Toward understanding the blame borne by wives in Duggar Family religion in the wake of Josh Duggar’s involvement in the Ashley Madison scandal
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by Cindy Kunsman
Originally posted on 22Aug15 at UnderMuchGrace.com
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I’ve tried for more than 48 hours to write this, but having watched this scenario play out with other followers of Bill Gothard, it brings up so many disturbing emotions for me, I found myself too caught up in them. As the media begins to report, Anna Duggar will share in the blame for her husband’s sins and divorce will be strongly discouraged if not demonized. I’ve watched it happen with other people who follow this belief system, over and over again.
I don’t know how the family will make her the scapegoat for his behavior prior to their courtship, but they will scapegoat her for his infidelity. The wife’s exemplary performance allegedly and magically prevents a husband from indulging in sin. We see elements of this same mindset in the blaming behavior of Tullian Tchividjian. Such magical thinking rests at the core of all of the beliefs within the Duggars’ cultic excuse for sanitized and superior Christianity.
Precipitating Events
In May of this year (2015), documentation of Josh Duggar’s molestation of several sisters went public. He resigned his job, and his parents lost their Learning Channel Show which highlights their lifestyle built around the ideology promoted by Bill Gothard’s family-oriented teachings. Their long-standing relationship of mutual endorsement with Mike Huckabee dissolved. I read in a tabloid that the Duggars approached the network with a new spinoff show idea wherein they would counsel sex abuse victims (shame-based/Gothard-style, I would assume). A few days later, news broke about more of Josh Duggar’s questionable behavior when hackers released the names of subscribers to the Ashley Madison adultery website — a service that he stopped using in May when news of his predatory sexual behavior went public. He and his parents confirmed the accuracy of his use of this adultery site on their family blog
The Scapegoat
Under Old Testament Law, to atone for sin, a family was required to give one spotless sacrifice to be offered at the Temple to atone for their sins, but the Devil was given his due as well. Each family also transferred their sins on to a goat which was sent out into the wilderness as an offering to Azazel, the name of a fallen angel (Leviticus 16). Today, scapegoating represents a surrogate who is used to purge another individual or group of the appearance of wrongdoing. This scapegoat “takes the fall” for another to restore them to good standing.
Berlet and Lyons identify scapegoating as one of the elements of how Right Wing Conservatives process their experiences and respond to them within secular society. Politically, it is a powerful “ideological weapon,” yet those within Christian Patriarchy also use scapegoating in family and personal relationships in much the same way. It’s so much easier to lay blame on a demonized other than it is to either accept flawed reality or take responsibility for a less than perfect outcome.
The Woman Problem
Within the religion followed by the Duggars, gender hierarchy provides a convenient route for scapegoating which protects men and lets blame “roll downhill” on to women — including the blame for original sin. One cannot fully understand the mindset of the Duggars until they acknowledge this scapegoating and the history of the theology that supports it. One must also acknowledge the nature of the indoctrination that families like the Duggars endure, instilling them with empty promises that find their roots in disdain. I’m sure Anna will be presented, over and over again with the challenge, “Me? Obey him?” Just as is true of John Piper, Bill Gothard also draws on this tradition forged by John R. Rice which was carried on by the Independent Fundamental Baptist tradition.
I sincerely wish that I could say that this tradition started in the 20th Century, but I believe that all Rice did was draw on the sentiments of those who preceded him. Author Bob Edwards just published a very moving 
post about the long tradition of deception in Christianity and the deeply personal journey that drew him to this study. It is well worth reading in its entirety, but this element of it describes just a portion of this long history of “the woman problem.”
Then I came across a historical book that continues to haunt me. It contained court transcripts of all of the women killed by men, acting on the authority of the church, during the Inquisition. It had their names, and the charges against them. Many of the women were found guilty of “witchcraft;” specifically, something called “love magic.” This meant that a man had allegedly been so bewitched by a woman that he couldn’t help committing adultery with her, or perhaps even raping her. Sexual sins committed by men were blamed exclusively on their female partners or victims. I read hundreds of names, maybe thousands. I lost count. I became dizzy. I didn’t realize it at first, but I had stopped breathing. I felt like I was going to die. Something inside me broke.
This notion that women must be subject to men had nothing to do with God, the gospel, servant-leadership, or the love of Jesus Christ. It was born of fear, hatred, and a felt “need” for control. It was prejudice, and it had led to subjugation, oppression and even mass murder.
Read more HERE about how Gothard and the theology that influenced him blame women and children for their own sexual assault.
“Spread Your Legs Theology”
I cannot begin to enumerate the contemporary references to this element of the scapegoating which lays blame on a wife for their husband’s sins against them. Shirley Taylor describes many of them in her first book. 
I’ll mention a few names that used to carry a great deal of respect. Tim Keller was once chief among them for me but now offers what I find to be disturbingly strange writing about sex, what it should be, and what it should mean. The Mahaneys, the Driscolls, the Wilsons, and pastors and their wives who I know in real life blame the wife for their husband’s sins. I can’t stomach documenting the numerous statements, but do a bit of googling, and they are sure to turn up.
“If your house were cleaner, he wouldn’t cheat… If you gave him enough sex, he wouldn’t cheat… If you hadn’t “let yourself go,” he wouldn’t cheat… If he were satisfied in bed at home, he would never have put photographs of his genitalia online to find flings… Love him with ‘ooey gooey love’ and let love cover a multitude of sins’ by ignoring how he treats you… Be his ‘on demand’ sex kitten’… Be a whore in the bedroom and a saint in the kitchen… If he still cheats, you aren’t trying hard enough… You’re getting just what you deserve and just what you earned ‘…
Shirley (the aforementioned author) privately whispered to me a few years ago, qualifying these teachings as “spread your legs theology.” (I’m glad that she’s finally willing to claim the phrase, as when I first heard her use it, she was not ready to go public. Today, she’s willing to claim the credit.) It sounds offensive, but with this filth that is promulgated in the name of the Christian Faith today, I don’t see it as that inaccurate.
All a woman’s worth is based not in her self and her image that was created in the Image of God but in the anatomy between her legs — a receptacle for conquer through piercing and a baby machine which allows men to take dominion over the earth to redeem it. Why would young men raised with this mindset see women as anything other than an object for their use and pleasure, bound to servile obedience in order to be acceptable to God?
