I don’t remember exactly how many guys asked my dad if they could court me. I know it was at least twenty. It could have been as many as twenty-six. I’ll never forget the week that five young men approached my dad, asking to start a relationship with me. I don’t share that number to brag. It doesn’t say much about my personality, character, or looks because most of these guys didn’t know me. Some had seen me at a conference my family attended. I hadn’t shared more than a passing hello with any of them. I’m guessing a few confused me with one of my sisters. Several had seen the show and decided they wanted to court a Duggar girl. A similar number of guys were interested in each of my sisters.
Thankfully, my dad always asked me and my sisters what we thought. If we didn’t want to court a guy, our dad would go back and let him know there was no interest. I’m not going to lie; it was kind of nice to tell my dad, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and not have to tell the suitors themselves.
Jeremy was the last guy to ask my father if he could court me. He was unlike the previous guys in nearly every way. He didn’t pursue me because I was a Duggar. He wasn’t a fan of the show, and he knew next to nothing about the tight-knit, conservative Christian circles in which I’d grown up. Jeremy and I met at IBLP in Big Sandy, Texas, but he was not there to attend or to meet me. He came to spend time with Ben and Jessa.
When Jeremy showed up at that conference in 2015, he was a former professional athlete who had attended not one but two universities. After college, Jeremy played professional soccer in Finland, New York, and Texas. He had traveled around the world and lived in many places, giving him a background that was vastly different from mine. None of my family was that serious about sports. And none of us considered going to a university—especially not liberal, secular schools like Hartwick College or Syracuse University. On top of all that, Jeremy was from Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia, which felt like a completely different world from Arkansas!
Along with Jeremy’s different background and interests, his theology and convictions were different from mine. While I was a follower of Bill Gothard’s principles, Jeremy was raised by a Reformed Baptist pastor. Some of his views on the Bible, God’s character, and the Christian life didn’t line up with what I had been taught. Those differences initially made my parents hesitant to approve our relationship. Thankfully, Jeremy has a lot of perseverance. He was determined to win over my parents, which he did after five months of almost weekly conversations with my dad.
During those five months, Jeremy watched Bill Gothard’s seminars so he could better understand what I believed. He didn’t know much about Gothard, but Jeremy was a student of the Bible, and he was confident he’d benefit from all that instruction. And if watching the seminars helped him win over my dad, all the better. Jeremy watched more than sixty hours of IBLP content. He started with the Advanced Seminar, which goes deeper into the seven basic principles. Then he went back and listened to the Basic Seminar, which introduces the principles. He also listened to more than twenty hours of the Financial Freedom Seminar. He took pages and pages of notes as he listened.
By the time my parents gave me and Jeremy permission to court, he had a lot to say about Gothard’s teaching. I was eager to talk with Jeremy about his beliefs relating to God, His Word, and salvation. Those sweet conversations with Ben, Jessa, and the Seewalds had helped me understand that a faithful, God-honoring Christian life didn’t have to look exactly like mine. The Seewalds clearly loved the Lord, and I felt the same way about Jeremy. Though his theology was different from mine, his character was obvious. He loved the Lord and was eager to obey Him. I trusted Jeremy, and for the first time, I was ready to hear a different perspective on the Bible.
During our courtship, Jeremy was a pastor in Laredo, Texas, and I was living at home in Arkansas. We talked on the phone all the time. Though having a long-distance relationship was hard, I’m grateful for all those hours of conversation. When you have nothing else to do but talk, you learn a lot about the other person, going in-depth on topics you might otherwise gloss over. That was certainly the case for Jeremy and me.
I was a bit intimidated by Jeremy when we started dating. The first time we really spent time together was on a mission trip in Honduras and El Salvador. Ben and Jessa had pulled some strings to get Jeremy on that trip so he and I could spend some time together and we could see if there was any spark between us. Though Jeremy didn’t know a lot of people on the trip other than me, he not only took an interest in all the team members, he also provided a lot of biblical encouragement and insight to everyone on the team. His natural leadership impressed me.
The mission team would gather in the evenings for Bible study, and the leader would facilitate a discussion, encouraging the group to ask one another questions. Someone would ask for wisdom with a difficult family situation. Another would ask for help with a passage of the Bible they didn’t understand. The topics were wide-ranging. Anyone from the group could offer answers. Whenever Jeremy spoke, I was always impressed by how biblical, wise, and loving his answers were.
By the time Jeremy and I started having those phone conversations six months later, my respect for him had only grown since that trip to Central America.
