What’s wrong with this picture? Wikipedia
“Young men would have more of a struggle seeing bad stuff, so what we’ve done with the smartphones that we’ve had, we’ve actually locked out Safari and any Internet search at all, and then we’ve just had basic apps,” Jim Bob.
Recently, Julie Roys posted Jill Duggar Dillard Says Father Jim Bob Treated Her ‘Worse’ Than Pedophile Son. Jill Duggar, one of the older sisters of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, married Derick Dillard. This marriage and the wedding of her sisters, Jessa and Jinger, would eventually launch the sisters’ inevitable backlash against their authoritarian, controlling, Gothard-spouting mom and dad. Jill was not educated beyond homeschooling. However, her husband went to law school and became:
an Assistant District Attorney with the State of Oklahoma, District 27.According to his LinkedIn account, the former TLC personality is a “practicing attorney” and is “licensed in Arkansas and Oklahoma.”
Uh oh!
This eventually led to Jill and Derrick bravely speaking out about what appears to be abusive behavior on the part of her father in her new book Counting the Cost. In the article at the Roys Report, which summarizes some excerpts from the book, she says (and I believe her):
- (ed.: Addressing her parents) “You treat me like I’m a prodigal who’s turned her back on you,” “You treat me worse than you treat my pedophile brother.”
- The Dillards had sent a detailed letter (ed.:to Jill’s parents) describing their frustrations with the control Jim Bob Duggar exercised over their lives.
- Michelle Duggar claimed a recent letter and text message from her daughter, Jill, was “disrespectful.” Jim Bob spoke of being “offended” and demanded an apology, standing up in the meeting as a “sign of aggression”
Apparently, her parents, seemingly displeased, released a statement that should go down in history as one of the most brain-dead statements by two people who sold their family and soul to the media.
In a statement to media, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar said: “We love all of our children very much. As with any family, few things are more painful than conflicts or problems among those you love. We do not believe the best way to resolve conflicts, facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation, or to communicate through difficulties is through the media or in a public forum so we will not comment.”
In addressing the conduct of her brother, Josh, who is thankfully imprisoned for his participation in viewing child sex abuse ( child porn), she said:
Dillard also spoke of her “anger” towards her brother Josh, who abused her and her sisters, as well as towards local government officials, who allegedly disclosed details of that abuse to the press.
It looks like Mom and Dad Duggar will have to watch Jill become a warrior against abuse.
We are still going to fight for victims’ rights through Derick’s line of work,” she said,
Importantly, she expressed concern for her many siblings.
We really wanted to tell our story for my siblings, because some of them are going to face similar challenges, if they haven’t already, to what I’ve faced.”
A Jurassic Park-type containment field will never work for humans. It didn’t even work for the dinosaurs.
Dee is banging her head on the kitchen table. Years ago, she gave a talk based on the original Jurassic Park book. Let’s start with Chaos Theory, which was mentioned in the book. Notice I highlighted “brain states.”
Chaos is the science of surprises, of the nonlinear and the unpredictable. It teaches us to expect the unexpected. While most traditional science deals with supposedly predictable phenomena like gravity, electricity, or chemical reactions, Chaos Theory deals with nonlinear things that are effectively impossible to predict or control, like turbulence, weather, the stock market, our brain states, and so on.
This is implied and defined as the Butterly Effect.
The Butterfly Effect: This effect grants the power to cause a hurricane in China to a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico. It may take a very long time, but the connection is real. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened.
In Jurassic Park, the park attendants reportedly were supposed to keep people safe from the obviously unpredictable dinosaurs. They employed every invention known to mankind to keep those dinos contained. Still, the dinosaurs got out due to various predictable (humans are fallible) and unpredictable events, and many screenwriters, producers, and directors made a bundle of the series of movies.
What does Jurassic Park have to do with the Duggars?