A good part of the world watched the Duggar Family market the formula that promises the raising of perfect and wholesome kids. I feel terrible for the Duggars for buying into the lie as I watch them pay the price for their moral disengagement — the illusion that obediently following Gothard’s plan makes them innocent of the fruit that the plan produces. They had faith in its ability to make them impervious to the problems with which they now wrestle. (Consider also that not all of the family’s problems have come to public light.) I’m sure that in their shock, they will continue to stick by their commitment to the formula, and we will see the “spread your legs” element of it piled upon Anna.
But is it for God’s glory or just as social proof to attest to the validity and the purity of the traditions of men?
The New Altar of Molech
Bible Pictures and What They Teach (1987)
Molech was an Ammonite deity who represented masculinity and the part that man played in reproduction to bring about life, and his consort was Ashtoreth, a female deity of fertility. Canaanites, Philistines and other people in North Africa worshiped these deities and offered their first-born children as live sacrifices to Molech. Ashtoreth was worshiped through shrine prostitution and other ritualistic sex acts. The altars of Molech were statutes made of brass and were heated from the inside, so that when children were placed in the arms of statute, they would burn alive and would then be engulfed by flame. The parents then earned divine favor from Molech in exchange for their child’s life.
I think so often of this image when women within this modern religious movement must willingly bury their talents and their gifts and even their identity as fully human in the eyes of God. They are said to be the indirect and derivative of man, so they are of lesser essence. Their sole purpose is also lesser as they were created for man’s use. They are told that they must sacrifice all to make their religious system work through servility which they must accept with grace and joy.
Like the parents who took their firstborn children to the altar of burning brass as they stood as drums drowned out the voices of their child’s screams, women like Anna Duggar are called to crawl up on the altar of the traditions of men in an act of worship to an ideology that promises to save them.
Who do the Duggars really worship? Is it the altar of a foolish consistency for their own brand, or has Bill Gothard’s version of truth completely eclipsed the simplicity of the Gospel? How is this magical thinking not an example of “spread your legs theology” ? How does any of it glorify God?
My Grief and Hope for Anna Duggar
How my heart aches for Anna and her children. I cannot help but think of this image as I read about Josh’s continued actions. I know well the way divorce — even divorce that is allowed in the Bible because of adultery — is vilified. She was likely seen as the “cure” what would heal Josh of his sexual deviance. The theology that blames women for every sin back to the beginning of the Fall of Man, and like Eve, she has failed. I know it what will happen. I have seen it. I have watched it destroy people and crush them.
I want to tell Anna to run from the brass arms of the idol that has been built in the name of a family because of the empty promises of a deluded, sick man who is also a sex abuser — Bill Gothard. I want to protect her somehow from the burning that will be sold to her as the purifying of her soul as opposed to an unholy sacrifice to a cultic theology of fantasy. I want to tell her to take her children and run as far as she can from the fire, but I doubt that she will. She loves the ideal to which she has pledged her life. As is true of any young wife, despite what has happened, I know that she loves her husband and the father of her children. But I also know that she loves a fantasy that she’s been forced to accept.
I can pray. I can write about how, from my perspective, she’s worshiping a hollow tradition that has made empty promises to her. How I pray that when the burdens of that life to which she’s bound so tightly become too heavy that she will ask God to show her how her burdens can be made light and how her soul can find gentle rest in Him! Perhaps then, she may somehow find her way to these words and will take them to heart, and the God of all comfort will reveal Himself to her in strength. Deliver her, Lord — soon! May it be sooner than I can imagine.
Spiritual Sounding Board 
Great article! Toxic theology!
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Hey Cindy, I was wondering if I could pick your brain for a blog post I am working on?
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Can you elaborate on Keller’s writing that you reference in the post?
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Privately she may be blamed, but since they have PR folks to craft and recraft their statements, that will not fly publicly. The excuse will be once again that they are just sinners like everyone else. The problem with that is that they have made their fortune off of the fraud that they were morally superior because they dressed modestly, homeschooled, controlled Internet usage, and used courtship principles….all of which didn’t help.
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Loura, pick away.
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Christian Agnostic,
The material of Keller’s along this line of thinking may be published elsewhere in addition to it, but I reference Keller’s book, The Meaning of Marriage.
In addition to his quotes, I would also like to offer a response and my own defense of exactly why I believe he’s horribly wrong. I’m going to work on a response and will post it on my blog. It’s at Julie Anne’s discretion as to whether or not it belongs here at SSB. This is a subject of such critical importance to me because I believe that what he says profance’s Christ at worst, and at bet, it diminishes His work on the Cross. Though I don’t really know which one is worse, frankly.
I think that to give it justice, it will take at least one long or two shorter blog posts. I’ll post a link to something before the day is out. I don’t want to legitimize Keller’s statements by posting them here without a thoughtful response,
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And then this gem from the pastor of the church the Duggar family attends (source)
Translation: Anna didn’t cheat, so Josh must have met her sexual needs. Anna must not have returned the favor, causing Josh to cheat.
The family’s pastor is spearheading a pathetic campaign to pin the blame on Anna. He isn’t even being subtle about this.
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thanks for this article I agree that they will target Anna I hope she has the good sense to leave him and that whole cult
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Does everyone realize that Ronnie Floyd — the pastor who preached about keeping a partner happy — is the current President of the SBC?
He’s also the guy who called for a “Biblical” statement about mental health from the SBC a couple of years ago, and all they could agree upon was that people should be nice to families who were wrestling with mental health issues.
Dip it in the sugar coated claim that something is Biblical, and many people will swallow it. That’s essentially my issue with Keller as well.
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No doubt Anna Duggar will be blamed for Josh Duggar’s transgressions. Men have been attempting to scapegoat women since Adam sinned. Well, just as God was not fooled by Adam’s attempted blame shifting, so also we should not be fooled by any suggestion that Anna must take even a modicum of responsibility for her supposed failure to meet Josh’s apparently inordinate, out of control, sexual cravings.
Or to put it another way, to absolve Josh on the basis of Anna’s supposed omissions is tantamount to absolving a bank robber who murders a teller who does not have sufficient cash to satisfy the robber’s expectations.
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Coming together without caring for the other person is abuse – done.
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I can so relate to this article and the validity of it. My husband of 21 years left me for another woman ten years ago. He said that he didn’t get enough sex and that I didn’t worship his penis. We raised our children in ATI, same as the Duggars for 14 years, with all the attendant patriarchy and attitudes. It took me several years to realize that I was worth more than being his sex slave. Thank you for writing this article; it struck a chord.
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“Does everyone realize that Ronnie Floyd — the pastor who preached about keeping a partner happy — is the current President of the SBC?”
I was born and raised in the southern Baptist convention, it is saturated with wife beaters and little girl rapist. We are well informed (by women) that Jesus will bless us if we do not tell any body and God will hate us if we do. .