In one of our first conversations, Jeremy told me he had been listening to Gothard’s seminars and asked me what I thought of his teaching. I don’t remember what I said. But I do remember being eager to hear Jeremy’s opinion on Gothard. So I turned the question back on him. I’ll never forget his response. Jeremy said that Gothard had some good things to say—some helpful insight into life—but Gothard approached the Bible from a philosophical point of view. He was not a Bible teacher. Not a Bible teacher? I thought. That was absurd. Bill Gothard was the premier Bible teacher in the world. Why would Jeremy say he didn’t teach the Bible?
A year or two earlier, when I was helping write Growing Up Duggar and then going on a tour to promote the book, I probably would have ended the conversation as soon as Jeremy said Gothard wasn’t a Bible teacher. At that time, I wouldn’t have been ready to hear someone say something like that. But so much about me had changed during the past twelve months. The Word of God truly had become sweeter to me and also far more powerful and compelling. I was beginning to see the glory and greatness of God for the first time. My understanding of God’s character was slowly evolving.
I was now open to different views on Christianity from the one I’d always known. So when Jeremy said he didn’t think Gothard was a Bible teacher, I was willing to hear more.
During the next several months, Jeremy and I listened to Gothard’s seminars together on video calls. We’d often pause the video and talk about what we’d just heard. The first thing I started to see was that Gothard did not teach the Bible correctly. I began to understand how his teaching was feeding my fears and guilt, not showing me the grace of Jesus.
One of the first times Jeremy and I paused a Gothard lecture to discuss what we were hearing was after Gothard told a story about a woman who lived many years ago. Tragically, she became a widow and childless when her husband and three sons went off to sea and never returned. A pastor stopped to comfort her, but while he was there, he didn’t provide comfort. Instead, he accused her of being the reason her family had died. He pointed to a painting hanging on her wall of a sailing boat and said, “The problem is the picture over the mantel.” He said, “If you didn’t want your boys to go out to sea, you should’ve gotten rid of the picture for the sake of your children.”1
Gothard used this story to argue that you have to be careful about everything, including the art you put up in your home. You may, without realizing it, cause your family to do something destructive because they were inspired by a painting you chose to hang in your home.
When I heard this story while listening with Jeremy, I was horrified. I couldn’t believe that in front of thousands of people, Gothard said this pastor was right to blame the death of those three sons on their mother’s choice of art. The pastor was not kind and compassionate. He didn’t care for this woman and try to comfort her in the midst of unimaginable grief. Instead, he placed an unimaginable burden on this heartbroken woman! She had not only lost her children but was now being told their deaths were her fault. Something she’d thought was innocent—a painting she hung on the wall—was actually murderous. And then Gothard used this pastor’s callous response as an example of the right thing to say to the woman. He commended him for his response and used his words as a warning for the audience.
As Jeremy and I talked about this story, I realized I had been captive to superstition most of my life. It was a major source of my fear. For a long time, I believed that at any moment, God could be displeased with me for some hidden reason. For instance, I was worried that I might hear music that would make God angry. Once I was in the car with some friends who started listening to music that, at the time, I was sure didn’t honor God. I was genuinely scared that I was going to get in trouble with God for even hearing it.
I also fretted about my clothes. I remember one time feeling a lot of guilt because I had worn a skirt that I considered immodest. When I sat down, the skirt did not fully cover my knee. Here’s what I wrote in my journal that night:
The Lord has been convicting me about modesty. A few times I had on a borderline knee-length skirt that would come above the knee when sitting. God brought conviction to my heart in this area. These “small things” are often some of our greatest battles. Especially challenging when others around me, Christians included, aren’t doing what I’ve been convicted of. Not to have a heart of pride thinking I’m better in any way but just walking with a meek, humble attitude toward God and those around me.
A few days after this journal entry, I went shopping for longer skirts. I scoured thrift stores looking for skirts that would drop well below my knee. I wanted to be as modest as I could possibly be.
That was a terrible way to live, and it’s not what God intended. He doesn’t punish us for random nonsinful decisions we make. He is far kinder. He tells us exactly what sinful behavior looks like. Here’s a straightforward command from God’s Word: “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices” (Colossians 3:9).
If God doesn’t tell us in the Bible that something is sinful, then He gives us freedom to decide whether or not we want to do it. For example, since the Bible doesn’t say anything about boat paintings, I’m free to put up such a painting in my house. God isn’t going to punish me for that decision.