I had a pastor who often discussed how people want to control life, especially Christians. Every individual develops a playbook with a bunch of rules that they can keep. They then believe they are being good Christians because they follow those rules. However, they have cooked the books. They picked the rules they liked the most and ignored all the rest. For example, a man with controlling, abusive behavior (there is a reason I chose these sins) might pick Gothard’s “immediate obedience” for his children and then say that men should keep their hair short(something he prefers.) He institutes harsh penalties for the three-year-old child who will not comply. He is proud of teaching his three-year-old how to model ‘Christian’ obedience. In the meantime, he is a controlling bully to his family and those he works with. His children grow up controlled on the outside but are quietly seething inside. His rule book says he’s fine, but he made the rules. In reality, he’s a failure.
He forgot that sin is always present.
Let me throw in another problem for the authoritarian bully. He can never fully control his children. What did Luther say?
Simul justus et peccator
This means at once justified and still a sinner. That means no matter how hard one tries to control behavior, it doesn’t work. Dad is a sinner and doesn’t see his very real problems. He also misunderstands that he cannot stop sin by merely spouting an outward expression of behavior. In the meantime, things are going on inside the kids, and they are not able to discuss this with their parents since their feelings and concerns might seem threatening to Mom and Dad’s belief that all is well.
Josh is the shining example of this failed uber control on the part of the parents. They would tell the kids to hide their eyes if a woman walked by, presumably dressed in today’s manner of dressing. They were not allowed to swim publically, and the girls were required, around their brothers, to wear ridiculous bathing suits reminiscent of a bygone era. Remember, girls were supposed to help a man not to lust.
It didn’t work. Josh molested a few of his sisters and went on to be convicted of using internet material of children who were sexually abused on camera for the pleasure of men like Josh. See the quote from Jim Bob at the top of this post. This was said before Josh was exposed. Jim Bob felt that if he put apps on the phones, his kids wouldn’t see such stuff. His son saw the worst of the worst. He looked good on the outside, and he was deeply disturbed inside.
The parents believe he is innocent. They have to do so to hold onto their rulebook. They enforced the right rules so Josh can’t be guilty. Mom and Dad couldn’t (or is that wouldn’t)imagine they had a budding pedophile in their midst.
Kids grow up.
I began covering the Duggars when I started this blogging in 2009. I found their family life, as exhibited in the media, strangely disturbing. Jim Bob came across as a bully. Michelle was harder to figure out. Was she a victim of a controlling bully, or was she an authoritarian herself? As time has progressed, I am inclined to believe that Jim Bon and Michelle may both be controllers, but I am open to differing points of view on this one. I am firm in my opinion of Jim Bob.
It was a photo that caused me to worry about the children. I cannot reproduce it because it belongs to AP, but here is the link.
It was all too controlled and perfect, and I began to aggressively follow the family with the assumption that something would happen, and it did. I still remember a man who wrote me and asked, “Why are you so negative about how the girls dress and wear their hair? They seem to be nice girls being raised well.” I said that a group of children raised to develop their talents and gifts don’t each act and look the same without pushback. I believed there was something wrong with this family.
As time passed, I learned that the Duggar home had two kitchens, with the one on TV always looking pristine. The real kitchen was a mess like it would be in a home with 19 kids. If a child acted up, the scene was reshot when they were brought back under control and the segment refilmed. They presented a false image to the world who wanted to see a ‘perfect’ family.
They attempted to control their kids and the media. They may finally come to the realization they can’t control anyone. They will be revealed to the world of employing controlling and (IMHO) abusive behavior, which will come back to bite them in the nose, especially as they keep implying that Josh “didn’t do it.”
Jill grew up, and the gig is up for Jim Bob, and Michelle.
Jill grew up and married a man who supports her as she speaks out. So, let’s begin our own 19 and ‘counting on’ who in the Duggars are speaking their truth or who are presently in prison. I predict that there will be many more children added to this list.
That’s 21%. I wonder how long before it gets to 50%? Keep me posted as you hear about the others. Jill hinted that there may be more in the future.