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I love Cindy. 🙂
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So do I.
God bless her
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I’m just frustrated beyond belief. All of my Christian friends are slamming anybody who has anything negative to say about Josh and saying we need to pray for him. Am I just callous that all I want is for him and his family to go away into obscurity and never be heard of again in public? I want him to be truly repentant and not just because he was caught. Why am I the bad guy for not being so quick to defend him?
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Anna is already being made a scapegoat by her own sister. Someone posted a FB link on TWW with copied and pasted comments from Jessa Seewald’s FB page. I wish I had screenshots of it. Anna’s brother is furious with Josh and wants to rescue his sister. Anna’s sister, however, had this to say:
This is the link where the comments were originally pasted. It has been taken down.
Here is where I quoted from this link on TTW:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2015/08/21/the-josh-duggar-scandal-reveals-the-underbelly-of-the-duggar-family/comment-page-1/#comment-215139
So, as you can see, if Anna does not submit to Josh then she is as guilty as he is of molestation, pornography, and adultery. Sick, sick, sick.
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Wow, The FB link didn’t show up. Here is where Debi Calvet originally posted it on TWW.
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2015/08/21/the-josh-duggar-scandal-reveals-the-underbelly-of-the-duggar-family/comment-page-1/#comment-215043
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Christian Agnostic,
Here is Part I. I’m working on a Part II which I may get up later today. It involves Hebrew, so I wanted to take my time in preparing it.
http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2015/08/tim-keller-on-meaning-of-sex-act-in.html
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Barnabas in Training and Scott,
Thank you for loving me. I’m a “hot mess,” so I understand it, but I’m trying. And these people are messing with Jesus. I can’t help it.
I copied your comments and sent to my husband, and he wrote back, “I love Cindy also.” 🙂
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lalacy1, I posted this on an older thread, but it fits here in response to your comment as well.
Even today, people on my FB and defending the Duggar parents and saying that the parents are not responsible for the son’s choices. We should not judge them because they are just doing the best they know how.
I think perhaps these are the voices of people who are really saying, “Don’t judge *us* for our choices. We are just doing the best we know how.”
But they are continuing to insist that IBLP/ATI is a good choice, it sounds like, and not to blame for Josh’s choices. Just like they are not to blame for their own adult children who have “rebelled” and walked away from the faith.
Because they are so (in)secure in their choices, they can’t seem to bear anyone criticizing the Duggars and their choices.
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(meant to say “are defending” not “and defending”)
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The paragraph about the scapegoat begins, “Under Old Testament Law…”
Which reminds me that under Old Testament law, Josh would have been hauled out and stoned to death.
But we are under New Testament law, which apparently means that all he has to do is confess (after being caught and publicly “outed”) and say he’s sorry, and then nobody has the right to express any opinion but an overall positive, supportive, and pious “praying for him” kind of thing.
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Cindy, I am looking for materials concerning a “doctrinal” trend about the divinity or near-divinity of husbands. I will investigate T. Keller, and your quotes from Handford shocked me. I couldn’t decide if it was a satire or if the “female” author was really a “he”.
I have found a few things, but I don’t feel my points are strong enough yet. Can you point me in the right direction?
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Thanks Cindy….I’ve never been a fan of Keller, but have friends and family that think he’s the cat’s meow.
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Loura,
CBMW and the like are now downplaying this now, but men are deemed as intercessors. They don’t just come out and say it anymore.
Here’s an old link —
Take note of the Owner/editor’s bio. They teach men how to sanctify their wives? This is a guy from RC Sproul, Jr.’s church: https://web.archive.org/web/20080511205039/http://www.homeschooltoday.com/aboutus/ourteam.php
But people like me complain, and they change stuff.
I was surrounded by seminary students that believed that they were responsible for the repentance of their wives and for making them holy. Like they were a broker who was going to stand with their wife before God to give an account for her sins.
http://www.ethicsdaily.com/speaker-chastised-over-criticism-of-biblical-patriarchy-at-sbc-seminary-cms-12555
Elizabeth Rice Handford pushes this same stuff in her book, “Me, Obey Him?”
And Bruce Ware hashes a lot of this stuff out in his ESS doctrine which he picked up from Wayne Grudem when they were both at TEDS. Look at the quotes from his book concerning women. They are demi-gods. At the top of this link, you;ll find a link to the 2008 workshop that I did that goes through a great deal of the theological arguments that they make — such that women are the indirect image of God.
http://undermoregrace.blogspot.com/search/label/Against%20Subordinationism
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This is old, too, but it at least documents the comments of the small crowd of Bible College students around me, arguing that they were going to atone before Jesus for the sins of their respective wives. I was utterly floored.
http://www.ethicsdaily.com/speaker-chastised-over-criticism-of-biblical-patriarchy-at-sbc-seminary-cms-12555
There is also that crazy video of John Piper’s about “wife’s submission” which basically says she’s supposed to comply with whatever, and so long as it’s nothing like group sex, she should do it. And she should take a couple of beatings in the process. You don’t call the church elders until after you’ve taken a battering. And I don’t think they ever want you to call the cops. In his clarification four years later, he talks about how wives are basically losing their meal ticket if they turn in their hubbies for abuse, and their children end up with a father in jail and with no means of support.
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Chris, I can see why it would strike a chord with you. I’m very sorry to hear that you have been harmed by a man who cared more about himself than you. It’s heartbreaking! How are you doing now? And your kids?
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I had someone tell me today after I brought up Bill Gothard’s grooming of the young women and called his group a cult that his personal affairs are separate from his teaching. I was told that his teaching is very solid. I had no response after that.
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My response to that would be that “a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” But then, I think some professing Christians would even argue with Jesus if He were walking the Earth today. There is a pattern of bad fruit from the Patriarchal ideology.
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I’m so sorry that I missed those comments in queue that didn’t get posted. Chris, I am so sorry, though it sounds like a mixed blessing that you aren’t still in that marriage. This strikes me so deeply because of the harm I’ve watched my old church do to women with abusive and philandering husbands, and the horrible stuff that they said to them. I wanted to hurt someone when I heard that “ooey gooey love” that was supposed to cover sin. ??? I said that God doesn’t forgive us when we don’t repent, so why is it right for us to do something other than that — and He is patient and forbearing beyond our ability to fathom. I’m sorry that you suffered this cruelty.
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How can you respond to it? I spent more than an hour debating with a guy on Twitter this morning (you can tell I’m on break from school) who said that Anna was partially responsible. He kept on bringing to the topic that she should not deprive him sexually. First of all, we don’t know that she sexually deprived him. But he kept assuming that. Ugh. Sometimes it’s just not worth debating.
