From SM Davis' message entitled Nothing Shall Offend Them:
A key verse every Christian should engraft into his life is Psalm 119:165: “Great peace have they which love thy law, and nothing shall offend them.”
The Bible and human life are full of stories of people who became offended or took up someone else’s offense. True to the meaning of the word “offense,” which is “stumbling block,” those who become offended often stumble and fall or cause others to do so.
[ . . ]
For many years this was Dr. Davis’ most well known and requested message. Some consider it his most humorous message. Here you will learn the key principles necessary for Christians to live in harmony with one another.
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Let me paint the picture for you about
how I learned about Gothard and forgiveness to put thingsinto
perspective. I'd just moved half way across the country and started
attending what I thought was a healthy evangelical church. I would
learn after I left that they were part of the Shepherding
Discipleship Movement which taught that church leaders should
micromanage church members's lives by focusing on submission
and authority. (Of course, no one tells you this when you start
attending. I thought that they were just a nice, non-denominational
church, having no clue that they were started by Christian
Growth International and that they loved Bill Gothard.) Read
more about these groups and their beliefs by investigating the
embedded links.
We started going to a mid week Bible
study group, and the husband and wife who hosted it seemed to really
like us socially. They invited us to go with them to a
conference/seminar
held in the evenings for the first part of the week, and then on a
Friday and Saturday all day. If we had not seen it as a social
opportunity as well as something related to the Bible study group, I
don't think we would have gone, but we were new there and had no
friends. Though we were new at our jobs, we each arranged to get off
of work so that we could attend. I'd never heard of the speaker,
Bill Gothard,
but this elder that we really liked sought us out and asked us to go.
They offered to carpool with us which made it into a more social
event, our primary interest in the effort to go. They told us on
Thursday night as an afterthought that they were not attending on the
all-day sessions on Friday and Saturday, so we'd have to drive by
ourselves. By then, we we felt committed, especially after arranging
time off, so we finished out the week, if only to get our money's
worth. And I must say that the couple's acceptance of the doctrines
also greased the wheels for us to find the ideas taught in the
seminar more acceptable.
(I would learn later that they were
only grooming us for leadership in the cult. The church very quietly
required informally that all people involved in leadership attend the
week long conference. Those who wanted to advance further would do
well to attend other conferences that Gothard offered.)
I've talked frankly in a previous post about the way that
the seminar promotes overriding of critical thinking, if only because
the sessions get long after a hard day's work, night after night. If
you were not yet questioning all of Gothard's novel, seemingly benign
interpretation of Scripture on Monday night, by Friday, you were
zoning out and challenged very little. By the end of the week, I'd
accepted many of Gothard's oversimplified lists about how to get
along with others in life and how the Christian life most
effectively. We were provided with a textbook (which I now call “Big
Red”) and a workbook for the many notes attendants were
expected to take. Even looking at them the next day, the materials
didn't seem non-Scriptural, so the errors
slipped right in under my “blatant error radar,” enhanced by the
fatigue of information overload. (If you're unfamiliar with how
Gothard's system works and how the conferences work against smart and
earnest people to override their critical thinking, please refer
to this post. Also consider taking a look a this
series of posts on surviving conferences.)
Before telling you about the details of
my single adventure in practicing repentance Gothard's way, let me explain what he tells you to do. In short, you give up your personal rights, you grovel, you repent to your offenders for having become offended, and you should consider giving the person you offended or the person who offended you a gift when you ask them for their forgiveness. It's spiritual advancement through masochism, self-deprecation, and self-sabbotage!
If you're familiar with the
Star Trek
franchise, Gothard's system seems like the exact opposite of the
Klingon way of
advancement through killing your superior to gain his position
(depicted well in this
episode). In Gothard's system, you advance by destroying your
own personality and autonomy. It's actually strikingly similar to
the Borg
collective. But I digress.
Gothard on Submission as a Panacea
He presents his material as a set of
moral imperatives that are tantamount to Scripture, as though they
are a shortcut for the smarter Christian to use in order to
circumvent hardship. (And who doesn't want to be a smarter, more
dutiful Christian?) In short, he gives the impression that he has
secret keys of wisdom that make interpersonal conflict a simple
matter, taking the sting out of the discomfort out of complex
relationships. Quite frankly, he “solves” interpersonal conflict
by outlawing conflict and denying it “for
the sake of the body of Christ” by requiring Christians to
assign their critical thinking over to the system and to its
leadership. The struggle in life becomes something less of an
interpersonal struggle and more of a personal one by transmuting
problems into issues of failure to submit to hierarchy and follow his
rules. (You no longer find yourself struggling against other
fallible people, you struggle against yourself.) All problems are
believed to stem from a failure to be sufficiently humble and
submissive, and if the system doesn't work, it becomes proof that the
follower hasn't performed well enough.
Gothard's
Novel Imperatives About Forgiveness
As mentioned in this previous
post, Gothard turns the experience of becoming offended into a
grave sin by eliminating personal rights, essentially by following
what Dr.
