Rethinking the Nativity

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Rethinking the Nativity

Rethinking the Nativity

25 December 2016, 12:39

*Reposted from the original Rethinking the Nativity on Djibouti Jones and shared on A Life Overseas. It is a thought provoking and eye opening look at the culture around the time when Christ was born and truly shows the GRACE of His Story!

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I am tired of the Christmas story.

Clarification: I’m tired of the way I keep hearing it and seeing it and reading it. Of course I’m tired of the way consumerism has hijacked this holy day but that’s not what I mean. I mean the typical western religious take on the Christmas story. Living in the developing world, in a place where women give birth at home, in a culture much closer to the culture of Jesus’ location and time in history, has changed the way I read the Bible.

Let’s think about how the story is presented in thousands of movies, children’s pageants, poems, novels, and kid’s books every year:

Joseph is a chump. He gets pushed around by some angels and then makes the totally irresponsible decision to drag a pregnant woman in her late third trimester to a town miles and miles away, on foot or maybe on a donkey. He plans this trip so poorly that they barely make it to Bethlehem on time and while Mary is (silently and peacefully) enduring labor pains, he is knocking on the doors of the local Sheraton and Holiday Inns. Apparently though Joseph is from this town, he no longer has any connections or relationship with people there so not only is he irresponsible, he must have been quite the jerk.

The streets are empty, no one sees this pregnant woman and harried man, no one cares until the hapless innkeeper reluctantly allows the couple to use his filthy, though warm and well-supplied with soft, cuddly hay, stable out back.

Mary gives birth, alone, the umbilical cord is magically cut, the placenta just disappears, though Joseph would have had no idea what to do with it and Mary would have been in no state to direct him. The baby has this funny glowing circle over his head, doesn’t cry at all, is wrapped in a dirty, torn blanket (or miraculously white and spotless blanket, depending), and is perhaps licked by the barn animals.

Some shepherds come and see the baby and the parents living in the filth and stink of an animal barn and leave rejoicing.

This makes for beautiful paintings, poetry, songs, and children’s plays. But does it fit the cultural norms? More importantly, is it what the Bible teaches?

How about this instead? (for more on this, read This Advent Season, A Look at the Real Setting) I’m not trying to add to the Biblical text, I’m not saying this is what happened. I am simply attempting to imagine another perspective. Click here to continue reading…

*Photo used with permission from JA Photography & Design

All articles on this site reflect the views of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of other Recovering Grace contributors or the leadership of the site. Students who have survived Gothardism tend to end up at a wide variety of places on the spiritual and theological spectrum, thus the diversity of opinions expressed on this website reflects that. For our official statement of beliefs, click here.

About the author

145 Comments

rob war December 29, 2016 Reply

Both Luke and Matthew give a very basic narrative of Jesus birth and nativity. It is helpful to always put both narratives in the cultural context for a more complete understanding. I think the only thing I had a concern with in the article was that the author kept referring to Mary as an "unwed" mother. She was bethrothed to Joseph which was considered marriage but not living together as husband and wife. That is why Joseph was considering divorce. One doesn't divorce someone if they are not married or considered married. When both of them traveled to Bethlehem, they were already living together as husband and wife. Whatever scandal that rushing into the living together part because Mary was pregnant would have been left behind them in Nazareth and probably didn't follow them into Bethlehem and just maybe why they stayed there maybe up to two years (till the Magi came) until Joseph was warned to leave at night. I heard a priest mention and I thought this was helpful in understanding both the leaving at night and the Magi was that caravans traveled during the night time due the the heat of the desert and used stars for guidance on where they were going. It makes all the sense in the world that Joseph easily getting up at night could easily get a ride with a caravan leaving at night into Egypt because that's when would have been getting ready to travel. Likewise, the Magi traveled during the night as well, using star and in particular one star on where they were going. St. Jerome said that the Holy Land was the fifth Gospel. I think the author was trying to give that prospective from having lived in the Holy Land and middle eastern culture. My concern was injection modern ideas of "unwed" motherhood into the nativity narrative which isn't there, Mary and Joseph were married.
- David S. Knecht Sr. December 29, 2016 Reply
  
  Good for you, Rob. Of course you are right. How could Joseph contemplate whether to "put her away privily" if there was no marriage to sever? Perhaps our author knows more than we about what "marriage" meant in their setting compared to ours. But the Nativity account is full of mystery.
  
  "As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery, you create morbidity." The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic."
  —G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
  
  Merry 5th Day of Christmas,
  David K
  - rob war December 29, 2016 Reply
    
    You have misquoted Chesterton and basically don't know what you are talking about. The mysteries that Chesterton was talking about had nothing to do with the cultural norms around marriage at the time of Christ as practiced by the Jews in the first century. The mysteries Chesterton was talking about concerned the incarnation of Jesus, the virgin birth, the trinity etc. which are the essential mysteries of our Christian faith.
    - David S. Knecht Sr. December 31, 2016
      
      On the contrary, sister. Check out Orthodoxy on the bottom of page 13.
      
      Chesterton was talking about mystery in general, not any particular religious mystery. You wrote that the Gospels give us a very basic narrative of the Nativity. We are denied many details. This leaves the full account shrouded in mystery. That's the kind of mystery which Chesterton meant on p. 13 of his book (the chapter is titled "The Maniac").
      
      Given that we are denied the details which round out the narrative, our author claims that we modern westerners are mistaken in the details we invent. So she gives us an alternate set of details. It sounds like a pretty good one to me.
      
      Sincerely,
      David K
rob war December 29, 2016 Reply

I think the other point of discussion with the article was how the author started out stating that St. Joseph was considered an unprepared doofus. I'm not sure where in the world she gets that view or who even holds it but St. Joseph from the Catholic prospective is very highly esteemed and even considered a model for husbands and fathers. I'm sure if Karen is still around, the Orthodox view would be similar. I've listen to many Catholic shows and commentary that St. Joseph is the ultimate model to be followed for husbands and fathers. He is also considered the model for workers. Maybe the circles the author was from carried such a low view for St. Joseph but he really a key player in the whole nativity narrative. Interesting the the Bible does not record one word from him, just records St. Joseph's actions giving credence to the saying "actions speak louder than words". I think St. Joseph is the model answer to the authoritarianism promoted by Bill Gothard and the TCG thinking group. St. Joseph does not act whatsoever in any kind of "male" authority manner.
- David S. Knecht Sr. December 29, 2016 Reply
  
  Point well taken, sister. If I may speak for Methodists, we agree with Catholics on your point about Joseph. There are plenty of doofuses in our Bible narratives, but not Joseph. He is is a hero to both Catholics and Protestants. Rome canonized him, and we Protestants admire him for the reasons you state. The world may dismiss him, but we Christians have always venerated him.
  
  But I think you are mistaken about Joseph's conduct being non-male, unless you insist that maleness is the same as harshness. Joseph was the quintessential Man. He was tough, resourceful, and courageous as he could be. How else can we explain a Galilean peasant eluding Herod’s thugs with a woman and child in tow? Even with angelic cavalry, few men could accomplish that!
  
  Your point about Joseph's wordlessness makes me self-conscious. When we post on these Gothard blogs, we do nothing but spew words. Remember Eliza Dolittle's exasperated lyrics? "Words, words, words!" Are we being called to quieter graces and fewer words?
  
  Only 175 words,
  David K
  - rob war December 29, 2016 Reply
    
    Yes, 175 too long. Only someone that into "maleness" and "being tough" and "men as the boss" because God made them "the authority" are going to read into St. Joseph as a "tough" dude. St. Joseph doesn't fit your model as his actions are recorded in the Bible. I thought you were "out of here". I do not have any desire to dialogue with you on this anymore. Someone like St. Joseph that considered to divorce Mary "quietly" shows love, concern, caring and sensitivity and demonstrates that he was an unselfish man that didn't put himself as the "authority" or boss or king or whatever cramp you have been following all these years.
- Karen January 3, 2017 Reply
  
  Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Rob and RG moderators and readers!
  
  St. Joseph has the title "the Betrothed" in the Orthodox tradition, signifying that in traditional Christian understanding only a betrothal took place between St. Joseph and the Virgin Mary, and no wedding (as a pregnant betrothed bride at the altar would have thoroughly scandalized pious Jewish sensibilities!). He is the Patron Saint of my parish, and we love the Righteous Joseph, a godly, self-effacing, and exceedingly humble man. It is the witness of the Scriptures that when he learned of Mary's becoming pregnant, despite his being scandalized by the situation (as he knew he was not the father of her Child) he sought to put her away quietly without public scandal, rather than insist on his legal rights as her betrothed husband which would have been to have her tried and stoned as an adulteress. This is a very different model and attitude of a godly man indeed than most modern "patriarchal" interpretations of the Scriptures I am seeing in Gothard and like-minded Protestant circles, as you also point out!
  
  I learned in becoming Orthodox about 1st century Jewish marriage that there were two stages--betrothal and the wedding (which are still reflected in the betrothal and marriage prayers and rites of the Orthodox wedding ceremony). Upon betrothal, the couple were called husband and wife and had legal responsibilities toward each other such that putting these aside would require a legal divorce. In betrothal, the husband received all of the responsibilities of marriage (that is, full legal responsibility for his bride and her support), but none of the privileges--the bride was to be kept a virgin, and a consummation and pregnancy before the wedding would have indeed presented a public scandal for pious Jews who knew no wedding had as yet taken place between the betrothed couple. In Orthodox understanding of Jewish tradition, an unmarried woman's legal rights were protected either by her father, or in the case of her father's decease, a male relative (as we see in the OT story of Ruth) to whom she could be betrothed. Orthodox extra-biblical tradition, following some of the historical records of the early Church, understands Joseph to have been a much older relative of Mary (a widower with children from his first wife, with a sterling reputation in the Jewish community as a righteous man) who was charged with being her betrothed husband (i.e., legal guardian) when her father died. According to Orthodox tradition, the extraordinary circumstances of her conception and birth (were very similar to those of St. John the Baptist's in that her godly parents, Joachim and Anna, were of priestly caste and scandalized by the scourge of childlessness into old age. In Joachim's case, according to the accounts we have, he was presumed in classic "Job's comforters" fashion to have sinned somehow because God had not blessed Anna with children, and he was cast out by his brother priests and not allowed to continue to serve as priest in the Temple. God blessed their godly perseverance and faithfulness in spite of unjust treatment by their peers by answering their prayers for a child in old age and allowing them to conceive a daughter destined to be no less than the Mother of the Messiah--every pious Jewish girl's most cherished prayer and desire! In response, as in the story of Hannah and her son, Samuel, in the OT, Joachim and Anna promised to dedicate their child in special service to God when she was weaned. According to the apocryphal, pseudo epigraphical "Protoevangelium of James," Mary was brought to the Temple by her parents when she was three years old and lived there (I assume being cared for by priest's wives and widows like the Prophetess Anna we read about in the Gospel who witnessed the dedication of Christ as an infant by His parents), where the Holy Spirit's Presence in this Holy Place sanctified and prepared her for her unique and special role in sacred history. Mary would have lived in the women's quarters of the Temple precincts until puberty and the onset of her menses prohibited her full-time presence there, at which point, her elderly parents having passed away, she would have gone to live with Joseph, her betrothed husband/guardian. Orthodox tradition also understands a parallel between the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, and the Apostle Paul, in that their special dedication and calling by God meant lifelong celibacy (1 Corinthians 7:6-8, 32-38). However, a celibate girl/woman who reached marriageable age also needed a legal guardian/betrothed husband, which probably explains best how to understand verses like 1 Corinthians 7:36, which has been so difficult to interpret for many modern Christians, who are unaware the option of dedicated celibacy (temporary or permanent) for purposes of service to God even in the NT had its roots in in a fully biblical Jewish and Christian tradition, and not in pagan practices of the Roman Empire, as I understand was alleged by many of the Reformers and their successors in reaction perhaps to abuses and distortions of teaching and practice present in the Medieval Roman Catholic monasticism of their day.
rob war January 13, 2017 Reply

A million thank Karen and everything you have shared, especially about Mary and the Proevangelium of James, I have heard talked about and considered in the Catholic Church. Mary serving in the temple at age 3 would be similar to Samuel's dedication at age 3 (the age of being weened from their mother) and she would have had to leave when her period started. That time period also probably put her in contact with John the Baptist's parents and hence why she would have gone to visit Elizabeth after the annunciation. I have always understood that the Jewish marriage at that time was a two step process of betrothal and then fully married. That is a different from the repeated statements that one sees now that Mary was an "unwed" mother as our modern time understands "unwed". Speaking of reformers, both Luther and Calvin did believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary and that the "brothers and sisters" of Jesus were cousins since Aramaic did not have a word for cousin and used brother or if one considers the above mention source of the Proevangelium of James, they were children of St. Joseph from a previous marriage. But I'm not trying to cause a fight over this on a Protestant blog. I know the earliest art work on the Holy family usually has St. Joseph as an older man who passed away between age 12 and 30 for Jesus since he is clearly out of the picture later.
Sunflower March 23, 2017 Reply

I was in a Sunday School class once, with two pastors present, and the question of Mary's virginity came up. The pastors said that we really don't have proof that she was a virgin, we have to take it by faith. I said that I presumed there was a midwife at Jesus' birth and she could have verified it. Why not? The place was crowded, surely a midwife or two could have been easily found. Those poor pastors just about fainted, they seemed to think I was talking heresy. Oh well. I've also mentioned here and there that she wasn't in labour when they arrived, and that when it says the shepherds found 'Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger' that they were likely all sleeping together in a dip in the ground in some nice straw (being a farm wife I happen to know that straw is very sterile). And I have never lived overseas......I just have a practical brain and read a lot and have had several babies at home by midwife. Oh, and for those cutesy Christmas plays with all the animals.....um....a pig? I don't think so.
- rob war April 6, 2017 Reply
  
  The heresy here is with these two pastors was going against the testimony of scripture that Mary was a virgin as well as the consistent clear teaching in 2000 years of Christianity that Mary was a virgin. If these guys were not sure about one of the "five fundamentals" of the faith (put together by a conglomeration of different Protestant groups) then God help them. The virgin birth of Jesus is essential to His divinity. If someone is "not sure", why are they even pastors to begin with. Even the Koran teaches that Mary was a virgin. People like this are on the border of apostasy and ought to be avoided.
  - Nicole Gardner April 7, 2017 Reply
    
    I'm pretty sure all true believers believe Jesus in His saying multiple times that His Father is in heaven & was/is not human. Mary's virginity (stated clearly in the Scriptures) was the key accessory to Him not have been able to have had an earthly father, therefore points to God the Father by default alone. I concede to the significance of a woman's purity, based on Scripture. And by this same precept coupled with the precept of monogamy 'til death to part, I likewise realize that male's purity is just as necessary. The average BEFORE gender-cide abortion was 107 males born to every 100 females. Now there's 78 female to every 100 male births. So.......... unless more guys become men & the 1st 78 each take a wife, the philandering rate, say, of somebody like Bill Gothard puts the rate at 1manX14+girls. This would equal each woman getting sexual liaisons forced on them by 15 or 16 different guys during their youth. Not a good bid for sanctity of the marriage bed, let alone a standing chance at individual purity. There needs to be a lot more marriage-honoring-Jesus-ness & a WHOLE lot less Bill Gothard-ness before Jesus is ever gonna wanna show up back down here to claim His bride.
    - Nicole Gardner April 9, 2017
      
      In my referencing the importance of Mary's virginity & therefore that of all unmarried followers of God I do not mean to join in Gothard's shaming of victims of sexual abuse. Rather I instead meant to point out that you can't have it both ways: obsessing over & idolizing virginity while yet taking advantage of a virgin's innocence of these sexual advances. To the tune of 14+ gals, if this were the rate at which all guys did it, such innocence would thereby be rendered extinct. His idolizing of such a concept was glaringly minus of any recognizing of this concept's actuality (since what he idolized had it's manifestation in the innocence of living young people). What he worshiped vs. what was tangibly present as the very thing that he idolized was so polarized & disproportionately attributed-to by Gothard! "Purity makes one superior to all others who aren't as pure. And BTW, here are my grubbing hands & feet to take you down from this rating just like I already took it from 13+ others." In summary, this is what he has communicated to so many victims directly, & to all of us alumna indirectly. Of all people who've damaged what he himself deems so important, he did it to so many who were so young. I hope to leave the indoctrination of IBLP idolatry far behind me so as to be able to regard & honor God's image in people wherever it exists. To fail to leave Gothardism behind is to miss actual godliness. I don't want to worship an ideal so much that I miss or misuse what God has actually manifested in another's life. He's done enough in my own to where I can't deny it & go back to idols. May we have God's eyes for the undermined so that we recognize their innocence as God's treasure so as to defend it against anyone trying to steal it as their own spoil. It is what it is. Not whatever it's taken for by one who can't see it as God does then takes it for.
    - Don Rubottom April 20, 2017
      
      Anyone who puts the physical act at the forefront of "purity" does not understand what Jesus taught about lust in the heart. Gothard did not appear to understand that the calling to marriage inherent in our design is a calling to a full communion of persons of equal dignity and worth and NOT to master/servant user/used male domination of woman. He says he never "touched" them in lust. But does anyone believe that he loved these girls of whom he took such advantage?
David S. Knecht Sr. April 8, 2017 Reply

Dear Rob,

That was interesting news from your reply to Sunflower. I never heard of those Five Fundamentals until you mentioned them. Yes, the virgin birth is right there as #3. Of course it is also there in the Apostles' Creed.