Final impression:
It is my belief that Jim Bob Duggar is a controlling, authoritarian, money-obsessed, and somewhat abusive man who used his brood of kids for his own financial benefit and wouldn’t see his own sin. He also forgot that his kids would grow up and would use media just as effectively or even more so than he does. He is discovering that he is losing control. I am not sure about Michelle. She clearly placed her husband’s wishes over those of the kids, which is disturbing. Is she just as controlled as the kids, or is she Jim Bob in a dress?
While everyone is free to make their own decision on the number of kids they want, the Duggars look like a couple that went out of their way to break a record and keep the money rolling in.
It is pretty hard work to raise 2 or 3 at times, and with the claims of the job and of the need to organise your everyday life, it can happen that you don’t even realise one kid has problems or is really unhappy for quite a while. It took us longer to realise our daughter was bullied at school in 7th grade than it should have taken us.
If you have a dozen kids, how can you do justice to all ofthem in terms of time and attention, llshowing them love and affection? You can’t. Even less so, if half of your everyday life is a more or less scripted show, with intrusive cameras and TV people everywhere.
And what kind of parent would subject their kid to living even their private moments before an audience of millions? I think that reality shows like the Duggars’?
It’s a form of child abuse (and, if Michelle D. ever had a moment’s doubt about the whole thing, of spousal abuse). But I guess the easy money and the fame were too good.
If it’s too good to be true, it usually is neither. Don’t sell your soul (and those of your children) for your 15 minutes of fame.
“Clever girl”
– I thought media companies were supposed to be rivals.
– Has any Duggar ever done a stroke of work? Everybody else is going backwards working their fingers to the bone.
– Do Santorum, and Huckabee, and pro life movements, really like these kinds of associations (without the letter slipped into the book)? A bona fide public operator would run a mile from a manicured manoeuvred media show surely.
– The Duggars have no Holy Spirit so they are colossally propagating disbelief in Christ internationally: obvious without the letter slipped in the book.
1 . “We do not believe the best way to resolve conflicts, facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation, or to communicate through difficulties is through the media” which is why they created their TV franchise!
2 . Any Duggar that has broken ranks should get their surname changed to “New Duggar”! I didn’t intend to put them into my firing line.
3 . Dominionism is legalism and dispensationism combined. Dispensationism was a pretend reaction against legalism. Kingdumb Now!
I’m not very familiar with the Duggars or IBLP, but I don’t think they were a complete aberration. From what I can tell, they were a distillation of some of the more unsavory elements already present in conservative American evangelicalism. For example, parenting philosophy. Yes, this level of parental control was extreme (and the commercialization of the family’s life would have had something to do with it). But James Dobson sold mainstream evangelical parents the same crap, just without the matching denim skirts. It was all about getting “obedient” behavior, on the assumption that this trained kids to obey God. I don’t know if there’s much difference in the underlying philosophy, even if the external trappings differ.
The importance of appearance over substance is not limited to ‘reality TV’. It’s pervasive in other, and much more consequential, areas, for example as discussed here:
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/too-much-of-not-a-lot
Another similarity is that it seems that we are losing the ability to convey wisdom from one generation to the next (though in the specific case of the OP story, this has an upside inasmuch as IBLP ‘wisdom’ is IMO best not propagated into the future).
“It is my belief that Jim Bob Duggar is a controlling, authoritarian, money-obsessed, and somewhat abusive man who used his brood of kids for his own financial benefit”
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world [wealth, fame, success], but forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26 AMP)
And that ought to scare Jim Bob to death!
I binged Jill’s book on Audible and I would recommend it to everyone. She and her ghost writer (who is credited) did a fantastic job going through her thought process as she began to get out from under the control of her father. I think she really captures the internal struggle of what it feels like to change one’s mind after growing up in an authoritarian cult. For example, she devotes a couple pages to whether or not she should wear pants! You’d think that’s boring, but it actually is a succinct snapshot into a person’s mind as they get free.
Also, in contrast to Jinger’s book (Jinger is now at MacArthur’s church), Jill seems to be more comfortable with ambiguity, and she is not making bold statements about how now she’s got everything figured out and believes the true gospel.
