Once Jeremy and I had my parents’ permission to court, we were excited to be together and talk seriously about marriage. Though we only courted for three months and were engaged for three months, our first half year together was full of many highlights.
I’ll never forget my first visit to Laredo in June 2016, a few weeks after we began courting. I went with my parents, and Jeremy’s mom and dad came from Pennsylvania for the weekend. It was my first time meeting them, and they were as kind and thoughtful as Jeremy described. My parents also enjoyed the time with Chuck and Diana. The conversations were easy and enjoyable. I loved seeing Jeremy’s church for the first time and meeting so many members. We got to eat a lot of great food. Laredo is on the US-Mexico border, so there’s all kinds of great Tex-Mex there. We explored downtown, visited Jeremy’s apartment, and experienced the extraordinary heat, which slaps you in the face the moment you step out of the airport. By the end of the trip, I was even more convinced that Jeremy was the man I was going to marry.
Not long before Jeremy asked me to marry him, he showed up in the most surprising way. I was at a Mexican restaurant in Fayetteville with Jessa, Ben, and their son, Spurgeon. I ordered tacos, and instead of a waiter bringing them to me, Jeremy delivered the meal (then, of course, he joined us). I’ll never forget the shock. I did a double take, and, for a moment, nothing came out of my mouth. What followed was a sweet visit and at least a few days where we could talk in person rather than over the phone.
As much as my relationship with Jeremy was changing my life throughout the summer of 2016, I don’t think it was that year’s most significant change. Instead, as Jeremy and I approached marriage and talked about the Bible for hours and hours, I learned a lot about Scripture. Even though I’d loved and appreciated it for years, I hadn’t dug as deeply into its truth as Jeremy and I did during this time. And the best way to explain what happened during those calls, how my understanding of what the Bible is changed, is to talk about the end of a Gothard seminar and the vows he asked his audience to make.
The last few minutes of a Bill Gothard seminar were almost always serious, sobering moments. No laughs. No jokes. No music. Gothard’s trademark smile would vanish. His eyes would narrow. He’d return once again to something he referenced throughout each seminar: vows.
If Gothard referenced the dangers of alcohol during his seminar, he wouldn’t wrap things up until he asked the audience to vow never to drink alcohol or even be in the presence of someone who did. If he talked about the dangers of rock and roll, he’d tell his audience they needed to vow before God never to listen to such music again. There was even a script for this personal commitment.
And if Gothard’s seminar stressed the importance of modesty, he’d urge everyone in the crowd, especially females, to commit never to wear anything immodest. Sometimes this came in the form of a specific vow never to wear pants, shorts, or miniskirts. And never to wear sleeveless or low-cut shirts.
By far the most common vow Gothard asked his audience to make involved Bible reading and prayer. He didn’t ask for a big sacrifice: five minutes of Bible reading and five minutes of prayer every day. He made it sound so easy. He implied this was the least Christians should do to show God they were committed to Him. Gothard would ask for a show of hands—a public commitment to the vow. Hands would go up all over the room. Then more hands. Eventually, so many raised hands blanketed the room that seemingly everyone in attendance—thousands of people—were making the same vow.
Whether someone raised a hand because of peer pressure or because of a genuine desire to read Scripture and pray more often, they were now committed to something Gothard said was deadly serious. He would point to texts like Deuteronomy 23:21: “If you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the LORD your God will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin.” What were the consequences of that sin? Gothard had a few ideas. He said God would cause suffering, sickness, or even death if someone didn’t keep a vow to the Lord.
I’ll never forget the conference where I personally made this vow about Bible reading and prayer. The pressure to do so was overwhelming. Everyone around me was making the same commitment. Plus, there are 1,440 minutes in a day. The vow was only requiring me to dedicate ten of them to the Lord. How hard could it be?
In the coming months and years, that simple vow would haunt me. If I didn’t read my Bible or pray in the morning, I’d feel so much guilt. Sometimes at night, I’d realize I hadn’t fulfilled my vow. Lots of nights, I’d see one of my siblings reading the Bible in our room and freak out, scrambling to read a chapter or two before I went to bed. The difficult thing about that vow wasn’t the length of time required; it was the relentless nature of the guilt. The vow weighed on me. Even if I did read my Bible and pray first thing in the morning, I’d only have to wait a few more hours for that same pressure and guilt to creep back in.
Of course, reading the Bible is a good idea. Psalm 119:11 says, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” There are too many benefits of reading God’s Word to count. So the problem wasn’t with the object of my vow: Scripture and prayer. The vow itself was the problem. It was creating unnecessary guilt. God tells me to dwell on His Word, to “hide it in my heart,” and to know it and know the One who wrote it. But nowhere does He command me to read the Bible every day. Laying that burden on myself was unnecessary.
A vow like that—especially one that calls for only five minutes each of those two crucial spiritual disciplines—is built on a serious misunderstanding of what the Bible is.
If someone asked you to describe the Bible, what would you say about it? Maybe you’d describe its contents: a collection of sixty-six books divided into two sections, the Old and New Testaments. Those books were written by different authors over many centuries. Some wrote in Greek. Others in Hebrew. A few wrote in Aramaic. There are works of history, prophecy, and poetry. Many of those sixty-six books, especially in the New Testament, are letters.
All of that is the kind of definition you’ll find in Encyclopaedia Britannica or on Wikipedia. And that description is accurate, but it leaves out the most important thing about the Bible: it was written by God. Christians believe the Bible is inspired, or God-breathed. God inspired every word written by the men who authored each of the sixty-six books. Second Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Because the Bible is inspired by God, it has no errors.