David K
- rob war April 8, 2017 Reply
  
  Thank-you. It's not something to debate if someone wants to call themselves Christian. It is very essential to Christ's divinity which if one is going to call themselves a Christian are suppose to believe in. I have strong feelings about this because the particular Church I grew up in, the woman who ran the religious ed program did not believe in the virgin birth and was quite open about it and being told this when one is going through confirmation (UMC) is a bit unnerving at the time. I've known other Christians that deny this as well. Like you pointed out Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed all state it.
JPU April 9, 2017 Reply

The Bible is clear that Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus. What is debatable is, was she a virgin for life, or did she and Joseph have a normal, consummatable marriage after Jesus' birth? Interesting historical information. I always thought she and Joseph had a normal, consummatable marriage after, and that Jesus then had younger siblings, one being James who wrote the epistle.
Interesting. Happy Palm Sunday.
- rob war April 10, 2017 Reply
  
  Mary "ever virgin" had been the consistent teaching and understanding up to the reformation. Even Luther and Calvin actually affirmed that Mary was "ever virgin" even though their current followers do not. One has to consider a couple things over this. One, the NT language was Aramaic and Aramaic does not have a word for cousin and uses brother and sister instead. This can be even seen in the OT where Lot is called a brother of Abraham while he was actually his nephew. And Sarah is called Abraham's sister when she might have been his niece or grandniece. Two, Jesus while he was dying on the Cross, gave Mary to be taken care of by St. John (behold your son, behold your mother). She went to live with him and he took care of her. Considering middle eastern culture, if there were other children by Joseph and Mary, that would not have been necessary, she would have gone to one of them. The lists of "brothers" given in the Gospels were always part of a list of different women that followed and supported Jesus. There is no mention of them in the Nativity narratives or the temple incident during Jesus childhood. And finally, all the earliest Christian writers and writings, those that knew the apostles, discipled by them state that Mary was "ever virgin". Not trying to start a battle over this but if interested, something for you to explore and ponder.
  - David S. Knecht Sr. April 27, 2017 Reply
    
    Dear Rob,
    
    You give some good support for the claim that Mary was a life-long virgin. "Behold your mother" is a good example. No caretaker but John? What happened to the other kids?
    
    What escapes me as a Protestant is how much importance we ought to attach to the topic. The Ecumenical creeds don't seem to be affected either way. They affirm the virgin birth, but fall silent about Mary afterward.
    
    You're right. Peace is better than battle on this point.
    
    Peace,
    David K
    - rob war April 28, 2017
      
      The virgin birth is critical to understanding who Christ is as fully God and fully man as well as Jesus being the 2nd person of the Trinity. If Jesus was the result of a man and a woman, He would not have been God. The virgin birth is mentioned in both Apostles and Nicene creed. Mary being "ever virgin" is an extension of her being virgin. It has always been taught and understood from the beginning and it was considered a heresy to think otherwise. I want to reiterate that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli all believed and affirmed this. Likewise, even John Wesley wrote that he believed that Mary was "ever virgin". To consider that Mary and Joseph had a normal marriage afterwards would put the virgin birth into question and would make Mary a polygamist in the sense that Mary is a "spouse" of the Holy Spirit and Joseph? It's like God saying
      "let me have her first, then you can have her Joseph". One should also ponder on what kind of effect on Mary in having the second person of the Trinity actually develop and grow in one's womb. I can only imagine that it was quite life changing and Joseph loved and respected that so much that he was never going to engage in normal marital relations with her but became her and Jesus protector and guardian. These are things one should ponder and explore concerning "ever virgin"
    - Don Rubottom May 2, 2017
      
      The best biblical evidence is " he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son." (Matt. 1) Why are there any words there after "not"?
      It does not matter to any doctrine of Jesus. I agree with Rob that carrying the Christ had to have an impact on Mary. And yet, God designed marriage to be fruitful, free, faithful and full. To direct Joseph to take his wife, but not to "know her" is to direct him to not take a wife but a sister. Their marriage is an example of selflessness, God-centeredness and holiness. But I fear that a medieval abhorance of sexual union, that saw celibacy as "more holy" than marriage, may taint the imaginations of many. John Paul II restored the balance that both states: celibacy and marriage are holy, godly, God-honoring and Salvation revealing institutions. It is possible that Joseph had the gift of celibacy. But then, it might clearly say: "he knew her not." Because it is not clear, it is unreasonable to insist.
      "Your mother", addressed to John, is as much and honor to Mary as the Christ-bearer, symbolic mother of redemption, as it is any default based on lack of siblings. Even if James, Jude, etc., were mere cousins, they should have had a higher duty of care than John. I believe he wanted both John and Mary to comfort each other in His absence, particularly while all those who fled the scene took time to come around.
      That is what I imagine!
    - Karen May 18, 2017
      
      Don, your "best biblical evidence" from Matthew 1 at the level of the precise Greek term employed for "until" in this verse (there was more than one option from which the inspired writer could have chosen) actually supports the understanding that Mary was ever-virgin. Look it up in Strong's Concordance. It's important to understand, Mary's ever-virginity was not to preserve her sanctity and purity as a believer or woman. Rather, it underscored and marked the extreme sanctity and utter uniqueness of her role in history as the Mother of God in His incarnation! Betrothal to Joseph in this unique circumstance was the only culturally viable means available for the protection of Mary and Jesus' legal rights and status and practical needs in the Jewish community. From an Orthodox perspective, Joseph was older and had already enjoyed normal conjugal relations in his first marriage, and would have understood his role as that of protector and guardian, not fully-wedded husband with conjugal rights, with Mary and Jesus. The Church's insistence on understanding Mary as ever-virgin predates the Medieval period by many centuries! This had nothing to do with unhealthy attitudes toward normal sexual love in marriage, and everything to do with guarding the full truth of the utterly uniquely holy Event and nature of the Incarnation itself!
David S. Knecht Sr. April 30, 2017 Reply

Dear sister Rob,
That's a new angle for me. I never heard how reformation heavyweights like Luther Calvin and Zwingli lined up on the post-nativity virginity question. They are reputed to be pretty strict sola scriptura types. I am surprised they would take a public position on a tradition about which the scriptures and creeds are silent. Same with Wesley, although he was a couple of centuries removed from the controversies of the reformation.

I admit it is goofy to suppose that the Holy Spirit said to Joseph after the Nativity, "Okay, now it's your turn." But I am way out of my depth here. Wiser heads should ponder this. Maybe we can revisit it next Advent. We are among the few recent posts on this thread. We might get a fresh Nativity thread late this year.

Thanks for the insight,
David K
- rob war May 3, 2017 Reply
  
  The Nativity narratives are not just nice Bible stories that one pulls out every December in order to give ourselves nice warm fuzzies. They have implications and lessons year round. Mary and Joseph are examples of model Christians in that they both accepted, submitted and obeyed God's will for their lives. Both of their lives were dedicated to and for Jesus. The Magi or Wise men or astrologers demonstrate that God's love and message is for all mankind and for all people. They demonstrate the search for truth and did so no matter what the cost, no matter what the lengths of distance and time it took. They also demonstrate the search for truth, even if all they had was one star and that those who seek truth in all sincerity will find it. The shepherds demonstrate God's outreach to the least of society, the outcasts, the lonely as well as that Jesus is our good shepherd. Herod demonstrates what happens to someone that lusts for power and control and for those that go down that path will end up in hell. Real power is not in lust for power but in humble obedience to God and service to others. And finally, the manger demonstrates that God came to earth in the most unsanitary and smelly place, the poorest of all places in order to reach all men in all situations for all time. To say that the Nativity narratives are just for December and lets just move on is a cop out and a form of avoidance of uncomfortable ideas being held and makes the richness and beauty and lessons found in them some plastic manger scene that has no impact on our everyday lives as Christians. That's what the world does, hype up Christmas into an over the top greed fest, to be put away as soon as it's December 26 and forgotten about.
Helga May 1, 2017 Reply

IBLP continues to shrink. According to several news outlets, the institute is selling their property in Australia for a few million dollars. Supposedly, they are looking to downsize to a smaller property. Most of the coverage refers to the institute as a cult. Apparently, there is such a thing as bad publicity.
- Nicole Gardner May 19, 2017 Reply
  
  Wherever there's such things as abuse, exploitation of workers, sexual-emotional abuse of all of the above, including children, it had well better be bad publicity. A Bad Egg = Gets Egg on his own Face. Thanks, Helga!! I'll go google that now.
rob war May 3, 2017 Reply

To Don,
I appreciate your thoughtful response. It shows that you are looking and pondering "ever virgin". That is key here because most people don't and just give knee jerk reactions because that's what they have been taught. I want to touch on a couple things. Just because the Bible says "until" does not mean that something happen afterwards. King David's first wife, daughter of Saul when she mocked David for dancing and coming home with the Art was condemned to infertility "until" her death. Obviously, she didn't have children after her death.

I want to emphasize again that Mary "ever virgin" is something that was not made up in the middle ages by Popes or monks that didn't like sex and were obsessed with virginity. It has ALWAYS been taught and accepted from the get go. St Jerome wrote a pretty scathing response to anyone that would consider or teach otherwise. It was considered heretical in the early church to teach otherwise. Mary "ever virgin" should not be considered as something superior to normal marriages. Mary and Joseph were in a totally unique situation in that Mary gave birth to the Son of God by the Holy Spirit and that in it of itself required two selfless parents dedicated to Jesus.
- Don Rubottom May 4, 2017 Reply
  
  I understand your reasoning and I see that "until" can be focussed on the birth, ensuring virginity throughout the pregnancy which is an acceptable purpose for the phrase. It is still all we have in Scripture and Jerome was late enough for traditions to have taken hold. I have problems with infant baptism also and there is little evidence it was mentioned for 100 years, but by Jerome's time it was common practice (even though in Augustine's time many delayed baptism until near death to insure their absolution, a sad interpretation of the efficacy of baptism in my book). In any event, many practices in the church are not necessarily Scripture and not necessary to any doctrine. Her virginity after His birth is of very little significance to any doctrine I understand or am even intrigued by. I am willing to be wrong and enjoy the surprise when He tells me all about it. I just wonder how many traditions the Roman Church is willing to be wrong on. JPII seems to have busted the old myth that celibacy is superior to marriage, surely there are more.
  I love the dialogue and I thank you for your patience with me!
rob war May 6, 2017 Reply

In considering Infant/young child baptism, one again must look at the fact that Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and i think even some Reformed groups practice this. Again if one looks at Acts, both in the situation with Cornelius and the Jailer with St. Paul, it mentions that the "whole household" was baptized. In other words, everyone which most likely included infants and young children. The Bible doesn't say "whole households except infants and young children". Infant baptism has always been practiced from the beginning. Acts mostly records that adults being baptized because these were new conversions in places that had no Christianity so of course the majority. Only since the rise of Anabaptists in the 1500's from the Reformation, was it considered "unbiblical". That then is a later added on misunderstanding by men, not by the Catholic Church or even other Protestant groups. With the Orthodox, when an infant is baptized, they also do communion and confirmation at the same time, something the Catholic Church splits off and does later. Even considering Mary "ever virgin", the Orthodox and Coptic teach and affirm the same thing as did the 3 big name Reformers. St. Jerome didn't make it up. The issue is the split in different Protestant groups on how they practice baptism and what they consider about it. Is baptism a sacrament or is it an ordinance or something we just do? There is nothing in NT that forbids infant or young child baptism. In fact Jesus said let the children come to Him. If you are worried about "traditions", it would seem that the so called "baby dedications" that go on in many types of Churches are just that. There is nothing mentioned about "baby dedications" anywhere in the Bible, it is not a recorded "practice" in the NT and it seems like it's being done as a replacement of infant baptisms and is filling a void. Also then let me ask you this, is the cannon of scripture then a "tradition" because the cannon of scripture was not finalized until 397. The creeds such as apostles and Nicene were decided on before the cannon of scripture. St. Paul said to "hold fast to the apostle's traditions". I think the better question is what you believe and practice an apostle's tradition or a later one addition or interpretation by men?
- David S. Knecht Sr. May 6, 2017 Reply
  
  Dear Rob,
  
  Of course we Methodists are with you on paedobaptism, and for the reasons you say. On the reformed side, Presbyterians are paedobaptists, too. I think brother Don is Presbyterian, but I'm not sure. It's nice to have a Nativity topic on which we all agree, isn't it?
  
  I don't know the technical definitions of terms, but I have no trouble with speaking of our ecumenical creeds as "tradition." The creeds represent our traditional consensus about orthodoxy. (I couldn't resist slipping in our Chesterton term.) Ha!
  
  Your brother,
  David K
  - rob war May 6, 2017 Reply
    
    Great book to read is "The Creed" by Scott Hahn. Read it over Lent, highly recommend it. Discusses the history and importance of Creeds, particularly the Nicene Creed which is the corner stone of how the trinity is defined. Currently under assault in some circles. I read somewhere where some want to change some of the words like "descended into hell" in the Apostle's creed as well as other things in the Nicene creed. Consensus about Christian orthodoxy isn't just a Chesterton term.
    - David S. Knecht Sr. May 8, 2017
      
      Thanks for the book tip, sister Rob. The Creed just got posted to my reading list. The Amazon reviewers agree with you. None rated it fewer than three stars!
      
      David K
- Don Rubottom May 8, 2017 Reply
  
  Rob, you ask your questions which are elementary questions that I have long since made my peace with. I accept the consensus of the traditions regarding baptism, but as a Presbyterian, I am uncomfortable with the Biblical arguments made. Having studied the "household" baptisms backward and forward, inside and out, there is no reason to believe an unbeliever was included in any such group. For each, the Scripture says they household "believed", except Lydia. It is hard for me to believe a business woman hundreds of miles from home had an infant in tow. Moreover, when the evangelists returned to receive hospitality from the same household, they are called "brothers". Worse for the "household" argument, clearly servants were part of the household and yet I know no church that will baptize an adult servant who does not believe, simply on the faith of the householder. The argument from Scripture to support the tradition is contrived and unpersuasive, even though I would love to be convinced. The best passage on offspring is I Cor. 7 and the promise of children being "holy" or "sanctified" (set apart) is unconnected to the sacrament of baptism, but may support a sacramental view of marriage.
  Cannon is a wonderful issue. Here, along with the ecumenical creeds, we must accept tradition as the confirmation. However, there are wonderful textual arguments: (Jesus quoting OT books, Peter referring to Paul's letters as "scripture") that supply strong internal evidence of canonicity. No Council "adopted" the cannon. Councils merely confirmed the earlier, widespread acceptance of the books as cannon. In fact, a good book I read on the "Catholic Bible", explaining the treatment of the Apocrypha, gave me ample 2nd century evidence of all the Scripture being accepted and the Apocrypha being a second class: used in the church but not useful evangelizing Jews because they did not accept them as cannon. Eusebius shows the near universal consensus of the cannon when he wrote, around 300, listing some competing "lists" then popular, none of which included books we do NOT today accoept. (I have also undertaken but not completed my own read of the Apocrypha.
  It is the Reformed being unable to support paedo-baptism by "Scripture alone" that troubles me and keeps me from accepting ordination as a Presbyterian Elder. (I'm probably more "reformed Baptist" than at true Presbyterian.)
  I always appreciate the sincere Catholic and Orthodox views you all share. But my own serious study has me far past being convinced the arguments that you offer in this post.
  I do love you all and know that we shall all be of one mind when "we shall see Him as He is"!
  - rob war May 8, 2017 Reply
    
    Don,
    I think it is sad that you would let something like "infant baptism" bar you from becoming an elder/deacon in your community of faith. I am sure that you would be a very good one so you would have my vote of confidence in that matter. I'm not sure if baptisms are a function of that office or not but I still think that is sad. There isn't anything I can offer that would convince you otherwise but I'll keep you in my prayers.
    peace
    - Don Rubottom May 10, 2017
      
      Thanks. That means a lot. But my reluctance is to not put my church in position of violating the denomination's already decided position: an elder must accept paedo-baptism. I am willing to be convinced but they don't convince me. There are those who serve "outside" ordination. If I am not willing to do all I can without being and Elder, I probably shouldn't be considered anyway.
    - rob war May 11, 2017
      
      Well, I don't think I can "convince" you either. This seems like the challenges by atheist that say, "prove to me there is a God, I don't believe but will if someone convinces me". I think and you will probably not be convinced is that there is nothing in the NT that forbids it or that it is wrong. Nothing whatsoever. Now, since you don't really accept or have mulled over the "household" references, I would suggest to look at Jesus and His own interactions with children. He said "let the children come to Him for such is the Kingdom of heaven". Jesus also said that we need to become as children to enter the Kingdom and that the greatest is a child. So, it doesn't seem like Jesus didn't want or like children (and babies) etc. Let me ask you this, what do you think about baptism, why do Churches do it, why is it important, why did Jesus Himself become baptized? Does baptism impart a grace or is it just some nice thing we do? Is baptism an end all or is it a beginning of one's faith journey? If you view baptism as a beginning then Christian parents that want to raise their children in the faith, why wouldn't they want their babies/young children baptized to begin that journey and why wouldn't any Church not want to encourage this and baptized the young. If your thinking is that children need to be of an "age of reason" to be baptized, aren't there a lot of adults that have no reason getting baptized? You can't prove from scripture your current position any more than you can disprove infant/young child baptism is not supported in the Bible. We probably are way off topic here but you can always contact me privately to continue the conversation. Peace
    - David S. Knecht Sr. May 13, 2017
      
      Me three!
      