Another place in the seminars where Jeremy and I stopped the audio to discuss was after Gothard described a conversation he had with a young girl who had grown up in church but stopped believing in God. Here’s what Gothard said to that girl when she told him she wanted to return to God:
“It would be unfair for me to ask you to become a Christian knowing that Jesus Christ would come into this kind of a mess in your life. Unless I had a way for you to get from wherever you are on this scale [of perversion] back down to freedom by very clear steps back down to genuine love, genuine freedom.”
She looked at me, and she said, “Do you have a way?”
I said, “I sure do!” That’s what the gospel is all about. That’s what the apostle Paul was talking about in Romans chapter 7 and verse 8. Paul said, “Before I saw the holy law of God, I thought I was living a normal life. But then when the law came it slew me, it revealed in me all manner of concupiscence. It promoted in me that” [speaker’s paraphrase] because he saw where he should be and where he couldn’t get, and so it just made him all the more awkward about the concupiscence—sin. “The law revealed all manner of consequences in my life.” And yet the apostle Paul says to us in Romans 6 [vv. 13–14, speaker’s paraphrase], “If you obey from the heart the form of doctrine that I’m gonna give you, then sin shall not have dominion over you. And that we would be able to be perfectly free [if we obey].”2
After describing this girl’s sin and mistakes in detail, Gothard convinced her to ask, “Do you have a way?” In other words, she was asking, “How can I escape my destructive life, be saved from my sin, and become a Christian?” That is the most important question anybody can ask. Because it’s the defining issue of Christianity, few mistakes are more damaging than telling others the wrong answer, misleading them, or lying about how God saves. Sadly, that’s what Gothard did. He said that before this woman could follow Jesus, she had to first clean up her life because Jesus couldn’t “come into this kind of a mess in your life.” In other words, this woman needed to start behaving better. She needed to obey and do good works for a while before God could save her.
Jeremy and I talked about how this is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s the opposite. The Bible is clear that good works can’t save anyone. The book of Isaiah says that our good works—righteous living—are nothing more than filthy rags (64:6). Romans 3:10–11 says, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” If we had to clean up our act and obey for a while before God would save us, then we would never be able to obey enough to earn God’s salvation.
Instead of earning God’s grace by cleaning up our act, the gospel says we simply must believe. Believe what? That Christ saves all who call on His name. Acts 16:31 says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” No one earns salvation by cleaning up their life, as Gothard told that young girl. We come to Christ with all our mess, and Jesus does the cleaning. He transforms sinners who hate God into saints who love Him and are motivated by that love to obey Him.
Since the gospel of grace is the most important message in the world, parents’ most critical job is to explain the gospel to their children. I’m thankful my parents did that. If I or my siblings asked them how to be saved, they would say that our good behavior couldn’t save us. Only Jesus and His finished work on the cross could do that. Even before I became a Christian at the age of fourteen, I remember hearing Mom and Dad talk about the grace of God. One of the great blessings of my childhood is that my parents pointed me to Jesus’ grace when they talked about becoming a Christian. I’m sure that if I had asked Gothard how to get to heaven, he would have talked about the grace of God. He probably would have said that salvation wasn’t something I could earn. But he was often adding works to grace, as he did with that woman. I’m thankful that even though my parents were influenced by Gothard, they didn’t tell me what he told that woman. They didn’t tell me I needed to clean up my life before becoming a Christian.
The stories of the painting and the woman who Gothard told to clean up her life are two examples of moments in Gothard’s seminars that Jeremy and I discussed, but there were dozens more. We spent hours combing through this teaching that had consumed my youth.
As I previously shared, I used to be convinced that I might die if I took Communion while not knowing about a sin. Most Sundays, I wouldn’t take Communion because I was afraid. I would think, What if I have a sin I can’t remember? What if I remember that sin later? Or God knows about it and I never figure it out? If that’s the case, I’ll be judged for taking Communion. The littlest conflicts would lead me to skip the Lord’s Supper. For example, if I needed to apologize to my sister for my attitude, I wouldn’t take Communion. This was pure superstition.
As Jeremy and I listened to Gothard’s recorded sermons, I understood for the first time why I struggled with this overwhelming fear of Communion. During a discussion about the Lord’s Supper, Gothard explained that if we had a secret sin we had yet to express, it would bring physical destruction. It was very important that we thoroughly examine ourselves.3
Of course, Scripture warns believers not to take Communion if they aren’t ready for it. First Corinthians 11:27–30 says,
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
That passage used to terrify me because I didn’t understand that it is not telling believers to stop remembering their Savior through this joyful act; it’s telling Christians to stop using Communion as an excuse to party, get drunk, and divide the church. The apostle Paul warned believers to stop abusing Communion, but he would never tell a sinner to stay away from something designed to remind them of their salvation.