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lalacy1,
I would say, don’t answer a fool in his folly. Where is that? Provb 26?
Hezekiah’s men did not answer the blasphemies of Rab-shakeh (2 Kgs. 18:36). Nehemiah didn’t answer Sanballat (Neh.6:8). What do you say to statements that make no sense?
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Josh and Anna had 4 babies in 6 years. I doubt she is denying him. But it seems that many “Christians” are already scapegoating Anna even though the Duggars haven’t made an official statement on their sex life. The Duggars still have an image to portray. I think that image would be toast if they made an official statement to that effect.
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You know as the uncle to 5 nieces (ages 5 months to age 23) that are in fundieland this issue really bothers me. I knew it was bad but come on , this is flat out over the top and unbiblical. I will be on death row if any man pulls this stuff with any of them.
I started letting my nieces and nephews pick their choice of handgun out of my collection for their graduation gift when they complete college. I’m starting to rethink that, and might moved that to graduation from high school for my nieces protection.
I remember when Doug Phillips had his armed thugs / interns going to people’s homes to issue warnings about speaking out against him. They skipped his most vocal critic because she was very angry and very armed. They knew she had a carry permit so they skipped her home. I would have shot all three of them on the spot if they came to my home in the middle of the night, armed to try intimidating me.
Maybe ole Mary Winkler in Tennessee had the right idea.
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Scott,
I was thinking more along the Loranna Bobbit method. Consequences related to the transgression. But I’m a female with baggage.
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I don’t wish harm on the guy. He is a product of his upbringing to a great extent, but he’s old enough now to have felt and apparently seared his conscience. I’m just angry over this condemnation directed at an innocent who is not responsible, but the toxic religion will hang the stench of his shame around her neck as an excuse.
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“there is no sin greater than another”
__________________________________
Where do people get this from? Jesus? No, Jesus was quite clear that certain sins were particularly egregious, inasmuch as He said at least one was unforgivable, and of another it would be better for the perpetrator to face the death penalty (i.e., thrown into a sea with a millstone round their neck) than to commit it. Elsewhere in the Bible? No, the Bible says nothing of the sort. Absolutely nothing. Zero, zilch.
Where do they get it from? From abusive, sociopathic cult leaders who make up their own self-serving gospel, sometimes, such as the “no sin greater than another” falsehood, out of whole cloth. These sociopaths make up their own gospel so that they can in effect excise true biblical standards, such as those which regard qualifications for leadership (which would, of course, render every single one of them unfit for leadership). Works like this: if you sexual abuse dozens of young, unsuspecting women over the course of decades, such as Bill Gothard allegedly has done, or cover up the molestations your son has committed upon your own daughters and a babysitter, then file lawsuits and attempt to use your connections to have the Chief of Police of your town fired before she can respond to a freedom of information request regarding your son’s crimes, such as Jim Bob allegedly has done, it serves your own best interests to inculcate people with the notion that no sin is greater than another. If this is the case, you can effectively destroy any argument against your leadership: “Who are you to judge, do you have any sin? Then you’re no better.”
It’s all about the power, there just doesn’t seem to be any Jesus at all in it.
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Truth Detector,
You know, I dreamed about Anna and she turned into the baby that two women fought over in front of Solomon. It is telling, isn’t it, who would offer to help protect Anna and her children from harm and who would rather seen her split in two? What you wrote and how you wrote it brought the feeling of the dream back to me for a fleeting moment.
We certainly have an amazing opportunity to see true colors over all of this, don’t we?
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Just to let you all know, I am 61 years old now, and five years ago I met a man who treats me as an equal. He never heard of Bill Gothard’s ATI. We married and thank God my present husband is understanding and patient because I have had a lot of demons and wrong logic to work through. Today I am thankful that my first husband left because now I have the life I always prayed for. Thanks for your comments.
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@Cindy K … thank you for taking the time to process this sad situation and produce such a thoughtful article. One thing that comes to mind is the title of an article I read decades ago in my search for understanding how a “worldview” becomes a “world do.” The article was entitled, “Ideas have Legs.”
I believe much of what we’re currently witnessing on a grand scale is how false worldviews **inevitably** walk us down pathways to harm. What’s happening with the extended Duggar clan looks to be a grievous “perfect storm” of excruciating consequences and potentially life-dominating problems from the toxic theological set-ups of Quiverfull, Patriarchy, Modesty Culture, Gothardism, Perfectionism, and more.
The Law, human mediators/pedagogues, and rules and regulations — none of these bring anyone to maturity, but leave us in a constant state of childhood. These have nothing to do with the Kingdom of Christ or the fruit of the Spirit, though they sometimes have played the masquerade well enough to pass as if they did.
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I found a cached page of the comments copied and pasted from Jessa Seewald’s FB. I don’t know why I didn’t think to look for this before. Daniel Keller is Anna’s brother. Colleen Keller Liszkiewicz is Anna’s sister.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.facebook.com/EntertainmentTonight/posts/473807399466267
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Thanks BTDT for the link to the cached FB page. I saw this in Colleen’s response about why a woman always has to submit to a man:
Man is head of the woman and will be responsible for her at the judgement seat.
Is this the teaching that the man is like the “broker” for the woman before God as Cindy said? How twisted and sick. Where does Jesus fit in?
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Time for moderation here???
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Yes, indeed. I just removed it. I don’t know how that comment slipped past moderation, but this person changes their user ID and posts some very odd and disruptive comments. buh-bye!!!
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Julie Anne – As far as debating the guy on Twitter…It seems like there’s no way to win that argument. She obviously wasn’t fulfilling Josh sexually because he went outside of the marriage relationship to seek what he needed. Never mind that he was more than willing to have sex to produce offspring. Shesh!
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Cindy, Thank you so much for the references! I definitely have plenty to search through now. I am a little confused about the Homeschool Today link. I am in the beginning stages of connecting various dots. 🙂
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All this “all sin is just as bad” reminds me of what I call “psychological socialism” which I wrote about here – http://watchtheshepherd.blogspot.com/2014/06/psychological-socialism-manipulating.html
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Loura, I’ve been there and done that myself. (As has frequent commenter here “BTDT”)
In that Homeschoooling Today link, the owner says something about either sanctifying his own wife or helping other men readers do that. Sanctification is making someone holy. You can be in a relationship that either makes that hard or easy, but only a holy God can make us holy. In this movement, men seem to think that they are the mediator between God and women and that they themselves as husbands have the job of making their wives holy. In that link, they actually wrote that out. It’s a reference to Ephesians 5. They think it’s a law book on gender when it’s actually talking the means by which we can be sanctified (holy) passed from the Law of sin and death and sacrifice to the Law of Love through Jesus who died once for all.