      David K
Karen May 7, 2017 Reply

Hi Folks! Christ is risen! We are still celebrating the Resurrection in the afterglow of Easter Day in the Orthodox Church, and I discover a comments thread here related to the Nativity! Haha!

I would like to chime in to expand on some of what Rob has explained--having had to cover some of this theological territory about the nature of the Incarnation and Mary's role in that for myself! Forgive me if I am repeating anything I've already written about here. In my study, I discovered that the Gk term translated in English, "until" in the verse about Joseph keeping Mary a virgin "until" she gave birth to Jesus dies not have the same connotation as the English term (which implies only until and not afterwards--there is a different Gk term for that). Anyone can discover this by looking it up in a Strong's concordance where the Gk is denoted by a number and examining other verses that use the identical Gk word. It definitely implies continuence of that state in perpetuity.

The other thing I was aware of from my studies as a Protestant was the biblical pattern in the worship of Israel and also described as an activity of God Himself of setting certain people and things (i.e., the redeemed, priests, spaces, altars, animals, garments, vessels, etc.) apart for sacred purpose or use. One thing you will notice is that these people and items were to be treated differently and remain distinct from those for ordinary everyday use. It's not as if there was anything necessarily sinful or bad about their ordinary counterparts, but in revealing Himself to the Israelites and making a place in their midst where God could more fully manifest His Presence and reveal Himself, God required the setting of some things apart, such as the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle, and later the Temple in Jerusalem. To return any of these people, spaces or items to ordinary use would be to desecrate them, and they would need to be properly purified again (through washing in water and sprinkling of the blood of sacrifice by a Priest before being returned to sacred use). Through the Second Person of the Holy Trinity taking up residence in Mary's womb when Jesus was conceived there by the Holy Spirit, it was rendered the actual "Holy of Holies" of the New Covenant! As a result, anywhere Jesus is incarnate now-- beginning in Mary's womb, but expanding to every corner of humanity and the world that becomes completely filled with the Holy Spirit-- is the Holy of Holies--not least of all the whole community of the Church, insofar as the Bride and Body of Christ is now the place in this world that truly makes manifest God's activity and Presence. As a righteous Jew, the significance of this consecration of Mary as Mother of God in His Incarnation would certainly not have been lost on Joseph! Most Christians throughout history have understood Joseph would have been scandalized at the thought of having an ordinary conjugal relationship with Mary under those circumstances. His relationship to Mary as her betrothed husband was that of a guardian (by that point according to early Christian tradition, Mary was an orphaned teenager in need of a guardian, and only a man to whom she could be betrothed could serve this role for a young unmarried woman or girl in Jewish society). This is how the early Church always understood Joseph's role in the gospel. There came to be two understandings in the early Church about who the "brothers" of Jesus were. In the West in Catholicism these were understood to be cousins. In the Eastern Church (Orthodox), these were understood to be older stepbrothers of Jesus from Joseph's first marriage--Joseph was an older widower with children according to some of the earliest extrabiblical Church traditions we have about this.
- Karen May 7, 2017 Reply
  
  I should have clarified that according to early Christian tradition, Mary was the only child of parents who were dead by the time Joseph became her betrothed husband (so she did not have a brother to serve as guardian). Also, the terms "husband" and "wife" applied in biblical terms whether the couple were only "betrothed" or fully wedded. There us no record in the Scriptures of a wedding between Joseph and Mary. Betrothal meant the betrothed husband had all of the legal responsibilities for his betrothed wife as if a legal wedding (in modern terms) had already taken place, but he had as of yet none of the privileges (I.e., to consummate and beget children)!
- rob war May 8, 2017 Reply
  
  Thank-you Karen. The concept of Mary as the "ark of the covenant" can be seen in Revelations where the woman of Revelations 12 has been understood to be Mary. Right before her appearance, Revelations 11 ends with the heavens opening up revealing the "ark of the covenant" and immediately after that is the woman of Revelations 12. A number of at least Catholic Biblical scholars point to this connection between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant which no one was allowed to touch upon pains of death, harkening back to OT where someone was killed for steadying the Ark on a donkey cart. Joseph would have understood this. I think Karen, the concept between sacred and ordinary might not be something understood or accepted in many Evangelical circles, especially those influenced by Reformed theology because Calvin rejected such.
  - Don Rubottom May 8, 2017 Reply
    
    Rob: John Paul II taught a very sacred view of conjugal love. Don't discount it.
    - rob war May 8, 2017
      
      Don,
      I did not say or even imply that marriage or marital acts are not sacred. I consider marriage a sacrament which is what JP II taught in his book as well as has been Catholic and Orthodox teaching and views all along. I would appreciate it if you would stop trying to twist this into something that either myself or Karen saying because that is not what we are saying about Mary "ever virgin". The only person that can change your mind is yourself.
    - Don Rubottom June 1, 2017
      
      Please forgive me for seeming so disputive. I do not intend so. I seek to understand how this teaching, not explicit in Scripture, fits with what I do know. I can't change my mind. But the Truth can change my mind. I am no unwilling, but neither am I convinced.
- Don Rubottom May 8, 2017 Reply
  
  Karen, the "set apart" rationale makes as much sense as anything I have heard. But the Book of Hebrews shows the true "Holy of Holies" which Christ purified by His blood. All earthly patterns being mere copies. "Ordinary conjugal relations" is clearly a perspective of many Christians through the centuries, demeaning marriage as "unholy". Yet, Paul in I Cor. 6 teaches that the body of each believer is the Temple and to be kept holy: not by celibacy, but by chastity, in or out of marriage. Ch. 7 goes on to explain the holiness of marriage, in spite of its base components, and includes the holiness of the child of a mixed marriage. John Paul II broke open the centuries of demeaning "ordinary conjugal relations" and reopens the glorious truth that we were made for conjugal love which truly images Trinitarian Love in the most complete way: "in the image of God...male and female created He them". Paul shows the significance of the Mystery revealed in human marriage in Ephesians 5.
  Finally, Jesus was rumored to be a bastard. Joseph NOT marrying Mary might have contributed to that, and yet, his formally marrying her (with or without conjugal relations) would have been a loving thing to do to protect her from being stoned. I believe Joseph, in his sacrificial love, did accept "responsibility" for Jesus, accepting any moralistic judgment that was directed at Mary. None of this convinces either way on her perpetual virginity, but it makes as much sense as the contradictory "early" traditions you have shared. These things are insignificant compared to the True Revelation:
  "that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles...." and:
  "He was manifested in the flesh,
  vindicated by the Spirit,
  seen by angels,
  proclaimed among the nations,
  believed on in the world,
  taken up in glory."
  - rob war May 8, 2017 Reply
    
    You have misunderstood JP II. He did not "teach" or brake open something new. Marriage as something sacred has always been taught as a sacrament and a "vocational" calling along side with celebrate religious calling. They are not in conflict with each other.
    - Don Rubottom June 1, 2017
      
      Thank you, Karen. I find no disagreement with the doctrine you present. I am curious how you see this differing from Roman Catholic teaching (they claim priestly celibacy as an institutional choice, not a biblical mandate).
    - Don Rubottom June 1, 2017
      
      My other response was accidentally put in the wrong place.
      Rob, may I have said that JPII "broke open for THIS generation, recent centuries of" misconception of conjugal union? I do believe JPII's mediation on Genesis 1 and 2, in short "male and female", conjugal communion "in the image" of the communing Trinity. I have seen very many, particularly men, find great freedom in the Theology of the Body, in that it emphasizes the pre-fall (pre-martyrdom) MEANING of our conjugal nature: to image Divinity.
      For this generation, TOB is radical in the church and treasonous to the materialists and secular humanists.
  - Karen May 16, 2017 Reply
    
    Hi Don,
    
    The Orthodox understanding of Christian marriage is that it is indeed a holy calling (the normative one for most), blessed and set apart by God in union with Christ for the mutual sanctification of the couple and any resulting children. Marriage is one of the sacred "mysteries" (sacraments) of the Church as well in Eastern Orthodoxy. In a "mystery", Paul says (Eph. 5), marriage (in all its aspects, not least of all physical), is appointed to reveal the relationship of Christ as Husband of the Church, His Bride--that is, to reveal to us by analogy something of the nature of the communion we are offered with God in Christ. (Btw, this capacity of God-created and ordered relationships in nature and in Christian liturgy to analogously reveal something of the real nature of God and us in relationship to Him is more than merely metaphorical or arbitrary and legal. These are connections of meaning that reflect spiritual reality in a non-abitrary way. (This is why allowing redefinition of Christian marriage within the Church, for example, as between other than one man and one woman is viewed by the Orthodox as a threat to our spiritual understanding and health and consequently the salvation of the world and why we won't join any mainline Christian tradition in blessing same-sex unions!) Following 1 Corinthians 7, the Orthodox Church doesn't consider normal, mutually-willed conjugal relations between a husband and wife to be a violation of Christian purity (i.e., sinful of themselves), and through the sanctification of the couple and their marriage, these actually become a vehicle of God's grace. For one thing, the physical consummation of marriage is inherently symbolic of the spiritual nature of our union with Christ in its potential to be fruitful and life-creating. Christian marriage is understood in the Orthodox Church as an arena of mutual "martyrdom", where we work out our salvation through voluntary self-sacrifice for the well-being of our spouse (and children). (Most parish priests in the Orthodox Church are married.)
    
    Voluntary celibacy/monasticism (a minority calling) in the service of God is understood in Orthodoxy as another such arena of living "martyrdom" for the working out of our salvation in Christ. It is certainly not obligatory for believers (or priests). In 1 Corinthians 7, St. Paul addresses the fact that in our service of God, we may have different callings (either temporary or lifelong) to either marriage or celibacy. He recognizes that celibacy has certain advantages over marriage for single-minded service to God and for concentrated effort in prayer, but that both are blessed. In Judaism, an example of temporary celibacy (or abstention from marital relations) in service of God, was the use of the Nazarite vow, which even St. Paul employed as a Christian on occasion. John the Baptist was also an ascetic celibate in this Nazarite vein as were some of the other OT prophets. Jesus, also was celibate in His service to the Father, as regards normal horizontal human relationships, notwithstanding the spiritual reality that He is also the Bridegroom of the Church! The Church has always understood this to be true of the Virgin Mary (as it was of the Prophetess Anna, subsequent to her widowhood early in life).
    
    I've personally found the Orthodox perspective tremendously helpful for bringing greater coherence to my understanding of both the Scriptures and of Christian history, and for unpacking more of the depths of the implications of the full reality of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ for our lives in this world and the next. Dividing the "essentials" of the gospel (i.e., Christ was born, died for our sins, and was raised from the dead for our salvation) from all of their outworking and implications in the history and development of the doctrine and life of the Church isn't an Orthodox mode of thought or operation, so the teaching of the Ever-Virginity of Mary (note: she is referred to as Virgin in the Creed), the use of Icons our worship, the meaning and grace of Baptism and the Eucharist as traditionally understood, and our understanding of the nature of the Church herself (note: faith in "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church" is a tenet the Creed) are not "non-essentials" that can be ignored or where one can dissent from the consensus teaching of the Church that first worked out and articulated that Creed, without at least potentially seriously distorting our understanding and experience of our salvation in Christ (from an Orthodox perspective). That said, it's a given that Christ, in His grace and by His Spirit, because He sees our hearts, can and does supersede our human limitations and misunderstandings. So I hope it will be obvious I don't discount the spiritual efficacy of the experience and sincere beliefs of Christians outside the Orthodox Church, especially where these coincide with the Orthodox ones in drawing them into communion with Christ. It is not so much as a question of black and white, from this perspective, as it is one of relative completeness or fullness.
    
    In my experience, our difficulty, as modern American Christians in a mostly-Protestant influenced philosophical environment, with getting our minds around why Joseph and Mary would not have even considered consummating their betrothal as their calling with one another (and why this is no reflection on the sanctity of conjugal relations in a normal context) likely has to do with false and unbiblical attitudes and teaching that arose in the wake of the philosophical revolutions that took place in the Medieval West under the auspices of the Scholastic Movement, Nominalism, and later with the Enlightenment. Arguably, these have fundamentally changed the way modern people in the West think about the connection between material and spiritual reality, and the nature of the sacred, compared with our premodern forebears in the faith (and with many in the world today who are more traditionally Eastern and Middle-Eastern in their mindset and understanding about the nature of reality)!
    
    I offer all this by way of explanation and education about Orthodox Christian faith, not in order to either persuade or condemn anyone outside that context.
    - Don Rubottom June 1, 2017
      
      Thank you, Karen. I find no disagreement with the doctrine you present. I am curious how you see this differing from Roman Catholic teaching (they claim priestly celibacy as an institutional choice, not a biblical mandate).
    - Karen June 6, 2017
      
      Don, virtually everything I know about Roman Catholic teaching is second hand and often from a polemical Protestant perspective, so I really can't speak with much authority about RC teaching. I do know that priestly celibacy for Bishops in the Orthodox tradition is a matter of the Church's authority to order her own household as she deems appropriate with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and working in a conciliar manner, and not direct biblical mandate, so that sounds similar to the RC persctive you mention. It was not extended to local priests and parishes as in the RCC. I don't know the particulars about the history of that other than what I have written here. An Orthodox bishop, in a manner that images Christ and His Church, is considered "married" to his diocese, but as I understand this, the household rule was initially established for practical reasons, to protect dioceses from loss of property through inheritance rights of bishop's children. Though property laws have varied since then, the Church has not seen a sufficient reason to overturn that rule, finding it to be of spiritual and practical benefit to the Church that her bishops can devote singleminded attention to their duties as bishops and to prayer.
      