Jill is still a Christian, but it seems like years of therapy is really benefiting her.
Jill still seems like in many ways she is in the middle of her journey, but she seems to know she hasn’t arrived anywhere yet even if she has sorted some things out with her family.
Like that sexual predator in early Furry Fandom who kept Virtue-Signalling with anti-smoking.
The more you push the Dark Side down, the more it will pop up like Whack-a-Mole.
Popping up in ever Darker and ever more Extreme forms and disguises.
To me, that Rabbi from Nazareth was pointing out “He who dies with the most toys is still DEAD.”
The first time I heard Michelle’s voice (on some video clip), I was poleaxed:
MICHELLE’S VOICE (AND SPEECH PATTERNS) SOUNDED LIKE A SIX-YEAR-OLD CHILD.
I’M TALKING SHIRLEY TEMPLE IN A 1930s MOVIE;
LIKE ANY SECOND NOW, SHE WAS GOING TO BREAK INTO A CHORUS OF “THE GOOD SHIP LOLLYPOP”.
My next reaction was “looks like Josh ain’t the only pedo in the family – Like Father, Like Son.”
Has anyone else noticed this?
The Total Conformity.
Eerie, Indiana played that for creeps and cringe (the disturbing creepiness of total unrelieved Normality), but this is For Real.
No, the Perfect CHRISTIAN Family.
ONLY a Dozen?
Like APOSTATE FALSE CHRISTIANS!!!!!
A wannabe REALITY SHOW CELEBRITY, of course.
“I’m gonna be,
I’m gonna be,
I’M GONNA BE FAMOUS!!!!!”
— Total Drama Island (reality show parody), Cartoon Network, opening theme song
And don’t forget CHRISTIAN Witness!
Actually, do-it-yourself Reality Shows are also a BIG problem on Social Media like Instagram and TikTok. Mothers forcing their children doing Munchausen-by-Proxy stuff to them on-camera. For the Clicks and Influencer Clout – “LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE!”
“I’m gonna be,
I’m gonna be,
I’M GONNA BE FAMOUS!!!!!”
I have. It also drives my husband nuts. He claims she is faking it.
You can hear it at the following link (at 2:40): “Josh has done a very bad thing.” IMO, Michelle’s voice is a “put on” (as my Dad used to say)
The video also goes into detail about Bill Gothard’s influence on Jim Bob. I shudder to think how many more children are having to endure Gothard’s teaching … for a young girl it must be hell. Gothard’s “Institute in Basic Life Principles” (IBLP) is cultish, IMO. The never-married Gothard obviously failed basic life principles with allegations from 30+ women of sexual harassment and molestation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3ga6G5Pwr4
Parenting is hard and requires your constant time and attention. The Duggar’s chose the “easy” route by completely isolating from the outside world. This left them living in a bubble that shields you from getting objective advice and support which helps to avoid going off the cliff. If your model for living is wrong/misguided (nobody gets everything right), it can have a negative impact on you family especially if you reject any outside influence. In the Duggar’s minds this is a “safe” and easier path to follow versus having to do the difficult work of properly having a balance between being in the world and still embracing your faith. Unfortunately, this path has had and will continue to have a devastating impact on their family. While this involves a very public conservative Christian family, I believe similar things are occurring in our broader secular society, yet the more secular lifestyle is celebrated and condoned despite its equally destructive outcomes. You have secular or even nominally Christian parents who are also choosing this “easy” path that ends up having a devastating impact on their kids and family. This lifestyle is often just as insular as the Duggar’s world. You outsource all education and discussion of values/morals to schools and the media which push a narrow ideological viewpoint that is very antagonistic towards faith and family. Kids are entertained by their electronic devices which often exposes them to all kinds of online predatory influencers that have the same narrow ideological viewpoint. Many public and even private schools are pushing these dangerous and predatory ideologies that are entrapping many kids. We all know there is something wrong with the Duggar’ approach and they are being called out by people on both the right and the left. However, on the opposite side of the spectrum, there is a full court press to vilify anyone who challenges the predatory abuse that is being pushed on kids. For instance, California has passed a law that targets parents who question or challenge their kids transitioning to the opposite sex. I’m all for calling out the Duggar’s and Gothard and exposing them for what the are. Unfortunately, I think a bigger threat is lurking in our public schools and online. Parents cannot take the easy way out on either side of this issue. You have to actively balance how you build into your kids in Godly, healthy and constructive ways that do not isolate but build courage and character to help kids to make wise and Godly decisions that are not based on some legalistic and rigid view of right and wrong.