That’s the focus of my next blog post discussing Tim Keller.
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An adult porn actress has come forward to say that she had paid consensual rough sex with Josh Duggar on two occasions when his wife was pregnant. She said it became so extreme that she was frightened. She says she has passed a polygraph test. If this is true, are these misogynist ‘Christians’ going to argue that Anna was at fault for not providing rough sex?
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I think perhaps these are the voices of people who are really saying, “Don’t judge *us* for our choices. We are just doing the best we know how.”
_____________________________
They tend to be the ones who are quickest to judge those of us who try to argue that so-called Christian leaders be held to objective standards of some sort.
Basically, they’re saying “Don’t judge us or our leaders, no matter how evil or destructive the actions, but if you dare to call us to account, we’ll most certainly judge you.” Have they no capacity to think logically?
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Ok, Marsha’s comment got me googling.
I am nearly speechless. Anna Duggar needs to get herself tested for STDs as soon as possible. I hope her brother continues to reach out to her.
Dear God, have mercy on Anna and the kids.
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Here’s my concern about the sex business with Anna that I’ve talked about in other places. They both need a Western Blot screen for STDs, and it can take up to a year to sero-convert to be positive for AIDS. If he is a liar and a risk taker, how do we know he used safe sex practices? And even then, the AIDS virus is 0.3 microns in size. The pores in a surgical glove are as large as 5 microns in size. Do the math. No barrier method is 100% reliable for pregnancy or STDs.
Now, that said. Say that they stay together and abstain for the next 6 months to a year until their tests are all back? What’s to stop Josh from going out the day after the test or two weeks before the results are back and having sex, lying about it (again) and popping positive?
This is a public health issue and a private health concern for Anna. And she’s forced to have sex with him and stay with him because of religion?
And Washington, DC area has one of the highest STD rates for certain diseases in the country. Top ten at least for some. And she’s dealing with a liar who was raised to think that Daddy or Mike Huckabee can buy him out of any mess.
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The Duggars released a statement that Josh is in a treatment center. At least they aren’t publicly blaming Anna. However, we’ve seen different on the FB convos.
http://www.duggarfamily.com/2015/8/duggar-family-statement
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Intouch Weekly said Josh used no protection with the porn star.
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Treatment centers for any kind of addictions have very low success rates.
I have watched a family member bounce from center to center (both secular and Christian) to no avail. These sort of behaviors do not go away with a magical mystery trip to the treatment center down at Strawberry Fields.
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http://www.duggarfamily.com/2015/8/duggar-family-statement
I’m concerned where Anna is going to get the counsel and
“help for her heart” that the Duggars say she needs.
I hope Anna is going outside of her family, pastors, and friends to qualified psychologists to get the help she needs.
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Bingo: apparently no safe sex.
(I wouldn’t go anywhere but The Meadows in Wickensburg, Arizona for sex addiction.)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3210828/Porn-star-says-terrifying-rough-sex-disgraced-Josh-Duggar-TWICE-wife-pregnant-fourth-child.html
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I also can’t imagine how the children molested by Josh, and especially his sisters that went on television to support him after the information was released, are all processing this. Either the entire family was duped by Josh or the head of the family was covering up for Josh. I hope all Josh’s siblings get counseling to process what they have been exposed to and put through as Duggars.
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So I read the Daily Mail article and….
Someone who went to IBYC/ATI, remind me if Gothard’s teachings virtually guarantee you faithful Godly children if dutifully applied.
‘Cause I’m kinda thinking “epic fail” here.
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And in another story about Christians who are clueless about sexual perversions, I read where the pastor of Back to Calvary Community Church is upset with law enforcement for objecting to a sex offender leading services and working with children. Why the pastor assures them that he has known this man for over a year now and wouldn’t hesitate to LEAVE HIM ALONE with his own children!!!!
Julie Anne, I have started working on the pedophilia article.
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I went to IBYC — the first session. They pass the buck of responsibility off on to God Almighty with the Bible (notably Brother Bill’s proof texts) to follow through on making good on the promises. If there is a fail, there is never a flaw in the system. It’s operator error. In any cult, this is the “sacred science” of the belief system which you may never question. The leaders and the doctrine are NEVER wrong, and it’s sinful to question them.
The poop always rolls downhill on to the members for failure to follow the formula properly. The bad fruit is always the fault of the follower. So it’s either Jim Bob and Michelle’s fault for not following God’s alleged design, or it’s Anna’s fault for not being the right kind of wife.
Consider also faith healing which is very similar. You have to confess and believe and get enough of the Word of God in you and pray in tongues enough to get holy, and then divine health is supposed to manifest when your mind is right. Mind over matter, essentially. If you don’t get the brass ring of healing, then you either have sin or didn’t yield to God or weren’t holy enough or have some demonic stronghold. The burden of error always falls to the member, not the leadership or the doctrine.
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I have to wonder what happens when it is The Poster Family for The System that FUBARs, and does so according to the rules of The System. I mean, this was a proper patriarchal courtship, wasn’t it?
For all intents and purposes, the Duggars are The System. They have been the ones celebrated for proving how well The System works. And now we see just as publicly from them either how badly The System failed them, or how badly The Poster Family failed The System. And if The Poster Family failed, who can measure up? But if The System failed….
As for Anna being the wrong kind of wife, how is that possible when the marriage came from a proper patriarchal courtship as per The System? Proper patriarchal courtship should not lead to the wrong kind of spouse. If it does, either The Poster Family failed in not performing a proper patriarchal courtship, or The System failed. And if The Poster Family failed, how can anyone measure up? But if The System failed….
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A Georgia Mom’s Open Letter Regarding Anna Duggar
JESSICA KIRKLAND’S FULL ‘BREATHE FIRE’ POST
I know everybody is laughing about this Josh Duggar story. Oh, a DUGGAR on Ashley Madison, it’s so rich! I wish more people would talk about Anna. I normally keep things light on Facebook, but let’s talk about Anna. Let me tell you: Anna Duggar is in the worst position she could possibly be in right now. Anna Duggar was crippled by her parents by receiving no education, having no work experience (or life experience, for that matter) and then was shackled to this loser because his family was famous in their religious circle. Anna Duggar was taught that her sole purpose in life, the most meaningful thing she could do, was to be chaste and proper, a devout wife, and a mother. Anna Duggar did that! Anna Duggar followed the rules that were imposed on her from the get-go and this is what she got in reward- a husband who she found out, in the span of six months, not only molested his own sisters, but was unfaithful to her in the most humiliating way possible. While she was fulfilling her “duty” of providing him with four children and raising them. She lived up to the standard that men set for her of being chaste and Godly and in return, the man who demanded this of her sought women who were the opposite. “Be this,” they told her. She was. It wasn’t enough.