      I see these sorts of things as the fruit of the Church's historical outworking of biblical principles as conditions and historical circumstances changed and developed (much like what occurred in Acts 15 where the leaders in the NT Church faced a novel circumstance where no direct command of Christ or biblical mandate existed and had to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit together to determine how best to integrate Gentiles into the Church without either compromising the gospel or causing undue scandal to the early Jewish believers). So the "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us" of Acts 15:28 has been the m.o. Of the Orthodox Church ever since that time.
- Don Rubottom May 8, 2017 Reply
  
  One other thing: if we can follow Jesus and live in His Father's house, what would be so unacceptable about James, Jude, Joses, et al., following Him in His mother's womb? He makes the way for all of us to abide in the Holiest of Holies. I don't say this to counter your arguments, but to open the hearts of all to the truth that He has surely "made a way" for all of us to follow.
  One of Mary's great contributions is her example for all of us to follow in saying "YES" to Him when He "knocks on the door" and would come in a dwell with and in us.
  - Karen May 16, 2017 Reply
    
    Your analogy about following Jesus into God's house is an apples and oranges sort of comparison from an Orthodox perspective. In Orthodox understanding, we do not "go into the holy of holies following Christ," though we certainly all through faith in Christ are given boldness to approach the Throne of Grace for help as Hebrews teaches. Rather, we are each in process of *becoming* part of the Holy of Holies by the entrance of Christ into our being, through our communion with Him and as members of His Body! Yes, certainly, the Virgin Mother is our first and supreme example of saying "yes" to the entrance of Christ into our hearts. Her bearing of Christ in her womb was her unique, special and unrepeatable calling.
    - Karen May 16, 2017
      
      P.S. These are just some thoughts off the top of my head and my own opinion. They are certainly not the be all and end all of what could be said about this from an Orthodox perspective.
    - Don Rubottom June 1, 2017
      
      Thanks, Karen.
      I do believe that this passage from Hebrews 10 indicates that we do enter in where He is, in the Holy of Holies:
      "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water."
      But this may be a distinction without a difference from your construct, evidenced in Ephesians, that we become stones of that very Place. "In the temple" as a piece thereof, and "in the temple" as an inhabitant. All these earthly analogs are mere "patterns" of a Reality that we cannot yet comprehend.
      I love your perspective!
    - Karen June 6, 2017
      
      Actually, I think it is true that I am making a distinction where there isn't a true difference, and I was reflecting on the fact that we don't employ the language either verbally or symbolically of "following Christ into the Holy of Holies" in the Orthodox Liturgy (though in every way our liturgical language and symbolism are founded on the assumptions of the teachings in Hebrews). I think what I am noticing and reflecting on in my own thoughts here is the difference between the emphases in Western Christian traditions on the legal images in Scripture and the reactionary polemics during the Reformation where the clericalism of the medieval RC understanding of the mediatorary role of the Christian Priesthood was a hotly disputed issue. That polemic was never part of the formation of Orthodox dogma or Liturgy (which most fully reflects what we believe about the meaning and implications of the gospel). By contrast with the Western emphases on legal images, guilt and acquittal, and so forth, the Eastern Orthodox tradition has tended to ground its overall paradigm of the nature and meaning of our salvation in Christ on the arguably much more dominant images in the Scriptures that are organic and relational--organic life/health and death/corruption/disease, and of life through participation and relational union and communion in Christ (vine & branches, head and body, bridegroom and bride, father or mother & children), and on the Passover images of liberation from captivity to sin and death. The Orthodox Priesthood/presbytery within the Church as well as the intercession of the Saints have never been seen as intermediaries standing between us and Christ, but rather as witnesses, helpers and supporters standing beside us as we ourselves also come before Christ.
Nicole Gardner May 9, 2017 Reply

Rob,
Do you behold Bill Gothard as being someone who has held to marriage being every bit as sacred & holy as life-long "celibacy" & "single-for-ministry"???? Because he instructed married people how to supposedly be holy while yet being adamant that marriage for him personally would have been a degradation from where he stood. Just curious.
- rob war May 9, 2017 Reply
  
  I believe that Bill taught a "covenant" view of marriage, so I would think that is his own personal view. A covenant view of marriage is not the same as seeing marriage as a "vocational" sacramental call by God. I also think and believe Bill had the typical fundamentalist view that most all women are meant to be married and only married yet men are "called" to serve God in ministry which in this warped view supersedes a man's call or responsibility in marriage. This view can be seen in the example of Jim and Elizabeth Elliot's long "courtship". I also remember Bill stating at his seminars (and all of mine were live with him) that he joked about being "too busy" to date and henceforth be married. Alfred Corduan has also revealed on his blog that Bill's mother wanted Bill to be married and that she thought it would be good for him, but that Bill thought that his responsibility was to his teaching ministry and was too busy to do so. Putting all of this mix together and this is just my view or opinion on all of this is that being "too busy" is an avoidance of being married which is coupled with typical fundamentalist types of views that marriage is a woman's calling and only calling and not a man's. My opinion of Bill is that there might have been some deep seated "issues" that prevented him from being married or inability to make or keep a marriage bond. It looks like Bill's normal male desires came out in surrounding himself with young women that he could touch and somehow find satisfaction with. That isn't someone then that is called to celibacy or singleness. Again, it's avoidance, not a calling. That is totally difference from seeing marriage as a sacred calling for both men and women equally for the purposes of mutual support and to have and raise children. Genuine celibacy that I've seen in those called to it, is that that person give themselves totally to God in service to the Church and that person has that desire which supersedes anything else. Catholic Priests wear a wedding ring because they consider themselves "married" to the Church for the service of the Church. The same for women religious (nuns). Women in this are not just called to marriage only and that single women have an important purpose equal to their married counterparts. I'm not sure if this answers your question but my opinion of Bill from attendance at his seminars to written testimonies about him is that he avoided marriage for whatever reason and used "being busy for God" to cover it up.
  - Don Rubottom May 10, 2017 Reply
    
    Good analysis of BG. I agree. But I did not follow your distinction. I learned more about "covenant" from the Theology of the Body than all the Presbyterian "Covenant Theology" I've been exposed to. A covenant is a death pact. Christ purposed to die for us before He even created us. These things come out clearly in the restorations promised in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Hosea, particularly chapter 2. Absolutely agree about calling. But I would say it is a calling to covenant, representative of the calling of each of us into Covenantal Communion with the Trinity.
    - rob war May 11, 2017
      
      Yes, sorry about not being more clear. Yes, marriage is a covenant and a sacrament in that there is a special grace given by God to both the man and the woman to be married and I think for all of us that are marred know that all marriages do need grace, no matter how good the marriage is. I think what I wanted to try and make a distinction is the notion that is the prominent view in conservative/fundamentalist teaching that marriage is the only call for women and that men have "higher callings" of ministry etc. If one sees marriage not just a "woman" calling but equally a calling or vocation for men and women for mutual support and the raising of children, then one has moved to how the Catholic Church teaches and views marriage as a sacramental covenant. Maybe covenant was a confusing term since both sides use it. Most people are called to marriage, marriage takes two (man and woman) and is God's plan and design. The emphasis I saw in the ATI books published on HA in the few I read was the emphasis that the woman's place was only in marriage, the wives of the different "heroes" of faith were presented as their purpose was only to support "their man" while the men were the one's called to do "great things for God". The men were never presented as being called to the marriage as equal with the woman being called to a marriage. That's a big difference between Catholic Church teaching on marriage and fundamentalist/conservative/complimentarian teaching on marriage.
Nicole Gardner May 11, 2017 Reply

I also agree with Rob's observation that what Gothard spun as a calling to singleness was, rather instead, an avoidance of the responsibilities & accountability of marriage. I'll even go so far as to say that the spin he put on it as supposedly being God's calling for the advancement of heaven's kingdom could have been Gothard's twisting and sugar-coating of God actually trying to speak to him. As in, maybe there wasn't ever any woman that God would allow to suffer as Bill's wife. Therefore, God wouldn't have prompted him to grow up & take manly responsibility, instead bearing defamation to His own divine name as Gothard went around touting himself as being holy devoted to Him. I truly believe God has borne all this tainting-by-association with Bill Gothard just so that no woman anywhere would be entrapped in covenant til death with him. (And I've been off morphine & everything else for a week now so it's not any meds that are talking here).
I do see the incongruity of single women being seen as worth less, missing out on life, unsuccessful etc., for not getting married whereas Bill Gothard plays the same situation off as some specially anointed cherub but that's just because of why I've stated above. (And also because he comes off as some sort of angelic precious-one, born with a silver spoon in his mouth). He's the rare exception among circles that generally wouldn't let such a responsibility-free person tell heads of households how to lead. I think he got his standing for that very reason- husbands/dads in fundamentalist homes so strapped with responsibility that they couldn't superintend their kid's educations. Ironic as can be; a rare Shirker-of-familial-duty instead creeps into the households of the dedicated by way of this very dedication practiced by these devout family men. As far as I'm concerned, this was the only guy in America who actually SHOULD have been sent to Vietnam for as many 1st-wave operations as it took for him to never come back. It's not as if 60,000 of his peers didn't suffer that fate. Still, at least what he's done to so many families never trapped anyone by actual covenant. No wife has ever had to break covenant with Bill Gothard OR break any covenant itself in renouncing his dictatorship.
The Christian economy needs marriage's reflection of the gospel in order for the gospel to be seen and understood. So, it really is saying something for it to be a matter of rejoicing that so-and-so never married, when due to obvious problems with that happenstance rather than feasibly chalked-up to some God-given alternative. Gothard's spin on his avoidance certainly is not feasible. Although his avoidance itself is no doubt cause to rejoice.
rob war June 2, 2017 Reply

Don,
I think in all of our talk about marriage, celibacy etc. there seems to be an either/or mentality which basically is too common in much of conservative teaching. It's not either/or but both/and. What I mean by that, is the common example of the glass being half filled or half empty. If one sees the glass half filled, then they are the good optimist. If one sees the glass as half empty then they are the pessimist. However the glass is both half filled AND half empty. It is both/and. Jesus is both fully human and fully God. He isn't half human and half God. God is love and God is holy and full of justice. To grasp, at least much of Catholic teaching, one needs to grasp the both/and. God is in control yet we have free choice. It isn't that marriage is good and in conflict with celibacy. Both are good and holy and needed in the Church. God has designed marital acts yet, Mary and Joseph according to historic Christian teaching did not participate. It is both/and not and either/or.
I'm not sure if you have ever read any of GC Chesterton's writings but his works are the best in understanding the paradoxes of God, faith and life. Much of at least Catholic teaching and I would suspect even Orthodox, incorporate the paradox. Someone like Bill Gothard and fundamentalist teaching (and a good chunk of Evangelical) do not incorporate the paradoxes. When someone like yourself has been under such extreme either/or instead of both/and, then it becomes a learning curve when encountering paradoxes. Bill Gothard is an extreme in the either/or. Just look at the "one interpretation" of the Bible. That is extreme because there is more that one interpretation, there are a number of acceptable interpretations and they can over lap and over lay. For healthy theology and teaching, it's both/and not either/or.
- Karen June 6, 2017 Reply
  
  Both/and and a full embrace of the paradoxes of Scripture is certainly the Orthodox approach. A difference between more recent post-Schism developments within Roman Catholic teaching and Orthodoxy *might be* (I'm far from expert in RC teaching) that the RCC makes more of an attempt at definitions and fine distinctions than the Orthodox, and so has the capacity to talk about the particulars of the sacramental life of the Church, e.g., the nature of the Eucharist, the nature of the grace of Holy Baptism, as if these are separate things and somehow able to be effectual as things in themselves rather than only by virtue of their organic and intrinsic connection, meaning and place within the One saving Reality in which these participate, which is Christ in His Church. Orthodoxy is sometimes confusing and even maddening to those looking in from the outside in the seeming lack of consistency in her practice and teaching. Sometimes what this reflects is merely the unwieldiness of what is a federation of national Orthodox Churches under no common Head, but Christ Himself as these have wended their way through a history that has for centuries involved persecution and attack and varying needs and local traditions. But it also reflects the reality that from an Orthodox perspective, we can never speak of one aspect of the faith in isolation from the whole--and that Whole is in essence nothing less than the living and dynamic Divine-human unity that is Christ in His Church. As such, it is One Truth and not something else, but that Truth is a living Person, not a static doctrinal formulation or law. The role of dogma in Orthodox faith is to make a distinction between truth and particular errors and to be signposts marking that boundary, but Orthodox doctrinal formulae are not presented as exhaustive definitions of the infinite and eternal living Reality to which she even in her whole life can only point as a witness and beacon in the midst of the darkness of this world.
  - rob war June 8, 2017 Reply
    
    This would be an accurate assessment.
- Don Rubottom June 28, 2017 Reply
  
  Thank you. I see your point and you "get" my struggles in making sense of "all" (which we cannot!). I always cringed at the "one interpretation" claim because Christ Himself and Paul explained many mysteries hidden in Scripture, i.e., "You say that the Messiah is David's son, and that is true. But how is it that David calls him 'Lord'?" or "But I am speaking of Christ and the Church".
  Gothard used his slogan "one interpretation" to evade critique of his "many applications" which were often misapplications! He denied being a "teacher" to exempt himself from examination. He was an "encourager" and if you disputed the encourager you were a discourager!
  - rob war July 8, 2017 Reply
    
    Yes, you should cringe at anyone that says there is "one interpretation" of scripture. It seems people swing from one extreme to another and both extremes of either totally literal or totally allegorical are wrong and not healthy Bible Exegesis. Bill Gothard as a fundamentalist is in the extreme literal camp. All one has to do in looking at an extreme literalist camp is realize that this is a set up to have the Bible contradict itself which often plays into atheists hands. The other found in liberal Protestantism take all supernatural out of the Bible. There are actually four ways of understanding the Bible, literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical. Many passages can have all four and often it takes careful study and prayer to understand the Bible. The type of literature of a passage is also important. There is a difference between reading OT and even NT record of events which is more literal and then reading either Psalms which is poetic or even something like Revelations and the prophetic passages. Taking "one interpretation" which Bill Gothard heavily promoted which was point blank literal is what enable him to twist and misuse the Bible like he did. However, most of his seminar attendees came from the conservative/fundamental side of Protestantism and didn't heavily think about this until his various ideas screwed up their lives and faith.
    - Don Rubottom July 12, 2017
      
      My experience with BG was not that he emphasized any "interpretation" but avoided interpretation (as in, let others worry about that) to get to his crazy applications. For example, Paul says: don't preach circumcision, but if you want to circumcise yourself, go ahead and emasculate yourself. Bill says: circumcise yourself because it will make you less lustful. ??????? He was all about "application", claiming "many" applications and making himself unquestionable.
      He was also closer to the crazy TV charismatics than fundamentalists in that he held forth that "rhemas" were special Holy Spirit insights into God's truth.
    - Nicole Gardner July 18, 2017
      
      The literal approach needs the allegorical, moral, & analogical interpretations right along with it to not be skewed. Otherwise, everyone would think they could never own their own house in reading what God said to Abram "Get you up & go to a land that I will show you" & then again in reading the NT where people sold houses & donated the proceeds to the budding church. However, I believe that this need to maintain balance between the 4 is in order to offset human fallacy. For instance, if someone somehow perfectly had the mind of Christ & was to interpret, say, Genesis 3 with the literal interpretation only, they would therefore be perfectly true to taking the literal approach & not lie to themselves in doing so. On the other hand, we have Gothard's camp claiming even within the past year that Genesis 3 has to be taken literally with the ONLY application being that no female (even a female who is single, motherless, even physically sterile) may be employed, let alone attend college. If she does do these 2 things, she is "shaking a rebellious fist in God's face" in trying to be "captain of my own soul" . And how?!? By not taking womankind's curse via a nose-to-the-grindstone method of acceptance. Gothard's camp claimed literal interpretation of Scripture & that this is the ONLY application of "the literal interpretation". However, his camp is not Amish, Mennonite, or Hutterite. These communities mimic Alfred's claim that literal interpretation of Scripture means that girls/women must only pursue womankind's curse with their lives. (Presumably because God has been incompetent at following through with His word to Eve in the garden & so women need to situate ourselves in such a way so as to enable God to make good on His word. Because, you know, there's never any consequence for sin unless the sinner pursues it because there's no such thing as Natural Law or anything. <Sarcasm). However, because these communities actually take a literal interpretation, they also interpret God's curse upon Adam literally, as well. Whereas both Gothard's & these other centuries-old religious groups believe that women's weakness with regard to desiring a man & going through agonies of ensueing childbirth are not enough without 100% lifelong devotion to both experiences, the Amish, Mennonites, & Hutterites all apply mankind's curse in a similar way to men. For instance, it's not accepting enough of this curse to work the farm as a child & teen & only after that to go become an electrician or computer tech. Nor is it acceptable for a farmer to moonlight as a plummer or anything else. This is totally disapproved of by the elders because "it's not how God intended." The curse is taken so literally that it is perceived as being as much "the kind intention of His will" (Eph. 1:5) as if there were no bondage-breaking aspect of the gospel, which is what is actually referred to as "the kind intention of His will." The fact that God's will is to be sought & obeyed is a theme throughout Scripture. But this is a fact that is apparently not taken literally by any of the aforementioned religious groups. If it was, there would be recognition of what the Bible clearly states as God's will & as a focal point for us (focus also just as clearly defined as what His will itself is). The literal interpretation is only as good as the ability to perform it. I totally agree with your point, Rob, that anybody saying there's only one interpretation is probably suspect. In the case of the Amish, Mennonite's, Hutterites, they are claiming to be literal without actually being literal. If they took God's will that the curse of sin be broken via the gospel, they would be intent on this gospel as a higher priority than the particulars of the curse. Likewise, if they even really, truly, believed God having instated the curse, they wouldn't try so hard to make it happen; they would just trust God that it would. Alfred's camp's interpretation of God's Word is even less literal; this one manages to also refuse to take Gal. 3:28 literally. In failing to take literally Paul's rebuttal against any sort of hierarchy of believer's standings before God, his sexist application of the reality of the curse is NOT due to literal interpretation of Scripture. And it certainly doesn't include any of the allegorical, moral, & analogical diagnostic approaches, either. I'm not really sure is Scripture can even be considered as any basis for such ideas. Other than along the lines of: "I heard a tune that went 'la-la-la-la-la" and, when I heard this, it made me think of icecream. So, in honor of this great song it's crucial to eat nothing but ice cream from now on."
    - Don Rubottom July 20, 2017
      