I used to think of Communion as an act of accountability. I thought God gave it to Christians like me to make sure we weren’t sinning too much. But in 1 Corinthians 11:26, just one verse before the warning about those who eat and drink in an unworthy way, the Bible says, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Taking Communion is a reminder to believers and all the world that Christ died, rose again, and is coming back to earth.
Gothard’s wrong view of Communion is another example of how his teaching twisted the Bible and made me believe God is harsh toward His children—a common takeaway from his teaching. I started to think that God was always out to get me, whether that was in Communion or in other areas of life, including activities as ordinary as eating.
After Gothard urged his audience to examine themselves, lest they die, he said this:
The tragedy is we live in a fallen world, and many times we do things in our life that we’re not even aware that we’re getting judged because we’re not searching out the Scriptures.4
This was a terrifying idea for me when I was younger. The idea that God was judging me for mistakes I didn’t even know I was making kept me on edge a lot, wondering if I was accidentally disappointing God. Right after Gothard said this, he applied it to food. He said that a lot of people eat food that God doesn’t approve of, and they don’t know it. The example he used is bread: I’m supposed to eat just the right amount of fiber in my bread. If I don’t, God is going to judge me for it. Ideas like that filled me with uncertainty.
I now see Gothard’s teaching on Communion and food as examples of his superstitious Christianity. Believers who followed Gothard’s teaching not only needed to wonder if the paintings they hung would cause them harm but also needed to be paranoid that there was some secret spiritual harm lurking in the food they ate. I used to worry that all kinds of food could be spiritually harmful to me. I was hesitant to eat foods like pork, shrimp, clams, oysters, crabs, and lobster. Anything Leviticus deemed unclean. In one of his seminars, Gothard pointed to Luke 8:33, where Jesus cast demons out of a man and they went into a herd of pigs, to make a point that pigs have an unclean spirit and are not supposed to be consumed by men.5 Consequently, when I was a kid, I thought I would be disobeying God if I ate pork.
I didn’t realize at the time how much of a burden it was to worry about the bread I ate and the pork I avoided. Gothard was making food more important than it’s supposed to be. He was making eating a burden because I had to figure out what food was spiritually pleasing to God and what food was not.
Now I know that God has given us all food to enjoy. As 1 Timothy 6:17 says, God “richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” Food is there to sustain us. It’s also a gift.
What is the overarching theme of these examples that Jeremy and I heard? It felt like Gothard was cultivating dependence on himself. He seemed to be manipulating his audience by saying, essentially, that God’s Word is not clear. That there are hidden dangers in the world, dangers most people don’t know about, that can cause spiritual harm. These dangers could come in paintings, Communion, food, and even confessions. As Gothard set up all this superstitious Christianity, he presented himself as the only one who could identify those hidden dangers and steer his helpless audience in the right direction. He talked again and again about having the “keys to success” in the Christian life. He claimed his principles would unlock the full potential of Christianity.6
Now I see that this kind of teaching made Gothard essential to his listeners. If there are secret principles that lead to God’s favor, and if Gothard alone understands those principles, then he is an essential teacher. I believed that growing up. I was sure other Christians didn’t have success in life because they didn’t know Gothard’s basic life principles.
During my experience of disentangling truth from error, I have learned to be skeptical of any leader or teacher who claims to be essential. If a teacher says the Christian life can only be lived successfully with some secret bit of knowledge they have discovered, then that teacher should be avoided at all costs.
Thankfully, God, in His kindness, does not keep us in the dark. His Word is clear. The key to the Christian life is not listening to hours of lectures from Bill Gothard. It’s knowing Jesus Christ. And Christ is not hidden. There’s no secret way to access Him. He is clearly presented in the Bible, not just the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—but in the entire Bible. Jesus is prophesied about and foretold throughout the Old Testament. And He is explained and exalted in all twenty-seven books of the New Testament. Jesus is the key to the Christian life. And the way to unlock His riches is to know Him through His Word.
As my relationship with Jeremy grew and I started to think more clearly about Christianity, I realized that I did not know some of the Bible’s most important truths. I was about to begin an extraordinary education.