What is Anna Duggar supposed to do? She can’t divorce because the religious environment she was brought up would blame her and ostracize her for it. Even if she would risk that, she has no education and no work experience to fall back on, so how does she support her kids? From where could she summon the ability to turn her back on everything she ever held to be sacred and safe? Her beliefs, the very thing she would turn to for comfort in this kind of crisis, are the VERY REASON she is in this predicament in the first place. How can she reconcile this? Her parents have utterly, utterly failed her. Think of this: somewhere, Anna Duggar is sitting in prayer, praying not for the strength to get out and stand on her own, but for the strength to stand by this man she is unfortunately married to. To lower herself so that he may rise up on her back.
As a mother of daughters, this makes me ill. Parents, WE MUST DO BETTER BY OUR DAUGHTERS. Boys, men, are born with power. Girls have to command it for themselves. They aren’t given it. They assume it and take it. But you have to teach them to do it, that they can do it. We HAVE to teach our daughters that they are not beholden to men like this. That they don’t have to marry a man their father deems ‘acceptable’ and then stay married to that man long, long after he proved himself UNACCEPTABLE. Educate them. Empower them. Give them the tools they need to survive, on their own if they must. Josh Duggar should be cowering in fear of Anna Duggar right now. Cowering. He isn’t, but he should be. He should be quaking in fear that the house might fall down around them if he’s in the same room as she. Please, instill your daughters with the resolve to make a man cower if he must. To say “I don’t deserve this, and my children don’t deserve this.” I wish someone had ever, just once, told Anna she was capable of this. That she knew she is. As for my girls, I’ll raise them to think they breathe fire.
.
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“And in another story about Christians who are clueless about sexual perversions, I read where the pastor of Back to Calvary Community Church is upset with law enforcement for objecting to a sex offender leading services and working with children. Why the pastor assures them that he has known this man for over a year now and wouldn’t hesitate to LEAVE HIM ALONE with his own children!!!!
Julie Anne, I have started working on the pedophilia article.” – Marsha
Hi Marsha,
I was ordered to be excommunicated and shunned from my church of eight years (California) because I discovered while doing research for a prosecutor about a sex offender that a new church member was a sex offender on Megan’s List. The pastors/elders defended him, he’s their friend, said he was “harmless” and “coming off Megan’s List”, and closed the meeting with me (four pastors/elders and just me) by reading a Scripture telling me that I was destined for Hell.
The pastors/elders had no problem with the sex offender touching our church’s children, without their parents’ knowledge or consent. They even invited him to volunteer at our church’s summer basketball camp for children, without the knowledge of all parents who entrusted their children to us for one week, both church members and members of the public!
The pastors/elders put him in a position of leadership and trust.
The sex offender’s supervising law enforcement agency – The Sheriff’s sex offenders’ task force – called the pastors/elders stories to me “all lies” and “total lies” and said he’s not coming off Megan’s List!! The Sheriff was so alarmed they contacted the California Attorney General’s Office which called the story all lies and total lies.
The pastors/elders called me at home and told me that I was to never contact the Sheriff or the Attorney General again and that I was “to obey my elders” and “to submit to my elders”.
(For your research/article, Church Mutual the largest of insurer of churches in the US has extensive information about sexual abuse in the church, some of it is for members only. But it is a huge area of liability for churches. Attorney Richard Hammer at Church Law & Tax notes on his website that Sexual Abuse of Minors is the No. 1 reason that churches get sued every single year, and he studies thousands of lawsuits filed every year across the nation.)
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Brad,
Thank you for your kind words. I had so many distractions today that I wanted a chance to read this again before I responded. Many images passed through my mind, and I wanted to chew on them a bit. I’ve wanted to use these provocative analogies for a number of years, but at the time, most all was well in that culture, and Vision Forum had just presented Michelle Duggar with the Mother of the Year award. People weren’t ready to hear the sharpness of the language or the imagery. About five years before that, I recall telling someone on the Board at American Vision that they’d become a Vision Forum infomercial — and that Phillips was the most dangerous man in their circle. They laughed at me. It took them about five years to listen, and even then, I’m not sure that they learned from other sources all that they needed. I wonder if that board member thought of me or if Gary DeMar did when the Phillips’ scandal broke?
Your comment reminded me of a sermon by the late Walter Martin, though he echoes Paul speaking about love. Our words betray us when the intent of our heart slips out, but our actions follow along eventually. I also thought of Jesus advising us to build our houses on the Rock, but we can so easily be taken in by what looks like a bargain plot of land. You must generally do some climbing to get to a house built on a rock — like the side of the mountain where I grew up. My dad taught me to drive on back mountain roads in a Datsun truck, and I was struck with fear when he pulled over and put on the emergency break on a hill with a 45 degree angle to teach me how to use the clutch. If I mastered starting out in first gear on that sharp incline, I would be ready for most anything — as opposed to getting caught in life years later with the hard challenge. It seems easier to build on the sand and to avoid the hills, but it speaks to me of a parent’s hard job of teaching life’s hard lessons to their children in order to make them well prepared adults.
We do best when we build on the Rock, and the narrow path makes work for us. These paradigms offer a “bargain you can’t refuse,” unless you realize that there is no way around that hard work and pain of living. And it seems that after we’ve bought the bargain, we have to suffer significant pain before we will consider that the bargain ends up costing us so much more in comprehensive ways that never occurred to us until the payments come due.
I hope you are well, or at least are in good shape for the shape you’re in. Your comment means so much to me.
Cindy
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Read this at No Longer Quivering today.
The latest issue of People magazine which will be in the newsstands on Friday, features a cover story on the Quiverfull movement. Reporter Christine Pelisek spoke with Kathryn Joyce, Cheryl Heartsees Seelhoff, and Vyckie Garrison to expose the Duggar family worldview.