      I take the curses literally. And I take Jesus's redemption from the curses literally! I need not "rule over" my wife because Christ has delivered her from the curse. Why would I want to be a curse unto my wife when I am called by my design and the written Word to love her as Christ loves the Church and gave Himself for her.... For freedom Christ has set you free. What you describe is not mere literalism, it is straightforward denial of the Gospel.
      Too, reading description as prescription is not literalism. It is a failure to comprehend what is actually written. For instance, some patriarchs were polygamists. OK. NOTHING in the Old Testament says it was OK with God for them to do that. Yet people teach it was, "then". But it is merely a fact that they did that, not an exposition on patriarchal marriage righteousness. Just look at the rivalries and murder borne by those practices!
      Many pick and choose passages that fit their version of natural religion or natural order and proclaim it prescriptive. ("Spare the rod, spoil the child.") But the only prescription is this: Love God, Love your neighbor.
      But we should know now not to get you started, Nicole!!
rob war June 5, 2017 Reply

general question

has anyone bought and read any of Bill's new books or materials he is now selling on his new web site?
- Nicole Gardner June 12, 2017 Reply
  
  The gut-brain connection series or his dispensation on how all the the people he's driven away from God left church because they're suffering from "mental illness"?? No I have not & don't plan to, though I'd be interested in a synopsis. Or maybe he's even already put forth material on how to recover from P.T.S.D. Because as you know it takes somebody who skipped out of the draft to tell seasoned warriors how to manage. Or maybe he thinks PTSD is as easily controlled as the young girls that he cloistered & brainwashed. All sarcasm aside, I WOULD like to hear a critique of THAT *help-program* as assessed by a vet. Maybe in a comparison against old Mickey Mouse reruns. (Q): watching which one is has more healing technique; Bill Gothard or Steamboat Willie?!?
rob war June 8, 2017 Reply

I would try to reply up above about priestly celibacy, but I think the comment would become too narrow. From the Catholic Church's view, priestly celibacy is considered a discipline not a doctrine and has always been a part since the beginning since a majority of the apostles were not married. Looking even back at the OT, the priestly services of the Levites was rotated and when it was the priest's turn to serve in the temple, they were to abstain from marital relationship's with their wives. In the Counsel of Nicea, in 325, one of the official rolling what the priest may not marry and to be a married priest, they must have been married before being ordained. Likewise it was a discipline with married priests, that they could not have marital relationships with their spouse before celebrating the Eucharist the night before. Also from this time period, if someone was to become a bishop, they were expected to have a celibate marriage. I believe with the Orthodox, priests are married but the marriage is to happen before they are ordained. In the Catholic Church, this discipline of celibacy was wide spread, it did not become an official discipline until 1139. Even today, there actually are married priests and those priest are converts from Anglican and Lutheran Churches where these men were already married as Anglican and Lutheran priests and receive a dispensation. Ordained Deacons are allowed to be married coming in but cannot remarry if their spouse passes away after being ordained as a Deacon. This is also true with those converted married priests and is consistent with Church discipline going all the way back.
- Karen June 8, 2017 Reply
  
  You are correct that Orthodox priests are to marry before ordination or remain celibate (and widowed priests are not allowed to remarry) because it is considered a conflict of interest for a priest (or bishop) to be caring for his flock as a spiritual father and still hunting (potentially among them) for a bride. Abstinence for purposes of prayer at specific times of the week and year are prescribed in the Orthodox Church not just for married Priests, but for all married members potentially, though these fasting rules may be, and often are, relaxed according to individual need and capacity as well as because of cultural conditions. We wouldn't have the same expectation of newly married younger couples as with spiritually mature and seasoned older couples, for example. Nor do we expect newly Orthodox people surrounded by non-Orthodox culture to manage the same rigor of discipline as those raised in an Orthodox culture with long established Orthodox practices and rhythm of life. In principle, all spiritual disciplines must truly be voluntary and not forced on people to be effective in their intended purpose. In practice, my impression is very few parish priests in North America and probably many other places would intrude on their married parishioners' intimate lives in this regard, even if invited to. The proper Orthodox mindset is the canonical rules concerning the spiritual disciplines are made to serve the sanctification of the people, not the people to serve the rules, and these rules can be both relaxed and tightened according to the real spiritual needs of the members. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." The goal of the Christian life is not to become the best at keeping all the rules, but to come into true experiential loving communion with Christ and His people, being transformed by the grace of the Holy Spirit to be like Christ.
  
  Because of the nature of this web site, I do want to stress that the Orthodox understanding of the classical spiritual disciplines of the Church (regular prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and participation in the sacramental life of the Church, its Feasts and fasts, etc. normatively applied to all her members is not that these are the terms of our acceptance by God or by which we must earn approval by the group! (It is actually considered a very serious sin to sit in judgment on the practice and performance of another in these or any other matters--more serious by far than failing to keep all the rules as prescribed.) Rather, the spiritual disciplines are understood to be analogous to taking medicine prescribed for our spiritual health and healing and to a training program for a soldier or athlete who aims to be equipped to do spiritual battle with spiritual enemies (I.e., Satan and his demons working through our sins and spiritual infirmities) or accomplish a spiritual goal.
  - Don Rubottom June 28, 2017 Reply
    
    Karen, I love the way you express your faith and that of your Church.
rob war July 13, 2017 Reply

Don,

This is in reply to your above comment about interpretation and application. Bill was pulling a bit of a slight of hands here because HOW one interprets scripture DOES influence HOW it becomes applied. Bill gets around being questioned on how he is interpreting the Bible as you pointed out by stating "many applications". However, he interprets the Bible in a point blank literalist mode, takes verses out of context, does not balance between NT and OT, does not use other parts to shed light and understanding on other parts of the Bible and on top of all that claims that God "revealed" this to him because he "meditates" and has memorized the Bible from here to the moon. So using your example about circumcision, Bill just interprets this command as just a health ordinance from God. Bill doesn't see the bigger even more allegorical reason that the 8th day means a new start or beginning. Jesus rose on the 8th day, the 8th day after the week of creation was the beginning of the new week and a new start. Circumcision on the 8th day points to the resurrection on the 8th day by Jesus and the beginning of the new covenant. So, all these deeper meanings and fulfillments are totally missed by Bill because all he does is focus on "health" reasons then tries to support his health reasons with bogus science like circumcision will make men be less immoral or that the baby's blood will clot the best on the 8th day. All one has to do is look at OT men like King David and Solomon who would have been circumcized on the 8th day as good Jewish boys were and realize that both men had moral problems with women.
- Don Rubottom July 20, 2017 Reply
  
  Amen.
  I prefer not to use "literal" with respect to those who take out of context or those who cherry pick.
Nicole Gardner July 20, 2017 Reply

Yeah, y'all got me started all right! (Smiley-face inserted here). It's with the interpretation/application thing. The whole basis for us supposedly having to get under Gothard's Umbrella regime was that this was supposedly *The Right* interpretation & application of Scripture. So: There being a right interpretation & application necessitated the submission of other people to the one proffering it. This has as it's basis the clout of God Himself & makes perfect sense as long as people have enough space away from this human teacher to use their own noggin. And so Gothard capitalized on people's sensitivity to the need to do this. Without doing it himself. Every day that has gone by since he got too busy *sharing principles* to ever sit & learn interpretations/applications from anybody else is a wasted day. Because, inasmuch as this is supposed to be done, it hasn't been done by him. He also made up a fake structure (the Umbrella system) that added volumes of fallacy to this basic fact of conscience that all his phony interpretations & applications hung of off like dirty underwear on a clothes-tree. One would think that never being subject to a Pastor nor sitting under sermons for a duration of over 50 years would leave a professing Christian's conscience a little seared. Like, not-even-a-little-deaf, but A LOT! Failing the basics is bad enough. But having added a life-atmosphere of extra orders, erecting an immovable dome over every unmarried person under which we supposedly have to exist, is Gothard's standard of measure as he meted-out. I can't imagine trying to muster any faith in one's own justification, even if it were to be recognized as via the cross, from a standing in a place of that kind of spiritual & relational deficit. God's grace is huge. It has to be, & come to Gothard like a whirlwind unto realization & faith in the One Who gives it. Because, if grace were "The desire & power to do the will of God" then Gothard had either not received grace before or else he has squandered it. So it better come to him as something totally different than "the desire & power to do God's will" if he is to be saved.
Nicole Gardner July 22, 2017 Reply

And Gothard's social-network defender Alfred was barking up the exact same tree when he said it's shaking a rebellious fist in God's face for a gal to chose singleness. It's even more "trying to be captain of your own soul" for her to do college &/or employment, or so he says, also within the past year. And he wouldn't let his daughters, the oldest of which was 27 at the time, out of the house for either purpose. One would think, since he stated that the only way women can be within God's will in light of the curse is to have a husband & children, that he would be eager to let his daughters have a tiny fraction of time before this takes place to do something else constructive with their lives. But no. Well, is he at least letting his sons get jobs & go to college for a few years before they take over the family farm?!? But no to this, too. Why? Is it because he feels that a man spending even under 20% of his working life away from getting yield from the soil by the sweat of his brow is too much of a deviation?!?!? (If so, he should really have issues with the number of working years that Gothard spent without weeding soil in order to sustain a living- which has been to the tune of NONE). But no. It is not because boys/men detouring from what he believes is a standard of obedience-the-curse. Gothard & his website-defender do NOT promote that boys/men should obey-the-curse with the MAJORITY of their working-age years (as would be the case if they approved of single women getting jobs &/or going to college straight out of highschool as most now-married mothers once did at that time in their lives, which, as they've both said, they definitely do NOT but rather have advocated against this). For girls/women marriage & family are not allowed to be a woman's MAIN focus, they are only allowed to be her ONLY focus, even if hypothetical rather than a reality. Yet, not only is weeding & otherwise working the soil not only not expected to be The Only Purpose of boys/men, it's likewise not even expected to be an eventual, more-or-less-pursued purpose. In fact, it doesn't matter to either Gothard or his website-defender if a boy/man ever lifts a finger in obedience-to-the-curse at all, ever. When I brought this up to Gothard's website defender (& this is all still in writing & public, btw) he said that the reason he holds women to having to put their nose to the grindstone with regard to the curse is because our bodies are made for this purpose. (This means that spinsters can only hope to be visited by another Immaculate Conception so that our sole purpose isn't wasted, apparently). Also, there's a moratorium on the fertility of all women except Sarah & Elizabeth (the Bible characters). So, since being able to bear children for less than half of one's life makes it *wrong* to do anything else, what about men's capability to sweat from their brows? One would think, that since men are capable of sweating from their brows for their ENTIRE lives, that they would be expected to utilize their means of doing so as meted-out in Genesis 3, even as womankind's purpose is interpreted in this way by Gothard. *Farming's too hard nowadays*. And wining/mothering isn't?!?!?
Nicole Gardner July 22, 2017 Reply

*wife-ingmothering*, not "wining"!
rob war July 26, 2017 Reply

Nicole,

The narrow views on women's roles are not just confined to Bill Gothard. They are pretty wide spread through-out conservative evangelical community in total, especially those in the Gospel Coalition camp. Just focus on these ideas, the first person to see the risen Christ was a woman, not a man, and that woman went and told the apostles and she is sometimes called "the apostle to the apostles". Likewise a group of women "supported" Christ and the apostles which means they earned money, bought food and supported in other ways. The middle ages has several women that were in leadership positions, St. Bridget of Sweden, St. Elizabeth of Hungry etc. In other words, they were wives and mothers and even queens and did all these things. Women can have and do have more than one role besides being a wife and mother and single women have just as much worth and calling as married women. Marriage is a calling for men and women, not just women alone. Raising children takes both parents, not just women alone. I was reading a review of a recent biography of the reformer John Knox. The reviews of this book and about his life were trying to explain or down play his more mysogynist views of women and their roles. What was pointed out was the political rulers he kept having problems with were women. (Mary Queen of Scots etc.). So they felt that John Knox fought back in claiming that women should not be in any leadership position and that women queens were not legitimate and did not have to be obeyed. An interesting take on him but his views and ideas have certainly filtered down through the ages and have a home in such groups as the Gospel Coalition which was started by Presbyterian John Piper. Martin Luther had similar views of women and their roles. This problem is bigger than Bill Gothard and runs much deeper and long term than Bill Gothard and what he taught.
- Nicole Gardner July 27, 2017 Reply
  
  My issue with Bill Gothard & those who teach his error are well founded & are beyond any other mere shadows of repression I have experienced in my 22 years of attending evangelical churches. At least, with evangelicals, the claim is made by us that we're "Biblicans", thus opening ourselves up to correction by anyone referencing what the Bible has to say. In fact, it was Don Rubottom, also a Presbyterian as Jon Piper is, who 1st mentioned here in RG that the cross nullifies the curse. He meant the effects of the curse, when redemption by the cross has been attained, no longer effects main rule unto automatically garnering attention unto the curse's horribleness. Not sure, but I think he claimed the cross as being able to do this against the stand-alone, natural consequences of the curse. No where from the evangelical community besides Bill Gothard's Seminar itself & from his website-defender have I ever heard that women need to avoid college & employment. [Gothard's website-defender is the only source I've ever heard say that women- single or otherwise- actually have to strive to obey what is specified in the curse on womankind- have NEVER heard that kind of disbelief in God's word anywhere else!!!!]. I did once follow a boyfriend to his totally non-evangelical, neo-conservative church where I had to leave because the dictator of it quoted Gothard from the pulpit, but their by-laws state that they do not believe in evangelism & they adamantly refuse to reach out to their community, also are non-denominational & so therefore are not an evangelical church. To the contrary, I believe that the Bible is the cure for mysogeny, in which case evangelicals are closer to it than anyone.
  
  The reason Gothard's teaching was so insidious in my life was because his Umbrella required that I, as an adult, subject myself to mysoginist abuse as wielded by a secular man. Gothard is the only so-called Christian I know of who demands that helplessness replace agency, dependency replace independence, abuse replace already-found freedom; all for the purpose of an adult Christian coming into subjection to non-believer(s). I'm specifically talking about a professing agnostic in this instance, although I could just as well be talking about a pervert who claimed to be s Christian even as he sexually attacked women in churches. For me, the situation with the professing agnostic meant I got reamed-out by the Gothard-following pastor I had at the time, had to withdraw from Driver's Ed that I had secretly signed-up for with my own earned money (I was 18 & a half!) the lady at church who had been my contact that got me my daycare job was reamed-out, too, even after we were both told to never be friends again even though we were still both expected to remain at that church, & my Gothard-worshipping pastor told a lie about me to get me fired from my daycare job when I disobeyed his order to quit it as part of his list of what I had to do to quell my "spirit of independence" which was an "evil" spirit as Gothard taught. Fortunately, my boss & her husband recognized his lie about me as being a lie & also discerned that his motive was to get me fired. So, they made sure it didn't work!!!
  
