the 4 LAWS address. What the Bible has to say about what our choices mean and where they lead.

I was nodding along.

Then he got to the example section. How to deal with youth — as parents, as teachers.

His answer: don't be friends. Be the authority.

The exact opposite of what I had just posted.

He's Not Wrong

Let me say that clearly before I say anything else.

He's not wrong.

He was addressing something real — parents and teachers who want to be liked so badly that they stop correcting. They let things slide. They look the other way. They choose the relationship over the responsibility and end up failing the child on both counts. That happens. It's common. It's a genuine problem.

Friendship causes bias. An adult who needs approval from a child will eventually stop telling that child the truth. The pastor has seen it. I've seen it too.

His solution is vertical culture. Top down. Authority to submission. The person at the top decides what is correct and enforces it. Teacher teaches, student learns. Parent commands, child obeys. Clear lines, no confusion, no compromise.

He's not wrong about the problem. His solution is just incomplete.

The Ceiling of Vertical Culture

Here's what vertical culture cannot conceive of: a relationship that is both corrective and equal.

In that framework, authority and friendship are mutually exclusive. You pick one. The moment you become a friend, you lose the ability to correct. The moment you correct, you are no longer a friend. That's the ceiling. And an entire generation of families is bumping their heads against it — oscillating between permissiveness and control, never finding the third option because the framework says there isn't one.

The 4 LAWS blow that ceiling off.

Because the laws are natural. Nobody invented them. Nobody owns them. They apply to everyone in the room equally — parent, child, teacher, student. When the 4 LAWS are the authority, the correction is never personal. It's never about who has more power. It's just true. You violated a right. Here are the consequences. Natural law. Nothing personal.

Which means I get to stay your friend.

The laws do the correcting. I do the believing in you.

What the Pastor and I Actually Agree On

The pastor preached about free will. Essential to mankind from the beginning — the intelligence and the right to choose. Toward light or toward darkness. Toward God's natural standards or away from them. A string of choices that build a life or unravel one.

That's the whole game.

And the 4 LAWS are built entirely around that same principle. Chosen goodness, not forced goodness. You cannot force a pearl into existence. You can create conditions for it to grow — or you can try to mold it like clay and watch it harden into opposition.

The pastor and I agree on free will. We agree on consequences. We agree on the necessity of correction. We agree that a child left without limits is a child left without safety.

Where we part ways is the relationship. He sees friendship as the enemy of correction. I see it as the vehicle.

The Question I'd Ask Him

If I could sit across from this pastor — and I say this with genuine respect — I would ask him one question:

What if the laws themselves were the authority? What if no human being had to own the enforcement? What if correction could be clean, consistent, and completely separate from the relationship — so that the relationship stayed intact no matter what got corrected?

I already know his answer. He would say: as long as it's consistent with the Bible, it must be considered.

And it is.

The 4 LAWS are natural law — the same natural law the Bible describes when it speaks of sowing and reaping, of consequences that follow choices like night follows day. Safety, possession, belonging, creation — these are not invented categories. They are the rights God wired into every human being from the beginning. Enforcing them isn't a departure from scripture. It's an application of it.

Because that's what the 4 LAWS do.

And according to his own advice — don't be influenced by others, go with what is right — I'll stand by what I posted.

Want to understand how the 4 LAWS create correction without conflict — and friendship without compromise? Start at /learn — the full framework, no jargon.

Or walk the path at the Family Program.

The third option exists. It always did.

Eduardo M. Bustamante, Ph.D. is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist (MA PSY3644) with 35+ years of experience specializing in disruptive disorders, ADHD, and oppositional defiant disorder. He is the creator of the 4 LAWS of Trust and Talent and founder of 4 LAWS Academy. Learn more at 4lawsacademy.com.