Exactly. It’s up to “You”, as a Christian, to teach your children how they should go. It’s up to “You” to teach them right and wrong from a Biblical perspective, not how the culture frames it. It’s a risky game to farm your children out to church, school or nation. God gave them to “You.”
We just got ourselves a new bully pastor. Having listened to him for a while now, it appears to me the underlying logic of these guys is as follows:
1. Original sin was in essence the claiming of personal agency.
2. Any personal agency on our part now is a concession to, and indulgence of, the sinful nature.
3. Holiness, sanctification, and growth in Christ are primarily replacing personal agency with submission.
4. We should welcome and desire more and more opportunities to submit to the God-appointed authorities in our lives.
5. While we must never obey the command of an authority to sin, because that would entail a lack of submission to the highest Authority, we should delight especially in submission to the most unpleasant, foolish, and even destructive commands because these offer opportunities for the richest and fullest submission and, thus, greater holiness. After all, is it really submission when obedience leads to the same action our personal agency would have chosen?
There. I said it.
Congratulations. There’s been an outbreak of those recently.
The church gets in a royal mess when it substitutes the authority of mere men for the ultimate authority in Christ … that would be called illegitimate authority. Unfortunately, the authority and influence of Jesus are waning in the American church, theodude bullies have taken over, and the people of God love it so (apparently).
Damn. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard it put quite that way, but it rings sadly true. Especially if you happen to have two X chromosomes.
Remembering all the ways I was taught this idea when I was young, it makes more sense why I needed a couple years of therapy as an adult!
there is no such law in the state of California. Good or bad, minor children are still property of their parents.
Ive always thought that there was great hypocrisy that the Duggars homeschooled to rid their children of the worlds influence…..then shoved them all in front of a camera.
In the world and of the world.
Longhorn Fan,
You are wrongly informed. The information has been twisted and misrepresented on social media, per usual.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/fact-focus-critics-twist-california-bill-weigh-gender-103133844
Abigail,
It obviously didn’t work. And never will.
The next move was Jim Bob blaming his daughters for exposing the truth.
The man makes me nauseous.
I know this is weird, but I have wondered what poor ole Jim Bob would have done if Michelle had died in childbirth with child #, say, 15 or 16???
Doug Jimbobber,
Sounds to me like it’s time for you to haul it out of that church, fast.
There is a quote from Charles De Gaulle:
“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
Replaced her with a new one and resumed filling his quiver.
Start a Go Fund Me campaign, probably.
(Side bar and PSA for all women considering leaving the workforce to become stay-at-home-moms: get life and disability insurance while you still have an income, particularly if your spouse is either not insured or under-insured. Because you can’t get disability insurance once you no longer have an income [since full-time caregiving is apparently not a “real” job], and life insurance is based off your husband’s, which may or may not reflect how much it will take him to hire people to replace your work.)
In all seriousness, though, the older Duggar children/daughters were probably already acting like second (and third and fourth) moms to the younger children. So they probably would have been the ones to continue with that burden, not Jim Bob.
That analogy has never made much sense to me. There are only so many arrows one can fit in a quiver before it becomes too cumbersome to do its job.
No, these are not different. This is the identical same thing itself. They only need take one way out of both.
– with the assistance of that world, inspired by very Jimbobbism (I know where he got that name from) so that he can use for his convenience.
This has spiritual roots in my time.