  By denying what the Bible says in favor of being subject to mysogynst views, Gothard is WAY worse than any evangelical doctrine.
  - Don Rubottom August 4, 2017 Reply
    
    Thanks Nicole. I really like your explanation here. That pastor and others would be the same with or without Gothard. Misogyny is always around. Gothard simply gave them a convenient excuse. Funny, though, how he would encourage young women to leave their wicked fathers to come "serve" him at HQ (where he could hold the umbrella), but when it did not "bless" him for a young adult to leave home, the umbrella ruled!
    - Nicole Gardner August 7, 2017
      
      Don, good point at the end here of how Gothard used claims to good vs. evil just to get what he wanted in the temporal. I wonder just how often he set & rubbed his grubby little palms together, laughing at people's regard for God that he highjacked for his own satisfaction in the now?? Probably a lot of patronizing happened in his head since so much of this was done with his hands.
      I wrote a piece late last night that will likely need to be in moderation for awhile now & so I do want to clarify what's in that: my 20-year long personal concern with dating has been mostly because of the upper-hand factor that is always to the guy's advantage. It has been a real challenge to try to get them to do coffee dates so that getting to know each other is in place before getting taken out on the town for sightseeing/dinner/ballroom forms momentous occasions with people who should rather soon forget each other. It's a challenge to meet requests to be an exclusive item via counter-dialogue that not only effectively points out that we don't know each other, but that goes ahead & asks more of the questions that need answers; even before a relationship is defined the woman is seen as subservient to his upper hand. Even this context of being asked by him, at his initiative, to be an item is evidence of him positionally holding the upper hand. Saying "yes" to being asked to not date anyone else, to see him at the regular times he sets forth, & to you mutually associating with each other before others in this context of what he's set forth basically makes him this woman's leader. When he uses terms like "we're right for each other", "I wasn't thinking about marriage at the time I met you but now I'm into those terms", "I like you exactly the way you are", & shows you houses, asking your opinion on which one he should buy based on what YOU would like to live in, etc., it seems as though he's in the marriage-market. He's not only selecting you, but he seems to be generally looking to settle down, in terms of his own place in life. A guy appealing to this makes the power imbalance seem even more extreme, since we have in the Bible the heritage of Sarai calling Abram "Lord". Marriage is no joke. I believe it's a matter of a sore conscience between a fellow & God if he uses his sole clout over initiating marriage for any purpose other than marriage. I believe that God doesn't hear any prayer offered by Bill Gothard's re. supposed sorry-ness for how he led Ruth on. Not until genuine repentance occurs for having violated marriage itself as God said it be honored among all & also the means by which he instated it. A player damages his own relationship with God because of how marriage, & the Anthropic principle in favor of it that is the power imbalance between males & females as 2 different types of people, is thereby hijacked for narcissistic purposes. Bill Gothard had way more clout even than a guy calling a gal up every week to go out with him ever had. He had way more clout even than a boyfriend or official fiancé has. To have added hints of marriage to his power in wielding this over Ruth, too, if even worse than him forcing his romantic liasoning onto the many. Every single one of those students of His would have had to UNsubmit before they ever could've entered into submission to him, him being their teacher. And, what's also according to natural design is the fact that, for those of us of the gender not ill disposed to carrying out a submissive role in life, it's even harder to accrue the mindset or the agency to undo. Undo the expectations of others, to undo these relationships, to become undone ourselves & re-made into an autonomous person. God does this for me & in me all the time, but it's counter-intuitive, & is adaptive to the sin of others. Dates merely playing, spiritual leader's despotism, all this traipses on God's original ordering of the natural world. If they're going to take advantage according to the natural, then we DO have an out, in accord with the spiritual!! And this means NO MORE impositioning of us by authority-abusers for our submission to them!!
      
      What I really meant to reply here, Don, is that the pastor that you say would've been that way regardless of Gothard really would not have been. He became a pastor because of Gothard's business success, admittedly was never called to it, & just tried to copy-cat everything IBLP in administrating his church. In showing the seminars on the projector screen, he told us not to look up the references in our Bibles but to just concentrate on Bill Gothard's face so that we would REALLY get the meaning of what was said. He expressed concern that not everybody in church was "on board" with the teachings. And he told us to go through the Seminar before googling anything "so that we would know for ourselves & not hear-say"!! He, as part of this intro, brought up that there had been "secretaries who had become disgruntled & there was talk of suing" but that God was clearly on BG's side of everything because of all the $$$$ he made following that. Which this pastor was also causing to be made!!! This was the early 2000's. This pastor would have had a totally different platform for his misogyny if he hadn't looked to Bill Gothard in deciding to become a pastor in the 1st place. (He had no degree, said he ran a de facto IFB). He would have had to become impressed with the respect women deserve if he'd gotten to know us on the job instead of as our dictator.
rob war August 2, 2017 Reply

Nicole,

If the general idea that the woman's only purpose or roll is to "stay at home and raised children" then the natural consequence of this is why should women obtain higher education? Women going on in higher education is actually a more recent development out of the woman's suffrage movement. Bill Gothard even though he himself had college degrees up to a PhD did not believe higher education was "God's way". I think Bill was borrowing from from Anabaptist types of groups that frown upon education beyond the 8th grade. However, one cannot turn back the clock to the 17th and 18th pre-industrial time period that was based on crafts and agriculture and education model was mentoring and internships which was what he was trying to promote in ATI. One however can't turn back the clock of time and these models no longer work in an industrial/computerized society.

The no higher education for women seems to be quite wide spread in the quverfull/patriarchal movement. The Duggars parade that idea quite well on their shows. Like i just wrote up above, if the idea that is widespread in conservative evangelical movement that the main roll of women is to stay at home and raise children then why go on, get a college degree only to stay home and raise children and be subservient or submissive to men? At least and even though I totally disagree with the quiver full ideas, that they are more consistent with their message about what women are suppose to do with their lives than having a double message of higher education only to shelf it if married found in some very conservative circles.

Let me give you an example of a double message. I read the book and saw her even speak, Elizabeth Elliot. The book "Let me be a Woman" basically was telling young women that their main purpose should be to be married and subservient to men, comply and follow the whims and wishes of their husbands. That pretty much sums up that book and her message. However, her own life and example was anything but quietly being subservient at home to her 3 husbands. She wrote books, she had a popular speaking ministry. She was on the radio. She taught at a major seminary. She was consulted on the NIV translation of the Bible. She was a talented lady and she used her own talents. I have nothing against anything she did, I think and see through her message to women that they give up on any dreams or wants and only be motivated to stay at home for the hubby and their only roll or purpose is marriage and children. Children are a wonderful blessing but that isn't the only roll women can have.
- Nicole Gardner August 3, 2017 Reply
  
  I've got to think more about all this, but for now let me say that the 3 or 4 times I read "Passion & Purity" (the only book of Elliot's that I've ever read & tried to follow to a *T* in my dating life) it went over my head that Jim treated her the way a player treats a woman. (In too many respects to list here). He obviously DID come through on all of his importuning of her to actually marry her after 5 years of having requested her exclusivity to himself (but only because their mission's board made this happen by telling them they HAD to go live together to minister due to flooding (I think we can reasonably deduce why they didn't appoint an already-married couple as being to give Jim an ultimatum). I honestly believe this influence is why I put up with being at least half-played a couple times by super-churchy guys. I also think it is why it took me a long time to readily see that I needed to push away the Gothardite expectations & go get myself a career as my BAE because most guys are not worth dating. Most guys who bahave like Jim need to get ditched after 6 months. (He constantly told Liz she wasn't important, that his life of chasing God's will was his own thing, after inundating her with attention at the 1st.) What's ironic to me is, the same wisdom that sends players packing would have sent Jim packing, had Liz exercised it. The woman I am now was sharply branded (or I'm told) as unsubmissive to mankind for having given a lecher an ultimatum about his lechery that he couldn't or wouldn't comply with. So, I'm unfit to be a wife for having not tolerated a player. Why should a woman have to tolerate a player in order to become a wife??? It's not fair, since these are two very different types of males. I guess that's pretty much the same question you ask; why does a woman have to check her brains & dreams at the door of Gothardite churches (Liz seems to have been a Gothardite) in order to make it to the altar?? Yet, this makes this child-bride invisible & marginalized for the rest of her life. The actual golden manifestation of what a woman is supposed to be shouldn't be silent before the Liz-s out there that are not but are doing the talking (think Nancy Leigh DeMoss for s minute here, also a FIC-pusher among other things). If one of these catch-22's ever stops being a catch-22, it will end the other. Abused = low education & vice verse, recognizing abuse = owning education & vice versa. In re-reading P. & P. again a couple years ago when it was brought up in the comments here made me recognize Jim's behavior. I'm appalled that I used to see it as a right standard. But it's not surprising that Elisabeth never saw the light because she got sucked into the institution of Gothardism.
  - Don Rubottom August 4, 2017 Reply
    
    Elizabeth was full of Grace, but that does not mean Jim was any more than Abraham's behavior justifies polygamy.
    You are indeed worthy of marriage but you should shun Gothardite churches which are not Grace filled but full of man's ideas and natural reap/sow religion. I am not egalitarian. I am complementarian, I do not support women in the pulpit or as elders but that does not mean that women's views are unimportant or that women cannot be Proverbs 31 productive persons in commerce and in "works of ministry" that Ephesians says pastors are to prepare the flock to do. It also does not mean husbands should make all the decisions in the home. Marriage is a full partnership.
    I do not think women are incapable of leadership. I do believe that men who submit to female leadership get lazy and stay weak (just as overly submissive women are too often "played"). The corollary is not that women should submit to men. Men should be strong and be servants and both women and men should submit to the love and good deeds of the other without demanding subordination of any other. Does that make any sense? Still a work in progress in my own heart.
    - Susan's Saddle Stands September 14, 2017
      
      I have found some well-meaning blogs written by christian men and women that continue in the gothard shadow that tell us what it says in the bible that is the unchanging, unquestionable will of God for women and cannot be deviated from---(woe upon them in the form of plagues, etc) and that we as Christian women are to submit so that our Christian husbands will become the men they are supposed to be: that a strong, decisive leader only result from when the wifes takes a back seat, holds her tongue, asks for permission, is a tidy, neat homemaker and of course, submissive in all ways and that this can take years and years as long as the wife patiently follows those guidelines.
      This leads me to these questions---
      1. Are Christian men so weak and feeble minded that any hint of a strong-willed, independent thinking wife (translated as bitchy, overbearing, unsubmissive with an ungodly rebellious nature ) prevents them from reaching their full potential as a Christian leader
      2. How come the military can take a lazy, irresponsible, incompetent slob of a man--- put him in boot camp where a loud, abusive sergeant rides his butt 24-7, ready to punish at a whim with loads of physically punishing training that makes them into responsible strong hard working men in only 8 weeks (and can do laundry, make the bed and showers every day) ???????????????
    - rob war September 17, 2017
      
      Susan,
      blogs like that are not well meaning. They are false and extreme and actually abusive of the Bible itself even though they may claim or think they are so "biblical". For peace of mind and heart it is better for oneself to stay away from such blogs and web sites and focus on healthy teaching. It is not well meaning to spread around heresy, whether they realize it or not.
    - Nicole Gardner September 18, 2017
      
      Even though IBLP taught that Abigail was rebellious for preventing her hubby Nabal from being killed by David, she had obviously been what BG seems to classify as *submissive* up until that point. I mean, Nabal wasn't prevented by her from killing himself a little bit each day up until that point, was he? His not protecting his own herds makes me think he may not have been much of a one to get up & move around, likely also drank & ate (& probly smoked) way too much.
      Hel-lo, stroke!!!!
      In going un-nagged & unrestricted, & likely even catered-to in those habits by Abigail, BG at least should have granted her that she was NOT rebellious from-day-to-day. And her *submission* sure paid off in the end. Just sayin'. But then again, pertaining to one example given in the comments, it's usually not the person who never takes a shower dying from this; it just kills everybody around them!! I'm not pretending to have advice for ladies in this predicament. Maybe I'm still single for a reason........
    - Don Rubottom October 3, 2017
      
      Susan, "as unto Christ" would not be anything that makes Christ a strong and decisive leader. He call His Bride to a spirit of love, power and a sound mind. So those bloggers are not understanding Ephesians 5 which passage begins with "Submt yourselves one to another..." These fools never speculate how THEIR submisdion to wives and sisters is supposed to form them. But they don't need Gothard to get it wrong. Look how David treated women.
- Don Rubottom August 4, 2017 Reply
  
  "stay home and raise children" is also contrary to I Cor. 7 which encourages singleness. For what? Of course, Gothard encouraged the ATI students to defer marriage so they could "serve God" (meaning free labor for ATI/IBLP) prior to availability for marriage. But otherwise, had no real comprehension of a life of service to God in singleness which Paul commends as superior (from his perspective) to marriage. People who read the Bible and teach that every woman should marry are not reading the same Bible I have!
Nicole Gardner August 7, 2017 Reply

Don, I appreciate your acknowledging my heart's desire to be worthy in God's sight to become married. While marriage itself is the only proof of anyone's fitness to BE married, & therefore worthiness of actually being married is only graced by God & thereby proven as His will for such a person as that, it is nonetheless important to me to not be ineligible in God's sight to qualify for entry into such estate. And, if I am qualified in God's sight to be free to enter a marriage, I do not want to become unequally yoked by doing so with someone who is abusive in God's sight. Notwithstanding whether my complementarian view is accurate or mistaken. If correct, then the power imbalance between a man & a woman is God designed to befit the marital union. In which case, this power imbalance itself underscores how essential a workable marriage must be, the un-perks of inferior standing of women & the burden of conscience respectively weighing on men, being as they are for purposes of marriage. A Fit-to-be-tied person of either gender thereby had better be getting away from a prospective mate who is not so. Very submissive gal? That much more suitable for marriage than if she was not so. Therefore, if she's seeing a guy who's domineering & brutish, their fitness levels are disparingly incompatible. Man who administrates justly & with good cue-taking in monitoring results? Probably will not get as far in life as he could with these skills if he instead chooses a partner who's obstinate as a learned way of deflecting past abuse. If complementarianisn is true, then the purpose(s) for which it exists needs to be upheld. The complexity of the differences fueling the gender war attest to how important whatever is to be accomplished in this must have to really, really be. The struggle is real. If I'm intrinsically inferior, (according to worldly ranking), it's for a higher purpose. So, even in the submissiveness of this inferiority, I accomplish what position I'm required by God to fill. Therefore I'm approved unto His purpose so as to need to not continue in subjection to a guy who is not, though he be my superior. Simply because he is not what I am in light of God's purpose for us each, respectively, being called to be whom we're supposed to be. Complementarianism probably holds a bigger "DON'T MARRY HIM/or/HER!!!!!!" banner over potentially abusive marriages than non-complementarianism does. Not to mention what the doctrine of men as superior over a woman bodes for them if they're abusive in that position.
- rob war August 7, 2017 Reply
  
  Nicole,
  Praying that God grant you your desires to be married. I have not doubt that you would be a wonderful wife and Lord willing, a wonderful mother as well.
  - Nicole Gardner August 8, 2017 Reply
    
    ^^^^^Thank-you, Rob! Hope I would get one who is actually possible to submit to without getting the Jim Elliot/Bill Gothard-treatment in being lead-up to marriage, also not get abused in my submissive position after the fact...... I would rather just keep single than undergo either or both.
    - rob war August 10, 2017
      
      Just focus on having a "soul mate" or better yet "best friend" and the rest of it will take care of itself. Don't worry about "roles". If you find someone that you respect and he respects you, all the rest of it will take care of itself. I'll be praying for you. The mutual respect and friendship will lead to love.
- Don Rubottom August 22, 2017 Reply
  
  Nicole, you've said alot in a couple of posts and I want to hear it all without reaction. But I do question your multiple references to power imbalance. While real in experience, I do not see power imbalance in the design of male/female union. The "rule" of the husband is a curse and redemption totally removes the curse. We are called to equal "power" (actually mutual submission), notwithstanding complimentary compatibility. The men exercising power in relationships are, as you well describe, players.
  Before the Fall, Adam did not question Eve telling him what to eat, he just took and ate. Afterward, he questioned everything, as did she! Without alienation, power is unnecessary. Power merely perpetuates alienation. But reconciliation resolves alienation.
  God Bless. I have an unmarried daughter over 32 and I despair the shortage of decent marriageable men for so many wonderful ladies.
  - Nicole Gardner August 29, 2017 Reply
    
    Thank you for both the empathy & the encouragement, Don R. I hadn't thought of how Adam, in his pre-fallen state, had no qualms in taking what his wife handed him. It actually inspires compassion in me for how some guys were constantly jockeying to dish it out, fixing circumstances so I would be to busy taking all kinds of games from them to be able to have a chance to dish anything right back at them. And I don't mean bantering, I mean GAMES. It actually makes sense, this one-up-manship, inasmuch as there's projection of bad motives onto the relationship. And you're right, these were players, inasmuch as it was mere decency that I was upholding that they were trying to override. Who should get their way & who shouldn't should have more to do with righteousness than with roles. And if it doesn't, then there's probably an unrighteousness extent of role-projection, which defeats the redeemed role that humankind as a whole is supposed to play via the cross. You shed light for me on this hope for relationships. Maybe your daughter governs herself, in light of this wisdom, better than any man would.
    
    And Rob, my half of the state IS gorgeous. The eastern side has it's majesty, too. I don't have explanations for my singleness in light of how much there is to do outdoors around here. I have had hereditary health difficulties for many years that doctors finally told me last March would likely have had me rendered childless for quite some time past. (If trying to have kids had ever been a thing for me). I maybe was spared a lot of heartache. Or maybe it's because I prayed so many times over that God should have me stay single from any guy from whom I would become divorced from if I married him. Honestly, the line-up of dates hasn't been too good in quality, although for some specific conversations & events deserve my gratitude to a couple of these fellas for. It is a jungle out there though. I think the wisest response to anyone getting asked out is to say: "Just shoot me."
Nicole Gardner August 10, 2017 Reply

Yeah, one thing I've hardly ever had is a guy friend. In the sex-obsessed culture I came out of in finally shedding my last IBLP-spouting pastor when I was 30. Then I didn't get back into a church for 2-3 years. I've had a couple guy friends since that time, my 1st-ever guy friends. It's nice to be out of that sex-obsessed culture where a girl/woman is initially "shown her place" by the guy clearly taking the lead (Jim Elliot/Bill Gothard style) that shows from the get-go that his is the appeal of a *superior* made to an *inferior*. One thing I've found: it takes a real man to do friendship, to be willing to relate on those terms. Because when he is, he's relating to another autonomous individual, & there's accountability in that. Meanwhile, what's way more brave of him is way less scary for me, because my dating life isn't being controlled by someone who I don't even know if I can trust.