David Stoop describes as a Path
of Denial. When offenses eventually occur, Gothard teaches that
his magical strategies will resolve this sinful conflict. He
advances this through his doctrine of “surrendering
rights to God,” and of course, this means surrendering your
rights, autonomy, and critical thinking over to your earthly
authority, particularly the authorities in you church.
If you have no real rights and can't pursue them, you cannot really have much interpersonal conflict.
Of course, conflict happens because the follower fails to practice Gothard's oversimplified checklist items sufficiently, preventing them from becoming God's conduit for some kind of spiritual, irresistible magic. But fear not if you experience conflict because of your failure to honor God by following his lists of plans and strategies for each problem in life! He offers a few ways to get around conflict once it happens when you cast your responsibility to God aside by messing up. There may be more than two strategies under this larger heading, but I recall two notable ones.
Strategy #1: Evangelism Through Asking
Forgiveness by “Healing” the Offended.
(I call it “Evangelism through
Sadomasochism.”) In this series of posts about forgiveness at
UnderMuchGrace.com, we've explored ideas that can help us become more
trustworthy so as to facilitate trust, creating a safe place where
wounded people can feel safe to be vulnerable and heal. The posts
have stressed that you cannot change others, so you must be brutally
honest and take responsibility to change those things within your
sphere of control.
What Gothard teaches differs
profoundly. He actually says that by following his moral
imperatives, no one can resist the positive effects of his strategy
(which he bills as God's perfect wisdom). When you read his “Big
Red” textbook, in the “Rights” section, he suggests that by
being obvious in the way that you live, you become a stumbling block
for others which provides an opportunity to fix people through your
holy actions. “Stirring the pot” and then groveling becomes
one's most potent evangelistic tool. When others see you grovel in
submission and self-castigation, people will fall all over themselves
to not only help you advance spiritually through suffering, but they
will become Christian converts. What he promotes goes far beyond
forgiveness and becomes a type of manipulation.
My edition of Gothard's
Big Red Book (not
necessarily to be confused with Mao's
Little Red one) says
(empahsis mine):
Forgiveness is having a greater concern for person after he offends me than I did before he offended me. It is using the hurts of others as the basis of demonstrating Christ's love back to them. (Pg 80).When God allows someone to offend us, He is entrusting to us the responsibility of demonstrating Christ's love and presence to him. Who can stand in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ for very long and remain the same person? (Pg 89)
Shazam and Poof! Stirring up conflict
becomes a means of evangelizing the lost, ignorant, and less
spiritual! If the evil atheists or lesser Christians you encounter
don't convert to Gothardism, then you did something wrong. You
didn't follow the steps and you must have been haughty. God opposes
the proud, but if you grovel in humility, God rewards you with grace
points which make you a more powerful Christian.
I also find it interesting that Gothard
couches things in terms of “asking
for forgiveness” as opposed to repenting and seeking to restore
others. It's a self-serving process that edifies self, not one that
focuses on ministry. He also mentions “clearing one's conscience”
frequently as though asking forgiveness should be governed more by
the offender and the list of steps to achieve forgiveness as opposed
to tactfully responding dynamically to the needs of the offended
person.
Please take another look at these quotes
from the Big Red Book. Forgiveness is about “having more concern
for people”? That isn't what forgiveness is, although empathy is
certainly a desirable element of it. It is also not a means to an
end to manipulate another into something or a process to be “used.”
Forgiveness is the canceling of a debt, even though the debt is, by
all rights, owed to the offender. It's a process of healing and
restoration with a focus on the offended, not a process that helps the offender earn brownie points with God. Done well, forgiveness does demonstrate Christ's love,
but that after effect is not the primary concern when resolving conflict. In contrast, Gothard
presents forgiveness as a self-serving strategy for advancing
personal agendas and evangelism. (Isn't that what Wicca is all about? Strategies to acquire power?)
(Then there are the followers of
Gothard who claim that you're supposed to ask forgiveness from people
who offended you, but you responded by actually becoming offended.
You're supposed to go to them to confess your sin of failing to
surrender your rights, implicating them without just cause and
creating stress within your relationship with them. But that's
another matter...)
Strategy #2: Investing in the Life of the Offended by Gift Giving.
If you offended someone, when you go to
them to repent, Gothard suggests that you consider “making an
investment” in them by giving them a gift that you find personal
and significant. It should be a gift that causes you a sense of
loss, becoming part of your penance process. It's your attempt to
identify with the loss experienced by the offended person, and it's
supposed to speak about Jesus' gift of life to us. You're supposed
to use the experience to turn it into an evangelistic or teaching
tool.
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| About YWAM! About TOILET POWER! |
Not all that long after this marathon
indoctrination process, I ended up in a conflict with this elder's
wife. I didn't handle it well and lashed out verbally when they both
dumped a bunch of last minute work on me. Again. I failed to
realize that the group, and this couple in particular, were strongly
hierarchical which meant that the elders expected other people to
take up their slack. I couldn't figure out why I'd not been
given reasonable consideration, why this was not seen as improper,
and why people in the church didn't see anything wrong with how I was
being treated. I didn't realize that what was happening was seen as
my duty to serve others.