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John Weaver helped with this excellent article by Kathryn Joyce:
http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/evangelical-prayer-bible-religion-born-again-christianity-rise-biblical-counseling-89464
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Cindy –
In regards to this quote from Keller’s book –
“Sex leads us to words of adoration—it literally evokes shouts of joy and praise. Through the Bible, we know why this is true. John 17 tells us that from all eternity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been adoring and glorifying each other, living in high devotion to each other, pouring love and joy into one another’s hearts continually (cf. John 1:18; 17:5, 21, 24–25). Sex between a man and a woman points to the love between the Father and the Son (1 Corinthians 11:3). It is a reflection of the joyous self-giving and pleasure of love within the very life of the triune God. Sex is glorious not only because it reflects the joy of the Trinity but also because it points to the eternal delight of soul that we will have in heaven, in our loving relationships with God and one another.”
Who could read this and think it is not beyond strange? I had not read Keller’s book where this is written. But in reading it at your site it just was like a big eewwww! It suggests a sexual relationship in the Trinity the way it reads. Why must the greatest joy in life come only during a sexual moment? Is this just a man speaking about his own feelings and projecting those feelings into all relationships, including the Trinity? This quote is bizarre to me. I wonder if Kassian was not simply regurgitating what she had read in Keller’s book. “Sex reflects the joy of the Trinity” Keller.
Just no!
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Oh, Bridget!
You aren’t kidding. The book isn’t as “flowery” as Piper can be when he says things that sound like they mean something but don’t make any kind of rational sense that I can tell, but it is along those lines. His writing was more like the way Bruce Ware sounds when he talks about the most wonderful aspect of the Trinity being the submission authority hierarchy. He gets all sweet sounding and animated and weird. I spoke to another apologist who studied his work as well, and that person said that the got to the point with Ware that their stomach turned when they heard that excited sounding expressive fluff tone. It’s almost like a red flag that they either know that it’s garbage, or they’ve been brainwashed and that’s the programming talking as they parrot what they were told. Keller writing reminds me more of that.
In a way, it’s like making a mountain out of a molehill, or as a friend of mine says, it is expounding upon a glass of beer to make it sound like fine champagne.
A friend of mine on Facebook said that she read something that Frank Viola wrote that summed up Keller, and she was so disgusted that she actually threw away the book. To her, it almost sounded like the Father and the Son sodomizing one another from what Keller was saying. I don’t know the book and have not read it, but after reading The Meaning of Marriage, I know what she means.
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Loura,
I was searching for something and came across this blog series I started and never finished because my husband tore the meniscus in his knee. And my computer died. But the first one in the lot goes through CBMW’s doctrine of God.
http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2014/03/cbmws-problematic-doctrine-of-god.html
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This story just gets sicker everyday.
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Concerning the Frank Viola book. I just got it on Kindle. I can’t find any reference to Keller, so I must have misunderstood. What I read matches up with the description that was given to me, but this was Frank Viola writing and not Keller. It’s in “From Eternity to Here.”
As all of these guys, they take the “social view” of the Trinity which focuses on the diversity of the Divine Persons as opposed to the “antisocial view” which focuses on the Unity of God. Each has it’s pitfalls as a concept. CBMW and TGC ascribe to the “social view.” I wrote this and put together a nice little chart comparing both approaches:
http://undermoregrace.blogspot.com/2009/03/against-subordinationism-section-e.html
“From Eternity to Here” says stuff like “God needed a receptacle for His love.” “Jesus, the Lone Bachelor”…. In a few short pages, I found the word “penetrate” listed five times. At one point, they say that the Spirit penetrates the chests of the disciples. It sounds pretty creepy to me, and there is a big deal about sexualization of God and His relationship with us as though God is like some horny teen boy. Then God’s relationship to the Church is said to model how Jesus and the Father are all over each other and penetrate one another. Blah, blah, puke. It’s about sex as a representation of the love-fest that that we’re all supposed to be having in some ecstatic bliss. I don’t get it. I understand why my friend threw the book into the trash.
I only read the parts of it that talked about the Trinity and sex, and I’m not going to waste any more of my life reading any more of it. I already wasted $10.
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So, Viola’s book is advocating the sex with God concept? There is a strong thread of this idea in Catholic mysticism I have been studying for a couple of years. With that group, they practice various forms of self-flagellation and meditation before coming to the same conclusions about God. I have read stuff from modern Christian mystics similar to this, but never from Evangelicals before. What are they doing to get into an altered state of consciousness?
What does Viola ascribe to, denominational-wise? I used to have his book, “Renewing the Wine Skin”, I think. Or maybe I read that one and had his other book about house churches…
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Here’s an interesting article linking Catholic mystic ascetic practices with the self-subjugation of women in Evangelical circles. http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/religious-studies/_files/conference%202014/abstracts/The%20Asceticism%20of%20Self.pdf
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Loura,
There is an element of Christian mysticism involved, but I see it as something that comes through the Shepherding Discipleship element of these folks than from the theology. The Shepherding movement was an attempt to contain the experiential nature of the Charismatic Renewal in the late ’60s which is where Sovereign Grace Ministries got its start. It was designed to keep people accountable so that they didn’t neglect doctrine, and it turned into a system of manipulation and control that had nothing to do with the Bible — yet they found proof texts for it all.
There are elements of Shepherding that have carried over into this movement, so many of their luminaries have been (knowingly or unknowingly) affected by the mystics indirectly.
And to take it down even further, human beings are fairly predictable, and crowd control and management works by a fairly predictable set of tactics. When we walk away from following the Spirit and keeping the message of the Cross central to our mission, message, and work, we have only one set of means to accomplish our goals. If we don’t follow the Spirit, we rely on the arm of the flesh. That’s why all of this stuff — be it Catholic or “Reformed” or a political group or Amway — ends up looking similar. The means apart from the Spirit all become some unique variation on the works of the flesh.
Break it down even further? How was Jesus tempted in the wilderness when He fasted? I like how John summed it up in his epistle: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. (Money, sex, and power?) Those are the primary things that pull us off course when we let the end justify the means. And the fruit of that will always look similar and will eventually degrade into similar outcomes because of the nature of the flesh.
Robert Lifton qualified these things as the dynamics of Thought Reform. David Henke and Jeff VanVonderan framed out the profile of Spiritual Abuse. They just use a different approach and vantage to describe the same common features.
I think that’s what I hear you describing as you put this stuff together — an important yet disappointing epiphany. And however validating, nothing saddens me more than to see that Christians who get caught in this cycle of the flesh look no different than other groups that are spiritually abusive — groups that are definitively not Christian or even anti-Christian.
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Hmmm…need to chew on this. Thank you, again!
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Cindy K, you wrote: ““From Eternity to Here” says stuff like “God needed a receptacle for His love.” “Jesus, the Lone Bachelor”
…. In a few short pages, I found the word “penetrate” listed five times. At one point, they say that the Spirit penetrates the chests of the disciples.