I know that Jim eventually made good on his singling Elisabeth out, by marrying her. But I believe they both missed out by not being friends instead, at least up until the last year. Not only did Elisabeth have to enter widowhood after already having been abandoned except for a day or 2 out of each of those 5+ years, (abandoned because she was not free to socialize- had she been free to attend co-Ed social events she would not have been abandoned while in her single state) but Jim also missed out. The whole point of why he kept Liz strung along was, according to him, not because he had goals to reach that took more time (although this certainly seemed to be the case in order to train to be a missionary!!). Rather, it was because he was continually taking "the next step" from the Lord & everything was up in the air- he told Elisabeth over 3 years after he secured her exclusivity to him that "God may want me to stay single". Obviously, he was a little mixed up re. Biblical ethics. At any rate, what he seems to have missed out on is an attempt to be the soldier not entangling himself in the affairs of this world. Since being engaged was obviously not conscionable for him, even on the basis of needing a long engagement in order to finish his training, then it seems that the buck supposedly stopping with the Lord on both counts was a bit hyper-spiritual. To have gone through school saying the whole time "I'm just waiting on the Lord's timing to become a missionary" was one stretch of terms. After all, God was waiting on him to jump through maturity's hoops, not the other way around!! But his having his cake & eating it, too, re. Elisabeth & all the girls he made out with while she waited for him really wasn't soldiering. I mean, SHE was; carried the weight of him claiming to be undestracted in devotion to the Lord for 5+ years. He had his reward for himself secured unto himself, indefinitely, for whenever he would claim it. That's not being a friend. And no friend would enable such a *friend* to treat them like this. Bill Gothard's use of secretaries in much the same way was even more ambiguous; they couldn't break up with him, as Elisabeth could have done with Jim, since they had jobs to keep. Plus, the secretaries weren't WAITING for an official offer to enter missionary work; they were already hard at work. VERY hard work (like, slave-labor work!) Plus, it was all being done to them by their pastor & boss rather than by a schoolboy requesting a stand-by girlfriend. If Elisabeth couldn't see her way out from getting the player-treatment, how were any of the girls to? It's not like Elisabeth would have had to have apostasized & also gone against both her pastor, her boss, her landlord & her parents in order to stop how Jim lead her on. In no world in which Elisabeth can be regarded for her "patience" can there be anything but high regard for the secretaries in the long suffering servitude they demonstrated in contract relationships they were already locked into. Because, if Elisabeth is to be lauded for taking this from someone even though nothing was signed, then these are not to be despised for actually honoring their contracts with their boss Bill. And Elisabeth Elliot is revered in evangelical circles, specifically for her relationship with Jim, is she not??

Btw, speaking of control, I was "making an appeal" in my own head re. the no rock'n'roll rule. I was centering it on the objection that, to follow this rule, a person couldn't go to a baseball game, shop in many stores, participate in a car wash, attend a birthday party that has "musical chairs", etc. This was going to be my argument. And then I realized: this is the whole appeal of "no rock'n'roll"!!!!!!! No socializing with anybody non-Gothardite. It was a catch-all rule. Anybody else think this was the appeal that it was marketed to have?
- rob war August 15, 2017 Reply
  
  I think Nicole, if you could find a group or form a group of older (30+) singles, either in your Church or even at another Church that just get together once a month and do social group things, that would be a big benefit in this situation. If your Church isn't big enough, you may have to look at other Churches that have older single adult groups. This isn't a Bible study but just social. Usually larger mega-style or denominational Churches have them because they have larger pools of people to draw from. So once a month everyone gets together and goes out to eat, or go to a movie, or go to a ball game, or go bowling etc. Something fun, light hearted, everyone together and those sorts of groups would be a big help in having friends with both sexes.
  - Nicole Gardner August 18, 2017 Reply
    
    I should look into that. I only like outdoor activities, though. Hardly anybody likes hiking & river floating & softball so these activities are always opened up to everyone & there's never any single guys 35+ at these types of events. Also, the climate in western WA only affords planned activities like this 4 months out of the year & even then it's touch-&-go with the rain. Also single groups for people as old as me never do anything active anyway, or so I read when I look into what they offer, I assume because there's no *weekend warriors* to blaze trails in lieu of the married leadership needing to spend at least Saturday's with their families. I've organized a few dozen hiking trips with my gal friends but we're not lesbians (even though we're in WA!) besides we're Christians so that's all I seem to be able to do. Those are a blast, though!! The little bit of dating I've done has been a total letdown by comparison. Also, I know a slew of great gals who have gotten no bites over the years even though they've been "getting themselves out there". So IDK what to do. But I do appreciate your thoughtfulness & suggestion of resources. Maybe, if I ever lose my fairly good health, I will just join Bingo games at local senior centers. Ha! I like your suggestion better.
    - rob war August 22, 2017
      
      Living in a beautiful area like Washington State and having a great love of being outdoors, I'm surprised that you haven't met some guy that doesn't share in that, being and doing outdoors activities like camping etc. is a common male type of interest. But even in the more winter type of months, I would think you could transfer that into activities like bowling, basketball and indoor soccer. In reading yours and Don comments about having a 32 year old single daughter, I'll just going to through out there as couple of other thoughts which may or may not apply to you or his daughter but sometimes it may seem with older never married singles that finding someone with a similar age, or race/ethnic or education is going to be very hard and that broadening the search pool to include younger/older or someone that was previously married (widower) or another race/ethnic group might have to occur. With more people actually delaying marriage as a cultural trend, I would think looking broader might help with you and Don's daughter.
Larne Gabriel August 16, 2017 Reply

Rob your right on. My larger church in Bothell, WA has several "Life Groups" for all ages and other categories (about 1500 people in groups if I recall). Most are a combination of social and study. We call it living life together.
rob war August 30, 2017 Reply

Does anyone know how the IBLP offices fared at Sandy Hook Texas after this hurricane? It would seem like they would have been affected.
- David S. Knecht Sr. September 2, 2017 Reply
  
  I don't know, sister, but you are thinking of Big Sandy, which hosts the ALERT program. Last I knew, they were kind of an independent branch of the IBLP commonwealth, so to speak.
  
  But ALERT may be pretty much deployed in relief missions. So hopefully they are mostly in the field now.
  
  Your brother,
  David K
  - rob war September 2, 2017 Reply
    
    I get the places mixed up. There is actually a Sandy Hook Texas on the cost which is south of Corpus Christi. It looks like Big Sandy is much more in land and north. My understanding is that IBLP moved or consolidated their offices and head quarters there which as you pointed out, have their camps such as Alert.
Nicole Gardner October 1, 2017 Reply

So I’m reading a book called “How to Get a Date worth Keeping” by Henry Cloud, who is a Christian. He basically says either impose boundaries in every relationship or get pooped-on. He even says that to have people worthy of being around, stayin around, you have to tell them what’s _*what*_ concerning your personal standards. No “No such thing as personal rights”, there!! Or, “All relationship problems are caused by expectations”, or, “Always defer to the other person if you wanna be Christlike.” Btw I was also reading in Jude & other places in the N.T. & I’m pretty sure that the purpose of the book’s expose of evil personified is unto avoidance of it. Rather than being swallowed-up by those practicing it.

The Bible says to love. The more unlovable someone is, the more greatness is required of the one living them. Loving is a benevolence & a giving-ness. So how does one heap-on more love to one who has wronged them if they’re not even able to forgive that person? We are commanded to forgive wrongs done against us. So, how does one forgive a wrong done when they’re not allowed to have perceived that wrong in the 1st place?!?!?

“To think, speak, or act against an authority is rebellion.”

So, there’s no wrong to forgive, since we’re not allowed to perceive it’s every having occurred. And we therefore forgive nothing that’s ever done against us by an authority. Hence, live in it’s highest form is not able to be experienced by us or through us. Even though Christ commands it.

It amazing to me how the empowerment of the Lord, even unto the practice of the Golden Rule at it’s most challenging, is denied by this tenet of IBLP. We’re not Christ-like-forgivers; not when it comes to authority. We have no such calling, no such opportunity, no such empowerment (according to IBLP). Instead, we must act as if we had fully forgiven the wrong, not failing this form in the least bit. Not because we have the Holy Spirit moving us with the love of forgiveness, but because we are minions of the one who wronged us. We have no rights, therefore our obligation to them is condition-less from their end; the only condition is the condition on us that we must unwavering submit to these.

Now, some theologians say that God’s relationship to mankind who have called upon Christ is such. It says all the conditions are on God & that Jesus fulfilled them. Since we couldn’t/cannot. In Galatians it is said “The lesser is blessed by the greater.”

So......... according to the one-sided conditions demanded by “to think, speak, or act against an authority is to rebel”........... the minions are thereby ranked as superior to our..................... SUPERIORS. By this main IBLP tenet, there IS no such thing!!! What a crock.
- rob war October 3, 2017 Reply
  
  Nicole,
  I have a couple of book suggestions for you. First and I did read this is "Courtship is Crisis: The Case for Traditional dating" by Thomas Umstattd Jr. I think there is a lot in that book that you will find helpful and practical. The second book and I have not read it but I think will give you a better image of marriage is "The Mystery of Marriage" by Mike Mason. I think the big problem with some of the heavy handed teaching about marriage by Bill Gothard and many others is that they take the "mystery" out of marriage and reduce marriage to a robotic relationship. That image isn't true and I think what you have been taught about marriage is causing you fear and worries about marriage in general. Proverbs 30 talks about 4 things "too wonderful" to understand and the last one is a man with a maid which really is talking about the wonder and mystery of marriage.
Nicole Gardner October 1, 2017 Reply

^^^^^^It’s a crock because the whole thing centers on human authority being supposedly so much higher than subordinates, but then by it, the definition of the subordination demanded denies the very existence of human authority.
- Don Rubottom October 3, 2017 Reply
  
  Very insightful. Stop listening to the idiots. You are hearing the Spirit clearly!
Recovering Myself October 10, 2017 Reply

Nicole's comments about the misogyny of Gothard and his defenders have pushed me to finally post after years of reading here. I know the suffering of being raised under Gothard's misogynistic sexual fantasies masquerading as doctrine. However, I do not take as forgiving an attitude towards him as many do here. I am not commanded to because I am not a Christian.

Bill Gothard is a not a Christian either. He's a narcissistic con man, an abuser, and a sexual predator. ATI is not a homeschool program, but a sex trafficking ring designed to bring him a never-ending well of narcissistic supply. I have come to believe that those who *choose* to follow his teachings as adults are also narcissistic abusers. I don't buy excuses like "They didn't know about the 1980 scandal" or "The internet didn't exist then!" That's because my condemnation of Gothard, ATI, and any who defend or follow it does not stem from the accounts of the brave women who have outed his predatory behavior on this site. Please know that I am not detracting from them or the work RG is doing. I'm saying that Mr Gothard's sexual perversions were written down by him for all to see a long time ago. They are in the seminars. They are in the Wisdom Booklets. They are in the Character Sketches. They are in the counseling material. Gothard's total disregard for the personhood of women and our ownership of our own bodies is right there on the pages. It made him a multi-millionaire among people who claim to be Christians.

The people who read Mr Gothard's teachings on women, sexual abuse, rape, and authority as adults were not misled. They were buying into Gothard's pyramid scheme of abuse because they are abusers also. His defenders, his followers, and my parents don't have a multi-million dollar HQ to fill with pretty girls and eager young men to feed their egos, so they keep their daughters at home to provide their own never-ending supply of narcissistic reinforcement.

The damages done to me and to those I grew up with in ATI and an ATI church are immense and sometimes feel insurmountable. Almost every "Young Lady" in my ATI church was being sexually abused by a brother or a father. They didn't need to go to HQ for it to happen because trickle-down abuse was the entire appeal of the program. I was being physically abused, starved, contained in tight spaces by my mother at home. My only break from her was reading even more Gothard material. Surely it's not a coincidence that she used the same methods as Gothard to control the rebellious?

I ran away from home to avoid a "Courtship" my father was choosing for me, but as an underage girl with no education, very little social experience, and no knowledge about sex - what happened to me afterwards was worse in many ways. I did not fully understand rape because my parents had never educated me about sex. What I did understand is that I became guilty of not crying out. In the eyes of my parents, Bill Gothard, Alfred, and every ATI parent who chose to educate their children with Wisdom Booklets - that rape was my fault.

I'm extremely grateful to RG and to the many posters and commenters here who've brought real change by forcing Gothard and IBLP's hand. That their hands had to be forced only reinforces my belief that there are no good intentions here. Again, I'm aware that I'm taking a much harder stance than many here, but I do not believe I stand alone in rejecting the idea of "well-meaning parents" taken in by Gothard or "misapplying his principles" when it's so clear that Gothard's teachings are *inherently* abusive.

Much love to all who have been affected.
- grateful October 18, 2017 Reply
  
  bitterness is very destructive.
  - kevin October 22, 2017 Reply
    
    grateful,
    
    In response to Recovering Myself's shared personal story, your reply was:
    
    "bitterness is very destructive."
    
    Did you really just say that?
    
    You say in a different post:
    
    "I'm not die-hard IBLP, but everything i've been involved with and experienced has been positive."
    
    grateful, you are victim shaming. She shared her story from the heart and your reply was to call her bitter. From your perspective you feel that everything that you experienced in IBLP was positive. But, you have been conditioned and brain washed to victim shame and blame. Everything that you experienced was not positive and you are doing harm to others from your blind obedience to IBLP teachings. I would encourage you to examine how you may have similarly harmed those in your family from such blaming and shaming methods.
    - huzandbuz October 22, 2017
      
      Kevin,
      
      "AMEN"!!
      
      Victim shaming.... How incredibly sad.
      
      I, too, believe that 'Recovering Myself' shared from her heart a very well written discourse outlining her astute observations and experiences.
      
      I am of the opinion that we become a part of Recovering Grace to share our pain and encourage when we can. The insensitivity associated with 'labeling a victim' intensifies their suffering... :+(
    - David October 23, 2017
      
      Very well said Kevin.
      
      And shame on you "grateful", whoever you are
    - grateful October 28, 2017
      
      How is making a true statement victim shaming? Aren't we all "victims" of something? You all have no clue about my past or who I am - I have had to overcome many hurdles and with the Lord's mercy and Grace, I was able to forgive and move on. This individual has stated that she is not a Christian, so the reality is is that bitterness could ultimately determine her eternal destination. That is truth it has nothing to do with "victim shaming."
    - grateful October 28, 2017
      
      Who the hell do you think you are making blind assertions like that about me? Are you shaving yet?
    - kevin October 29, 2017
      
      This is a place of healing for those harmed by Gothard and his teachings. She shared her story of abuse and you victim shamed her, right of of the Gothard handbook- calling her bitter. No compassion, no sympathy, no understanding how a person who was abused for years might still have pain and anger towards her abusers.
      
      You point out that she is not a Christian. Do realize how many people brought up with IBLP have walked away from their faith? When someone is abused by people who profess to be Christians, what do you expect? And then, to top it off, when she shares her story of abuse, you call her bitter. Please stop and think for a moment. Just think. She shares here story of abuse. Your reaction? You, who profess to be a Christian? You shame her by calling her bitter. Do you think this will move her towards Christ? Can you not see the extreme damage of these teachings? An abused person needs love and compassion- not your name calling.
      
      If you come to this site and talk about how great your experience with IBLP was and shame victims by calling them "bitter" you better expect that you are going to get some push back. No, grateful, you don't get to come to this website for healing and bash victims with your IBLP methods, without being called out for it.
    - grateful October 30, 2017
      
      Simple question: What is the path for the victim to freedom from the power an abuser has over said victim (assuming they are physically removed from the situation)? I can lay out my victim credentials if it somehow validates my position, they are similar to Recovering Myself's.
    - Joe November 2, 2017
      
      Grateful, I do not have an answer for your simple question, but I believe the answer is individual and not simple. Sharing the story is part of it and is helpful to both the victim and to those of us who can both learn from it; and understand, love, and support each other through it.
      
      While your statement may be true, none can see your heart or intent and it came across as sanctimonious and judgmental while even including a favorite gothard buzzword. I myself have experienced the magical thinking of my soul as a chessboard with ground to be reclaimed and strongholds to be torn down. I did not find any power in that method and don't think it's the answer to your simple question either.
      
