What was so “devastating,” said Jeremy, is that “people looked at Bill Gothard’s teachings and bet their lives on it.” Rather than building his teachings on Christ, Gothard built his teachings on “his rules, which we’ll see are unbiblical.”
Jeremy made sure to note that he believes Joseph Duggar, like every person, is responsible for his own choices. “None of this is an excuse to say, ‘Oh, but the theology was poor, therefore someone’s not responsible for their actions,’” said Jeremy. “No…as the Bible teaches, the sword of justice is given to the government to punish evildoers. That’s Romans 13.”
Nevertheless, he added later, “Everybody, but young men specifically, they don’t just come out of a vacuum behaving a certain way. There are contributing factors.”
Citing “Gothard’s life and…the over 30 accounts of accusation brought against him and his brother and others in that teaching,” Jeremy said, “I mean it was, like, rampant abuse.” Given that reality, “you start to go, ‘Ok, something that they’re believing, teaching, living by is producing this, and it’s not good.’”
Jeremy and Jinger proceeded to outline some false beliefs Gothard and IBLP promoted, contrasting those beliefs with what the Bible actually says. One of the main problematic teachings was “a wrong understanding of sin,” said Jeremy, specifically, “thinking that sin is something out there that we need to shield ourselves from.”
There is a “big bad world,” but “if we can isolate ourselves enough, we’ll be safe.” Examples of such isolation are not using the internet, not watching television, not listening to secular music, not dressing like “the world,” and not eating and drinking like “the world.”
“We’re not going to spend time with the world,” Jeremy said. “We are going to separate ourselves.”
Jinger pointed out that after giving people a bunch of rules to follow to stay safe, there had to be “a way to keep them keeping the rules. And the tactic that was used was fear.”
The fear promoted was “fear of God, but it wasn’t a proper fear of God,” she noted, “because there’s an [appropriate] awe and reverence of God, realizing how powerful he is. But it was a different fear.”
“It was one that was looking for ways that God was going to smite you or take you out if you misstepped even for disobeying one of Bill Gothard’s rules that he made,” Jinger said. Gothard even taught that people could be punished for breaking a rule without knowing they had done so.
“Yeah,” said Jeremy. “If you put yourself under a worldly influence, God’s going to punish you by just unleashing hell on you.”
“You could be in a car accident,” Jinger said. “It’s very superstitious.”
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