Domininism (pure Spinoza via Montini), dispensationism (pure Hegel), no Holy Spirit belief which means no Jesus or Father (the evangelical C of E says so), no supplication, no assurance, solely influencing (via J Stott), no thirst for providence, no acknowledging of contingency (by discrediting Kant and Gould), no meaning, no honest language, no reason, no asking for prayer, no teaching because outsource to Graham and Zacharias.
Does that remind you of the religion the AG of Alabama wants to sell to his voters?
Only a genuine sovereign and actually personal God wouldn’t be controlling like Jinger’s church.
How many of your pastors taught you to repent by proxy for the wrongs of your forebears and betters? Dan 9: 3-21
Doug Jimbobber,
This is an excellent insight. We’ll parsed too. Going to save it for future discussions with my Calvinistic, 9marks friends. Because no way in a million years would my personal morally inspired choices ever lead me actions like denying gifted women platforms to lead and edify others, pushing membership covenants, or disfellowshipping young people who have already left the church. Submission to that kind of “wisdom” would never be wise.
Doug Jimbobber,
Astute analysis. I hope you know what was always the main part of he meaning of Gen 3 (the rest is that the war of the sexes is false). God inspired the ancients to turn it into a just so story so we could come along and catch the authorities lying to weaponise it against those weaker than themselves.
ONLY by agency plus Holy Spirit will enable us to intercede for them not to perish for their trading in our souls.
St Paul wasn’t inventing “original sin”, he was alluding to conceptual methods of discourse familiar to Romano-Graecian Jewry in his day. Materialist dullards following Plotinus further entrenched it as non metaphor.
Your pastor doesn’t want you to be humans just like his pretend enemies.
This reminds me of the people who claim to undermine the fundamentalists (but are reinforcing them) by staying on the ground they have chosen by misusing genuine concerns.
The mere fact of having nineteen children should be cause for a safeguarding and psychiatric assessment of the parents for all the reasons mentioned above to which I would add:
1. Depending where you live the effect of having that many children may be to bias election results to your views.
2. The people who have that many children always, always want to maintain their own gene pool really and there will be racial/eugenics reasons in there somewhere.
All the reasons given in the comments are why any movement that aims to ban both safe termination and also contraception should be treated as very suspicious. The effects of these huge families should be considered the real motivation for doing this.
The *one* reason I can think of for dressing everyone alike would be if they were out in public and one of the kids got lost. Then someone can say, “They have brown hair, brown eyes, and they’re wearing exactly what we’re wearing. (My husband, son, and I did this when we were traveling out West a few years ago.)
But that said, it was the scandals in the Duggar family, along with the scandals of other “Christian celebrities” that made me say, “I’m done” with evangelical Christian culture. There is Christian music I listen to, and I do read Christian fiction, but I do it with, I hope, a more critical eye than I have before.
We Christians say we’re “in the world, but not of it”, and then we turn around and act exactly like the world does. Sometimes Christians deserve every bit of criticism they get.
That analogy has never made much sense to me. There are only so many arrows one can fit in a quiver before it becomes too cumbersome to do its job.
Sarah (aka Wild Honey),
Yes.
Really, if it had not been for income through the tv programs, how would they provided basic needs for that many children??? Clothing, food, healthcare…..
… be “Of the World but Not In It”.
(immersed in Christian Counterfeits of everything in and of the world)
Think Jeff Bezos, except with children/dynasty instead of money.
Love and wisdom are in short supply in the New Calvinist movement.
Jim Bob is PATERFAMILIAS MAXIMUS of Gens Duggar, and the one in Power is NEVER the one to actually do the work.
And if they shun and excommunicate you, count it all joy!
Lots of “copy-cat” families out there sadly . . . I remember one such family of many children, all with names starting with the same letter, all playing the fiddle and doing Irish-styled dancing . . .
they played and sang for my parent’s assisted-living facility long ago. . . .
I mercifully forget their name.
One wonders who came up with this template originally for making-money? Was there any real ‘belief’ and was it Gothard-worship also?
long, wavy, hair . . . .