      I'm sorry for the abuses that you've suffered as well. I hope you find peace and joy on your journey to the answer.
    - grateful November 6, 2017
      
      The answer: Forgiveness. And the type of forgiveness required can only come through Christ. Gothard, no Gothard, whatever - that is the truth: forgiveness is the path to freedom. And "victims" need to hear it.
- Joe October 20, 2017 Reply
  
  Thank you for your comment. As a guy raised in ati, I'd just like to say that I believe your story and I'm very sorry for the abuses and injustices that you've suffered.
- huzandbuz October 20, 2017 Reply
  
  Though I do know Jesus as Savior, and am therefore a professing christian, I, too, must admit that 'regarding this man and the prevailing situation', I do not have the forgiving attitude that many others appear to possess.....
  
  It presents itself that Bill Gothard has spent his life, thus far, in wanton disregard of others especially those precious and innocent young ladies 'under his watchful eye'. While weaving his spider's web and negatively effecting perhaps millions, his so-called 'ministry' may be the worst travesty of Christianity since its 1960's inception...
  
  Where and when has he expressed even a modicum of genuine regret for his actions...??? Only a demonstration of heartfelt repentance can anticipate forgiveness from God or man. Surely, and without a doubt, this man
  KNOWS HOW to COMMUNICATE...!!
  
  An individual must first, of course, recognize the error of their ways. Continual, blatant sin is not easily nor comfortably concealed. The presence of the Holy Spirit in one's heart cannot be squelched or disregarded void of guilt... Does he feel that he is above reproach...??? Or is he aware that he is a cruel, deceitful narcissist and just doesn't care...??? In one way or another, he repeatedly justifies his every questionable action. Nothing has changed that I am aware of....
  
  As a result of Bill Gothard's actions or inaction, I, personally, do not believe that I am expected to convey, in any way, even an inclination of forgiveness toward or regarding this individual who is shameless and void of remorse....
  
  I am not nurturing a bitter spirit. Long ago I distanced myself from his concepts.
  
  Bill Gothard 'is what he is'.... :+(
  
  LOVE and HUGS to 'Recovering Myself'....
- kevin October 22, 2017 Reply
  
  Thank you for sharing your story and for calling it like you see it. I'm very sorry for how you were deeply harmed by Gothard's organization. I am surrounded by many people who have been severely negatively impacted by IBLP and ATI. Some are out and healing, others are still in and in denial. I do believe that some abusive individuals are drawn to such an authoritarian structure taught by IBLP, so that they may abuse others. However, my experience is that the vast majority really have gone in with the best of intentions, believing that they were doing what was most "Godly". From my perspective, it is important to realize that they too are victims of Gothard and IBLP.
grateful October 18, 2017 Reply

Anybody heard anymore about the lawsuit(s) against Bill? I heard from a reliable source that they have all been dropped and the "evidence" is not much ... and this website has been awfully quiet ... just curious. I'm not die-hard IBLP, but everything i've been involved with and experienced has been positive.
- huzandbuz October 20, 2017 Reply
  
  I, too, am continually curious....and often check Recovering Grace and other sites for any 'news updates'.
  I cannot imagine why anyone would willingly 'drop their lawsuit'. :+(
  I agree, however, that it is 'too quiet for too long'....
  
  Continued Prayers....
  - Larne Gabriel October 20, 2017 Reply
    
    In checking the Dupage County Court Clerk's website the case appears to be active in the discovery phase.
    - huzandbuz October 21, 2017
      
      Thank you, Larne. We remain hopeful.....
      
      Blessings....
    - Karen December 16, 2017
      
      I certainly hope and pray the lawsuit vs. Bill Gothard/IBLP has a good outcome for the victims. How long can "discovery phases" last? Maybe Don Rubottom has some insight?
      
      I pray for justice and for an end to the evil being perpetrated. All abuse is truly evil, but it is especially damaging when it is done in the name of Christ!
David Pigg October 27, 2017 Reply

Huzandbuz,I want to give you for your honesty and efforts a total bow.I now feel like there is no recourse but to use prayer,communication,and intense concentration of searing light to bludgeon this man's saeared consience Gothard needed the vitriolic pen of an A.I.Solzhenitsyn or the pointed finger of a John the Baptist;but what he got were a few temporary roadblocks,some brushed away annoyingly,and then quiet eager faces ready for "business as usual";from his followers,and the automatons his years of influence have dehumanized.No worry from the after effects of the spent chaffe of exhausted souls,spent in the treadmill of entreaty for his offenses.He's stepped over those thrown by the wayside with little more than contrived jestures,and now will leap through a crack in the doorway just after a few more exercizes in posturing; a few sad sighs that we really "didn't understand".The afterward hits us all hard as efforts tend to cease and passivity is encouraged.But for the lives of the downtrdden comes a place now given to abide in; something Gothard hates with a passion but can't get his hands on.All too well.
huzandbuz November 8, 2017 Reply

To Grateful:

My path to freedom......
I believe that the 'path to freedom' BEGINS 'when you surrender your life to Christ'. God's forgiveness of us is then instantaneous and complete. However, the process involved in our offering absolution to those who have severely wronged us OR even in forgiving ourselves is...not so simplistic.

*Can a magic wand be waved which would immediately obliterate those long ago but ever-present and incredibly distressing memories from our mind??
*Upon conversion, will promptly swallowing an aspirin guarantee immediate relief of all lingering emotional or physical pain ??
*What about squelching the powers of recall involving early catastrophic events that have severely impacted us which have absolutely nothing to do with forgiving an individual??
How is this accomplished?? By purposing to forgive God??

Are we not a work in progress?? Keeping this fact in mind, consider that 'first and foremost', victims need to be 'heard and understood' no matter how much time that may take!!! Though they desperately desire to be FREE of emotional bondage, those who are casualties of Gothard's predatory behavior may continue to endure psychological trauma ................. with no end in sight!!!
(His sincere acknowledgement and profound sorrow for his lascivious actions concerning each one would no doubt be the very catalyst to begin their recovery!!)

(It 'appears' that you are advocating an expeditious 'Forgive AND Forget' blanket philosophy regarding all past offenses....)
If so, do you understand this total attitude to be biblical??
Are the 'Forgiving AND Forgetting' to happen simultaneously??)

:+)
grateful November 8, 2017 Reply

Huzandbuz, agree 100% with your post. "Instantaneous" forgive and forget typically leads to neither. I think all this started simply because I was not cognizant of the ramifications of the buzz word that starts with "B" my point is that unconditional forgivess from victim to abuser is supernatural aND can only come through the Power of the Holy Spirit ( Christ in us). However the flesh wants to hold on to (the word that shall not be named) which prevents true freedom. It is definitely a process, but it starts with the revelation of needing to let go.
joe November 9, 2017 Reply

Thank you, huzandbuz for beautifully articulating your path. I couldn't agree more.

Grateful, forgiveness is definitely part of the answer, but it is a process and not a supernatural endowment. Christ teaches the importance of forgiveness, but I don't see where he teaches that there is a kind of forgiveness that only comes through him. Are we to discount the ability to forgive of someone like Gandhi who was not a Christ follower?

This started when someone took a step in their journey and you made a statement which read as smug, judgy, and uncaring and were called out on it. Instead of examining your words to see whether there is any justification for that backlash, it is telling that you again choose to blame others as not being able to handle the word bitterness because gothard used it.
- huzandbuz November 9, 2017 Reply
  
  Dear Joe,
  
  How kind you are.... :+)
  
  As an 'old gal', I make every attempt to express my thoughts clearly as well as..... carefully.
  
  Your words, too, are insightful and appreciated.
  
  God Bless.
  
  In His Grip,
David Pigg November 10, 2017 Reply

This reply is in a sense to Grateful but in a greater overvierw to Gothard's adherrants who have used his word lingo,maybe a little bit too long without getting to the basis of theses articles'intended purpose.Does any serious participant of these dialogues really believe for one minute that Bill Gothard even remotely cared for the last victim he threw away callously in disregard for their welfare,safety,sanity,to exploit the next victim he could manipulate using the usual perversions he is all to acustomed with? While keeping the impeccable projected image?You see I've read these personal stories and I believe them.These girls were thrown away, left with no one to care for them,dysfunctional. In some cases,abuse came from their own families... for years.Overworked with no regard,vulnerable,molested,spiritually abused;with the last straw public humiliation before banished from Bill and his lackeys.They have names:......
Ruth,Heather,Charlotte,behind pretty faces;lives to tear apart;good for a few years,maybe just to entertain Bill.Doesn't this make you just a little bit angry?I am;and in trying to extract anger from going too far:I.E.the "B" word, the realization that the fruits of Gothard's ministry are automatons,precise surgical legalists,graduates of the dehumanization process.Oh yes,I have daughters too;names with pretty faces.Should I go on and say what your attitudes imply?They're just females;support; expedient for the ultimate sacrifice;and it's not the Kingdom of God.Only the logical conclusion.
- huzandbuz November 12, 2017 Reply
  
  David,
  
  I cannot help but ponder.....
  What were the 'ongoing dynamics', within the Gothard household, that resulted in all (3) of the sons advancing into such immorality...?!?!?!
  
  William Sr. held prominent positions within Christian organizations. Yet, he helped to cover up his son Steve's 'serial sexual involvement' as well as Bill's 'disturbing propensity to groom young girls' while each one was such an integral part of IBLP. Son Dave was imprisoned twice after his Ponzi schemes were revealed. Mind boggling...
  
  In his 1994 tribute, Bill Jr. 'credits his parents' for their moral influence including his father's abhorrence of alcohol.
  
  It is truly all so bizarre....
  
  Blessings...
  - David Pigg November 14, 2017 Reply
    
    Back to you huzandbuz;bless you.I don't know.There seems to be a mechanism that short circuits within us, when the combination of supramoralism and the utter wicked evil depradations of Bill are made manifest, and when Bill combines the two,it becomes a smokescreen. We just can't believe the evil.The victims really don't count.They don't have names,feelings dignity,humanity.I've got to go back again and again and get so angry after reading Heather's story,Charlotte's story,and how about Ruth?Yes,Huzandbuz,I forget.Yet anyone thats stayed here ought to know by now Bill wouldn't look over his shoulder with any compassion not in the least upon receiving a new vulnerable naive girl to exploit,groom,molest,abuse,sexually,spiritually,vocationally,however which way he prefers;totally .Throw one away;get another.No remorse for the previous one.He built the dehumanization process slowly within us,Seminar after Seminar.He recreated us for his world and when we are used up,or when we see injustice,he passified us;for he can't possibly be at fault;what with his supramoralism.I got three lovely daughters myself...they have names faces,hopes dreams.But they are females,simply meant to be just for Bill's temporal gratification.Now throw IBYC in for gauranteed coverup,surgically precise legalism, and to tie up a few loose ends for forty years. We are the ones that are bitter,misunderstanding of his altruism.Gothard's desciples are recreated without feelings;deprogrammed and reprogrammed.Automatons.Such people as Grateful,Alfred,are the chosen few.After all authority from the top down is never meant to be questioned.
  - kevin November 14, 2017 Reply
    
    Huzandbuz and David,
    I have wondered the same thing about the Gothard household, that such rotten fruit came from all three sons.
    Along those lines, I wanted to make another comment, in light of the recent outing of high profile sexual predators that is happening right now. The recent boldness of victims speaking out is a glaring example of how sexual predators in powerful positions can often get away with their crimes for decades. When the first few women came out with their accusations against Bill Gothard, many of his supporters caste doubt on the accusers, in that they had taken so long to come forward. Why, they asked, did they wait 20/30 years? Why did they not "cry out" at the time? As with the other sexual predators who are being outed, one can easily imagine how the victims each felt like they were the only ones. Additionally, who would believe them against the word of someone so exalted as Bill Gothard? Combine with that the power of the man in that cult environment and the brain washing that went on about how victims of sexual assault are to blame. Is it really any wonder that the victims felt alone, afraid and possibly to blame, until many years later after they had matured enough to understand what had happened and had the strength to come forward? As we have seen with Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and many others, often all it takes is one brave soul to come forward for the damn to break.
    I want to again thank all of the brave women who have had the courage to come forward and speak the truth. In doing so, they have made sure that Gothard no longer enjoys his powerful position, from which to prey on innocent victims.
    - Don Rubottom November 17, 2017
      
      Excellent points, Kevin. But your reflection reminds me that these are common sins. They increase as predators as their power increases.
      Power corrupts. I work in government and it absolutely does. They think everyone loves them and wants their attention. They think they deserve attention. They think they are superior people. This happens in corporations, churches, mission organizations, colleges, everywhere men of flesh act as gods.
      That may explain the Gothards more than their legalistic father. Once one sibling rises to "success", bringing some family members along, others have a high bar of "success" to reach, just to be in the same league with "Jr." Success pretends to breed success, but more often success yields corruption and it breeds more corruption. It's not just Bill Gothard. It is all men and women.
      It is their response to the light of truth that is the most significant proof of their corruption: "I only did a little...I did not mean evil...She is lying...My lawyer won't let me say more. Blah, Blah, Blah." What you never hear is what Arthur Fonzarelli could not say: "I was wrong." "I am the chief of sinners." Because the "success" would be destroyed. Excuse me, I mean "the ministry"....
    - Karen December 16, 2017
      
      This reply is to Don Rubottom's November 17 post to Kevin.
      
      *Like*
      
      Well said, Don. This last election cycle brought things to light which serve to validate your observations in spades. Some of the fallout is only now beginning to trickle into mainstream media here in the US (those purveyors of "Fake News" who have been mostly just serving up the propaganda of six big corporate conglomerates for years!) and only because it can no longer be hidden. Weistein. Franken. Schumer. This is just the tip of the iceberg. It's only going to get uglier. I've read there are now thousands of sealed indictments coming down the pike. We are living in tumultuous times I would never have imagined (except in my worst nightmares) growing up! May God preserve us all faithful, come what may!
grateful November 15, 2017 Reply

The dehumanization process, heh? Wow. Is that in the advanced seminar? Must've missed that night.
- huzandbuz November 15, 2017 Reply
  
  To Grateful:
  
  By definition, the 'dehumanization process' is: the action of depriving an individual or group of positive human qualities.
  
  This (14) letter word's 'intended systematic activity' does NOT have to be spelled out 'among those of us within the realization of Gothard's planned patriarchal take over.' We have 'been there'!! There is NO ROOM for confusion or doubt!! For countless numbers, the methodology and techniques used in Gothard's calculated undertaking, achieved Bill's desired results. At the onset, ALL participants were/are a part of his devious goals. :+(
grateful November 15, 2017 Reply

10 unchangeablEs totally transformed my self acceptance and my view of God. For that I am indebted to BG. Very thankful.
- Larne Gabriel November 15, 2017 Reply
  
  Grateful,
  
  Praise God you were blessed, and your self-acceptance was transformed along with your view of God! I have a story just like yours and is why I joined Bill’s staff in 1979, but God had a different purpose for me, but that's another story. It’s amazing what God can do and who He can work through and how perfect His timing is.
  
  Just think of all the Bible stories that God allow sinners to bless his people, then punished them. The prophet Balaam blessed the God’s people three times, but later God killed him. Numbers 22,23,24 & 31. I love the story it involves a bad prophet Balaam, bad king Balak, an angel, a talking donkey and a battle, but God used it for good in His allotted time for His purpose. Solomon is another example, the wisest man, incredible wealth, great builder but because of his sin his kingdom was divided after his death. This lead to the ten lost tribes of Israel and the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
  
  We are all sinners only saved by God’s unmerited Grace. Our focus needs to be on becoming more like Christ and making Him the sole focus of our worship. Romans 3:10 says, “as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;” In the modern vernacular, we are all “dirt bags”! That includes me, you and Bill, I have told that to Bill face to face. The issue is what do we do with that understanding? We have a Redeemer who provides a way through confession, repentance, asking forgiveness and believing on Him.
  
  If you remember the story of the lost sheep in Luke 15:1-7 and Matthew 18:10-14 that’s what I see in Recoveringgrace, finding the lost sheep and being a voice for them, praying for them and loving them. All we ask of Bill is to join the cause.
- huzandbuz November 15, 2017 Reply
  
  To Grateful:
  
  In my opinion, Gothard's concept of *accepting one's physical defects*
  'appears to teach' that Our Heavenly Father 'deliberately' created an individual with deformitie(s) to glorify Himself.
  I am NOT accepting this abstract....!!!
  
  *To me, Gothard's concept really FOCUSES ON.....
  forming an 'attitude' NOT an 'acceptance' about ourself.
  
  There are those of us who would be willing to discuss these ....
  "Ten Unchangeables" ... 'one by one'...???
Daniel B February 15, 2018 Reply

<>

Wow, that is quite the impressive exegesis of kids plays!
Blubb December 12, 2019 Reply

I'm not sure I can continue reading an article claiming to put things back into historical perspective that starts with calling St Joseph a doofus for not calling ahead from his iPhone 10 to reserve a room for himself and his wife....

Lost for words, here...

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