It sounds pretty creepy to me, and there is a big deal about sexualization of God and His relationship with us as though God is like some horny teen boy.
Then God’s relationship to the Church is said to model how Jesus and the Father are all over each other and penetrate one another. Blah, blah, puke.
It’s about sex as a representation of the love-fest that that we’re all supposed to be having in some ecstatic bliss. I don’t get it. I understand why my friend threw the book into the trash.”
======================
Have you ever read the book “Singled Out: Why Celibacy Must Be Reinvented in Today’s Church” by Christine Colón and Bonnie Field?
They have a chapter or two in that book that talks about how some Christians go overboard with discussing God and Jesus in sexual terms, how some Christian authors argue in their books that to be fully Christian, or to really and truly know God, one must be married and having sex with a spouse. (They compare the sexual act with being in union in God, or something.)
As the authors explain, this sort of thinking (other than being very creepy and weird) leaves the unmarried and adult virgins out in the cold, because obviously, adult celibate singles are not having sex, are not married.
Meaning, if it’s true that one has to have sex to really know, experience, or understand God, singles can never know or experience God. And I don’t see any place in the Scripture that teaches that at all.
Some Christians have turned sex and marriage into deity, which leaves no place for singles or celibates.
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Christian Pundit,
I haven’t read that book, but as a woman with no children (not by choice and for reasons that are no one’s business), I know what it’s like to be seen as a pariah in the quiverfull movement. Childless couples fall right in with singles and celibates substandard, damaged goods. Some say that we blaspheme God. I know how many tears I’ve cried and how painful it has been for 20 years of condemnation before I learned not to care by moving through that trauma as well as the traumas that put me in that situation in the first place.
This hobby horse of gender that has been given status as essential doctrine is a manifestation of a problem that I talk about on my blog. It’s in my “To New (or Disgruntled) Readers” tab, this issue demonstrates what happens when you try to add to what the Bible actually teaches and when you put too much focus on peripheral issues in doctrine and life. To give me more time to start prepping for likely Erika flooding of my apartment, I’ve copied the section that explains how this kind of thing happens and why. Jesus spoke of this in Matthew 23 when he said that they make the way to heaven so difficult that even they cannot attain it. This is why doctrine and praxis and accountability are so important. Parachurch groups like CBMW and TGC make this worse, because they are run by people who seek to write their own doctrine and praxis, and their independent status apart from a denomination or a board stacked with friends and “yes men” circumvent accountability.
That’s why I keep talking about a Talmud. These “rules” and expectations and weird doctrines that become a part of them become like unto an Evangelical Christian Book of Mormon. The genre of writings on patriarchy become the interpretation guide that eclipses the Gospel itself. Even the leaders fall into the trap of confusing the means of their lofty end with what is often a desirable endpoint. The traditional family was supposed to help facilitate the effectiveness of Christian evangelism to bring more people to the foot of the Cross, but it seems like the majority of evangelicals have opted to bring people to the feet of the idol of the family itself.
>>>Many in patriarchy also take ease in declaring those with different views to be marginally Christian, “non-elect,” or even heretics. This group has taken doctrines such as gender and human agency that have been traditionally considered intramural or “non-essential” (those unrelated directly to salvation) and have redefined them as “essential” doctrines of orthodoxy (those necessary for salvation).
According to Michael Meiring, such groups actually broaden what is considered essential orthodoxy by redefining it, and in so doing, they make salvation accessible to fewer people. I consider those in patriarchy to be Christian in terms of the essentials, inviting productive discussion with them, even in academic settings. To say that it is my personal experience that they do not reciprocate is an understatement! This makes celebration of the unity we share in Christ nearly impossible, primarily because patriarchy insists upon uniformity through conformity instead of unity.
Meiring summarizes this quite well in his new book “Preserving Evangelical Unity: Welcoming Diversity in Non-Essentials”:
<<<
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We need to encourage and support women to leave adulterers the first time it happens. No tolerance.
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Kelley, I sure wouldn’t have sex with them for at least six months, and even then, I don’t know what I’d do. It’s a public health issue and a private one.
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Reblogged this on The Stench of Discovery…! and commented:
This Deserves “The Stench of Discovery”! Great article. 🙂
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Well, it guaranteed Got Hard a real GOOD income, CELEBRITY status, and a steady stream of young fresh interns with long straight hair in navy blue & white.
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P.S. According to my old DM in a post-D&D talk session in the parking lot, “Most cults are founded so the cult leader can (1) get rich, (2) get laid, or (3) both.”
I close with Steve Taylor’s 1985 Ode to Bill Got Hard:
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Money, sex and power…
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I put up another installment in the Tim Keller quote series. I’m still working on graphics to add to my own response to this mess, and there’s another good quote from Shirley to come.
I might explore this love fest as sex between the Divine Three (though the Holy Spirit is relegated to the position of child, so I don’t know if I want to waste my life writing about it). Freakin’ sick stuff passed off as theology.
http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2015/09/tim-keller-on-meaning-of-sex-act-in.html
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I added more from Tim Keller and some quotes from Frank Viola’s book about Eternal subordinationism. I’m also three days behind on correspondence. 😉
The sexualization of God’s love:
http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2015/09/is-trinity-sex-orgy-part-iv-of-tim.html
The Genesis of the Eternal Subordination doctrine from Covenant Theology:
http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-genesis-of-eternal-subordinationism.html
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When Christian Agnostic asked me a one sentence question on the 24th of August, they had no idea how loaded that question was for me. It blossomed into five, fairly long blog posts.
christianagnostic
August 24, 2015 @ 10:25 PM
Can you elaborate on Keller’s writing that you reference in the post?
Here is the final post that describes my understanding of the connection between marriage and the Trinity. It is an analogy of how God redeemed us — first through the Law and then once for all through the Cross.
http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-connection-between-marriage-and.html
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You are right; this is the same evil doctrine promoted in the Fifty Shades series and the Twilight saga. A message for you folks: God is the one who saves, changes and purifies; no human has the power to do it. That’s why we needed the cross. This kind of teaching is the ultimate blasphemy against God’s saving work of redemption, because his blood is pure. Also if men really were the head of women they should be bearing the responsibility for their actions against women, not the other way around.
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Sadly, this article was true, this is exactly what they did to Anna and sadly what she accepted. Now Josh has made his seamless return into the family and fake christian royalty status has been re-instated to him and the Duggar family. I think ten years from now she will be facing something like this again, but I truly hope I am wrong for her and her children’s sake 😦
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