I hope the law keeps that perverted son in prison until his youngest is old enough to speak out of abuses because that family didn’t just ‘look the other way’, no . . . it was much, much worse than that indeed
may God have mercy on the innocent among us who live in the cults of male-worshipping patriarchy . . . at some point there will be an end to bully-worship among the 70 % of these pathetic creatures or there will be a hell-on-Earth – ’24 is coming at us
Doug Jimbobber,
Now that was a mouthful. Well thought out, btw.
Longhorn Fan,
Lots of interesting ideas, especially the one that says certain Christian families isolate themselves, but it can also be true for secular families.
John Berry,
John, first of all you don’t know the motives of why people have large families, ( BTW what constitutes a large family in your view? ). I grew up with several large families in my neighborhood in the 60’s and 70’s and almost all of them were normal. A lot of them were fun to hang out with. They had all the family issues that we smaller families had. Please don’t think that every large family are like the Duggars. A real bigoted view from your perspectives concerning the gene pool allegation, I guess those large Hispanic families must get on your nerves . Really you use the term always? I don’t comment here much but one I couldn’t let go.
Michael in UK,
“Domininism (pure Spinoza via Montini), dispensationism (pure Hegel), no Holy Spirit belief which means no Jesus or Father (the evangelical C of E says so), no supplication, no assurance, solely influencing (via J Stott), no thirst for providence, no acknowledging of contingency (by discrediting Kant and Gould), no meaning, no honest language, no reason, no asking for prayer, no teaching because outsource to Graham and Zacharias.”
Well, we were all thinking that so I guess it had to be said.
Doug Jimbobber,
Wow. Try to fire this guy.
Unfortunately, many of these guys (I’m reluctant to call them pastors) fireproof themselves by putting in place hand-picked yes-men elders. Couple this with doing away with congregational governance by installing elder-rule polity (the NeoCal playbook), and you can’t touch them.
Charles Gordon,
Humans have understood the principles of artificial selection since prehistory.
I can’t see anyone having and caring for a large family with that objective in mind. Housing, feeding and clothing multiple children to make sure Uncle Joe gets re-elected to city council is an over the top quiverfull goal.
My grandmother was one of eight surviving children (out of 13 births), and she mostly raised her youngest sister, who was 12 years younger, mostly herself.
This grandaunt loved her elder sister like a mother all of her life.
Samuel Conner,
In fact the YT channel Mentour Pilot contains many well explained profound lessons for churches, religion and “Business Modelling” (including secular).
Following the Tenerife disaster documentary on that channel with that about Milan Malpenso 20 years later, drained the blood from my head.
I know a man from Milan who ran our movement like that.
I remember watching the Willis family, who were more modern, but the Dad was a total control freak. They tripped my radar, and unfortunately tuns out the Dad was abusing several daughters.
Actually, Dispy was an attempt to reconcile ambiguities in books of the Bible by crushing them all into One Perfect Theological System. One True Way reconciling EVERYTHING, no matter how convoluted it has to get
Square Peg, Round Hole, Sledgehammer:
‘YOU’LL FIT!”
SMASH!
“YOU’LL FIT!”
SMASH!
YOU’LL FIT!”
P.S. Dispy is credited to one John Nelson Darby of the early- to mid-19th Century, along with founding the Plymouth Brethren and other Plain Readings of SCRIPTURE like Rapture Eschatology. I have hands-on experience with the last-mentioned, and the damage is still there. Even the Manchineel bears sweeter fruit.
In one of my Freelance Traveller articles, I described selective breeding as “Low-Tech Genetic Engineering”.
Darwin’s breakthrough was proposing a working mechanism for “natural selection” to determine which random mutations would be selected. His context was relative reproductive success over time.
Doesn’t matter.
The Trans Card is now in play, and all the neurons above the Christianese brainstem have shut down. Cue the Two Minutes Hate automatic response.
You know there was another large homeschooling family who all dressed alike in public?
The Turpin Family – you know, that high-profile child abuse/neglect case in my part of the country some 4-5 years ago? Father with the Prince Valiant haircut?-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpin_case