After
years of suffering in silence and scorn, many have cause for hope.
Bob Jones University reinstated the Godly Response to Abuse in the
Christian Environment Group to complete their investigation of
unreported assaults. And... Bill
Gothard was placed on administrative leave by the board of his
parachurch organization, the Institute in Basic Life Principles.
These matters have even caught the attention of the secular press
including the New
York Times and the Washington
Post.
It has
been said of critics that people like me are dancing
with glee over these new developments with Gothard in particular,
as somehow it means that there will be no consequences for sinful
activities. (I can't connect any of those dots at all!) I wish to
see the abusers come to justice so that restitution can be made to
the survivors. And in many ways, that is impossible. It would be
nice, however, if places like Sovereign
Grace would at least pay for therapy to help their victims can
recover. It would be something. It is a starting place. – But it
makes me anything but happy. Part of me cringes, half anticipating
that all of these efforts will result in no change at all, despite
all of the work and the public scrutiny that the victims have
suffered in the process. Or it may be change that no one will see
tangibly in quite a long time. That's often how these things work.
Back to
matters concerning Brother Bill...
Recovering
Grace (RG) is an online
organization that helps people work through the challenges that
they face after their involvement with Bill Gothard's teachings. To
date, thirty four women have come to them with reports of Bill
Gothard's sexual misconduct, and this is in addition to his previous
history and similar
reports. At the end of this post, I will post the chart that RG
created to trace his modus operandi with just a few of these young
women, some of whom were still minors when he pursued them. There is
something chilling about seeing this comparison, and I'm grateful to
RG for allowing me to repost it here. For more information about all
of this, visit “The Gothard Files” tab at the top of the RG
website to find more information. The drop-down menu makes it easy
to sort through the history and categories to particular information.
I was excited to notice a special section (“Silencing the Lambs”)
that speaks to the false doctrines that Gothard uses to suppress
criticism. Some of these teachings are miserable and difficult,
mingled with just enough truth and delivered in such a way as to
seduce
a person into accepting them.
Recovery
from Gothard
I only
had a short brush with Gothard's material, and I was blessed to have
very good basic doctrinal training prior to my exposure to it. I had
access to mentors in the faith who could help broaden my perspective.
I knew about spiritual life outside of a heavily controlled system
of conformity. Yet despite all of this, the teachings proved to be
quite toxic for me. It took several years before I was able to sort
through the many skewed ideas that Gothard taught and the church I'd
left still followed. I'd like to think that seventeen years after
leaving that church and the Gothard mentality that I am free of it
all, but it would not surprise me to find some new issue that
triggers the automatic and rehearsed response that was part of this
indoctrination. My church wove his ideas into everything, and I
lived it as much as I could for four years while trying to make it
work.
I
identify with the people who grew up in Gothard's system however. If
you've read here for very long, you likely know that I experienced
many of the same issues as a child. What the legalistic
homeschooling families required of their children for religious
reasons, my parents often required of me for their own personal
reasons, with the exception of corporal punishment. You learn to
bury your own feelings, you follow your authorities, and you do what
your parents want. In the middle of it, you become a universe ofshame and self doubt in a nutshell. I suffered sexual abuse, too,
outside of a religious context, so I can relate to that experience as
well.
Blogging Gothard
In all
of the talk about this new sanction placed on Gothard until his Board
decides what to do, I came across a very well written blog post about
recovery. I identified with it and still struggle with answering
some of the questions the author poses and the challenges that one
faces when you are taught to live in a system of self negation and
shame. It was honest and lovely and painful and sweet and
melancholy.
Micah
Murray's blog post at Redemption Pictures talks about how hard it
is to make sense out of something so pervasive in addition to
discussing the accusations and why he finds them absolutely
believable. When your normal is abnormal, you have no standard of
comparison. All you know is deeply flawed. He starts out early in
the post, noting that people often say, “Don't throw the baby out
with the bathwater.” You're supposed to rescue the good and leave
the bad behind in the rubble as you move on, but no one tells you how
to do this. It's almost like people to tell you to “just get over
it.” I don't even know what that means. If all of your experience
is grounded in trauma, you don't know how to get over anything. You
only know how to exist in the system that hurt you.
No one
tells you how to pick up the pieces of your life. You have no idea
where to begin and how to begin. It is this sense that I felt when I
wrote about how difficult it is to study the Bible after someone
has used it to beat you up. There is such a mix of emotions and good
and bad, and all you want is an easy, black and white way to make
things feel good to you again. Then you realize that there is no
black or white, or that those instances are more rare than common.
Unique people make for much grey.
I loved
how Micah phrased this as well about being raised in Gothard's system
which he calls a cult. I once
likened it to the “splinter in your mind” from The
Matrix film. You know
something's wrong, but you don't have the words or the perspective to
define it.
You know it somewhere in your mind before your mouth will admit it.
We talked about how it was a cult, joking at first. Outsiders could point and accuse and question, but we knew that it wasn’t what it looked like.
His
article is well worth reading. The pictures are quite telling,
too.
Gothard's
Advice Regarding Sexual Abuse
Another
enlightening feature of Micah's post focuses on what Gothard had to
say about how to counsel sexual abuse victims. It's basically a
guide of how not to approach a victim. He says of it that it is “The
very sort of thing you’d expect, in retrospect, from an alleged
sexual predator.”
In
hindsight, he expresses how terribly hard it is to consider that, at
the time, he didn't realize how terrible this advice really was. I
wrote
recently about this and recalled how I felt when I froze several
different times when walking through the different moments of
realization I had when my friend had been locked in the basement. It
never occurred to me that it could be happening at the time that I
took this woman's call or when the pastor downplayed it as trivial.
And I froze, not knowing what to say when I learned that she was
calling from her confinement. What on earth was wrong with me? Like
Micah, I was brainwashed, too. You don't know what to do. You
freeze. You play along. You survive the pressure of the moment.
But thank God that other moments come when you realize that you have
a choice. You don't have to remain frozen indefinitely.
I
agree with him that brainwashing is “a real thing.” It happened
to him. It happened to me. It happens to the young and the old, the
best and the brightest, the simple and the meek. We believe the
promises that are made to us if we can only follow the plan. As
Micah puts it, we end up floundering in a sea of lies, wondering if
there is even any baby or bathwater.
Bravo,
Micah.
And
here is the promised chart
that Recovering Grace put together. Please visit there and read
more. These processes are predictable, just like patterns of
spiritual abuse and brainwashing are predictable. It still amazes
me.
As
Micah notes, “Pray
for us.”
And let us hope that more will be done than repentance for
“defrauding,” loaded code language for enticing someone sexually
without ability or intent to follow through on satisfying that
desire. Recovering Grace has a
post about that, too. Pray that all of the wounded find healing
and that justice can be established. Mercy
comes later.