In this group, if you worked your way
up high enough on the food chain, you'd even get the blessing of
being able to wash an important person's car [Bob
Mumford's, as was the case with this elder in his own past ] or could scrub
their toilets. (A section in Vision Forum's Passionate Housewives, one of many complementarian manuals, includes an example of this Shepherding Discipleship Movement divine right of leaders and the domestic servitude duty of followers.) The privilege of ministering to leaders is exactly like washing the feet of Jesus so you can earn extra grace points. Gothard says that
"serving the vision" of an important person is a way that you
can earn enough humility/grace points to become an important person
yourself. At least, that's how things are understood pragmatically
because of how Gothard redefines
grace.
In remorse, humility, and shame, I knew
that I would have to repent to these folks for lashing out at them,
and I happened to recall attending this course with them. Still not
yet aware of the big picture about the expectations on me to just
absorb whatever treatment I was met with, I pulled out the “five
easy steps guide” to figure out how this new church went about
following the procedure. I even went directly to the pastor and the
assistant pastor and confessed
to both of them about how I'd reacted – not realizing this was a
sign of blurring boundaries and an expected response in the cult. I
referred to this material about the gift giving tactic, too.
Long story short, I gave a gift
along with my apology, and the gift was literally tossed back at me
in anger. (For those who are morbidly curious, I gave her an
old, vintage rhinestone wedding brooch in excellent condition, a precious part
of my small, treasured collection that I'd accumulated over the span
of a decade. I did not want to part with it, but I wanted to follow
the whole process all the way through. And I offered in joyfully
because I wanted to bless her just as much as I wanted to restore
things between us.)
I'd labored and done all that I could to
follow the book, and sought advice from the pastor and assistant
pastor, yet the very people who introduced me to these new helpful
hints (the elder and his wife) didn't even follow them, I thought
afterward. In my mind, by following all the rules, I was honoring
this couple who had invited us to the conference where we learned
these “magic” principles of “enlightenment.” Now that I'm
far away from that group and look back on those events from almost
twenty years ago, the fact that this woman literally threw my gift to
her back at me was actually the healthiest thing that I'd ever seen
her do. Good for her! Probably not remembering this element of the
indoctrination program, she clearly identified it as manipulative,
given the circumstances. I look back on all of it with such regret.
What a mess!
Manipulation 101, Gothard-Style
These are ways of making people feel
obligated to comply with your wishes, ones that Gothard claims to be
directly from Scripture. But we are never called to pressure people
with manipulation, nor are we called to beg people for forgiveness.
Asking for forgiveness or pointing out to others that they must
“forgive or else” can become a means of manipulating others, and
the gift becomes a blatant manipulation tactic. A person may not be
ready to offer forgiveness, but someone acting from a position of
religious legalism can point the finger at others, charging them with
unforgiveness, reminding their offender that God requires us to
forgive one another. Jesus decried this kind of behavior when He saw
it in the Pharisees who reminded the people that they were miserable
by comparison to the piety of the priests.
Scripture speaks about repenting, and
we are encouraged to seek out other friends in our churches to help
us work through disagreements when we cannot do so successfully one
on one in private. We're not supposed to repent through pious
appeasements as David
Augsburger names them (see
previous post) but are called to voice and resolve our offenses.
In contrast, Gothard's tactics are merely measures used to maintain
milieu
control in a closed, high demand group and to intensify shame and
blame to make people more easy to manipulate.
Since those days when I attended that
Gothard seminar, I was encouraged when I read that Augsburger's
opinion about manipulating to solicit forgiveness from others
differed little from my own conclusions. When we focus on asking for
forgiveness instead of repenting and making restitution when it is
possible, we must trust God to do whatever it is he wants to do. We
put the needs of the offended person before our own in order to help
them heal as we take responsibility for our neglect, error, and any
of the harm we have caused. According to Augsburger, we essentially
forfeit our right to ask anything of the offended party because the
offended party gets to call the shots. They may be required to
forgive us, but that process takes time and loving understanding.
Forgiveness is a journey of difficulty without shortcuts, not a
formula laid out in five easy, foolproof steps that guarantee
results.
Trusting God Instead of Man's
Formula
When we ask for things and push the
agenda, we end up with disingenuous results. We don't build a
foundation for true forgiveness, unity, and intimacy. We turn into
legalists who run around with checklists comparing ourselves amongst
ourselves. If things don't work out the way we might hope, we
must look to God to help us as he works in others to bring the
process to its fullness. If we cannot restore what we have caused
others to lose, or if those we have offended do not respond to us, we
must trust the matter to God. Love
doesn't keep score,
and it waits and waits, as long as it takes. Hopefully in time, we
will find favor with them.
True restoration always begins with the
conviction of God on the individual's heart, not with concerns about
how to change others. How others respond to circumstances as well as
the way others respond when we do what God requires of us becomes a
secondary matter that rests in God's hands.
More
to come regarding
the
topic of reconciliation,
then
special issues in forgiveness.
Note:
The above Youth With A Mission photo obtained from their My Space page,
documenting aspects of "Base Life."
The photo is entitled "Who knew scrubbing toilets could be so fun."
http://www.myspace.com/ywamseamill/photos/1636150#{%22ImageId%22%3A1636150}