Growing up, I was taught that the Bible is inerrant and infallible (though those words weren’t often used). Inerrant means it doesn’t have any mistakes. Every word of it is true. Infallible means there isn’t even a possibility that it could have a mistake.
Here are a few descriptions of the Bible that I believed:
When I read the Bible, I believed I was reading the perfect words of God. But here’s what I want to address: Why did God give us the Bible? That’s the question I was confused about. I suspect that question confuses a lot of people, including Christians.
I assumed God gave us the Bible to show us how to live. He had a bunch of commands for His creatures. In the Bible, He laid out those commands so people like me could know with perfect clarity what decisions were good—would please God and bring success—and what actions were evil—would dishonor God and bring failure.
I now see that my understanding of the Bible changed in two phases. It started to change during those car rides with Ben and Jessa. Those conversations began to cultivate a perspective that would become more established as my relationship with Jeremy grew. During that time, it became clear to me that rules are not the only reason the Bible exists. Those who read the Bible only to figure out how to live—only to learn what rules to obey, what actions to take each day, and what bad attitudes and decisions to avoid—are missing the main reason the Bible was written.
I can remember lots of mornings reading the Bible and thinking, How does what I’m reading apply to my day? I’d think through my schedule. I will be filming today, so how can the Bible help me say the right words or have the right attitude? I’m going on a trip with my siblings, so what does the text I’m reading have to say about my relationship with them? I’m about to pick my outfit for the day. The Bible can help me make sure I pick a modest outfit. Of course, the Bible does help me in all those areas. But if that was the only reason I read the Bible, then I was missing a lot.
When Bill Gothard talked about the Bible, he talked about it as a divine rule book. His seminars hardly say anything about God’s character, the way of salvation, the nature of the church, or dozens of other issues the Bible emphasizes. Instead, he taught me that the Bible is about me. It’s there for my purposes. God gave it to me to show me how to be successful and happy. Believing that, I inserted myself into the story whenever I read the Bible. I assumed that every story in it had direct and specific application to my life.
The famous and dramatic story of David and Goliath, as described in 1 Samuel 17, is a great example. When every soldier in the army of Israel refused to fight the giant Goliath, David, a young shepherd, volunteered to fight him with only a sling and five smooth stones. The battle was over almost before it started when David slung the first stone at Goliath and hit him in the forehead, knocking the giant to the ground. David then killed Goliath with the giant’s own sword. When I read that story, I asked only one question: How does this apply to my life? I assumed the answer was in the details. I’d read that David didn’t wear armor when he fought Goliath and think, What does that mean for me? I’d read about the five smooth stones and think long and hard about the significance of that number. Why weren’t there six stones? What does that mean, and why is that number significant for me? I’d see that the enemy was a giant and think, Are there any giants in my life that I need to defeat?
Here’s another example, this one from a note I wrote next to Proverbs 23:1–3 in my Bible. That text says:
When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you,
and put a knife to your throat
if you are given to appetite.
Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food.
Every time I read that passage now, I shake my head at my application from years ago. I wrote “fasting” next to those verses. I decided God was using those verses to tell me I needed to fast.
But that’s not what this passage is about. Instead, it’s warning people not to be enticed by a rich ruler who will use his wealth to get them to do what he wants. That has nothing to do with fasting, but I thought I had to find a personal application for that text, so I came up with fasting. At the time, I genuinely thought this idea came from God. If I read the verse and thought of fasting, that must be God’s intended meaning of that text for me. In other words, I believed that God had a specific, individualized interpretation for me.
Bill Gothard called these personal interpretations of Scripture rhemas—communication from God to one person and no one else. The IBLP website defines a rhema as “a verse or portion of Scripture that the Holy Spirit brings to our attention with application to a current situation or need for direction.”1 Gothard claimed that rhemas had guided the IBLP ministry since it began. God had given him a new standard for the Christian life, and he had to start the seminars to make sure the world knew what he had discovered.2
When I’d visit the IBLP headquarters in Illinois, I’d frequently hear Bill Gothard talk to staff and guests about a rhema he’d received from the Lord. He would say God had used some portion of the Bible to tell him that a particular food was unhealthy or that a medicine would work wonders. (He regularly talked about food, medicine, and topics related to science.) He would say God had revealed a new principle through a rhema, and now he understood a key to the Christian life that was going to transform how we all lived.
I assumed the same thing was supposed to happen to me when I read the Bible. I was hoping to discover a hidden meaning that would be revealed not through words but through thoughts I would have as I was reading those words.
Gothard’s rhemas weren’t limited to the Bible. He also saw God communicating His will through personal experiences. Gothard would tell a lot of stories. He’d tell his audience about conversations he’d had, people he’d met, and accounts he’d read. Typically, these stories were about conflicts in relationships, alcohol abuse, financial ruin, or sexual immorality. In them he’d find analogies from everyday life. He’d say that because the person he was describing had conflict, alcoholism, debt, or a child out of wedlock, God was saying not to live like they lived in other areas.
Here is a story I was told more than once when I was growing up based on Gothard and other teachings. It shaped me in a profound way. It was about a young girl who stopped following Gothard’s modesty standards. Soon, she started wearing pants and shorts. Gradually, her skirts got shorter, and her pants became tighter. As she dressed with less and less modesty, she became more and more interested in relationships with boys. At first, they were other Christians. But before long, she was dating non-Christians. Eventually, she became involved in a serious relationship with a guy who wasn’t interested in God. He got her pregnant out of wedlock and left her to care for the child on her own. This kind of story was used like a weapon to warn girls against the dangers of dressing immodestly. They had lost their purity, marriage, money, and health after wearing pants—and that proved clothes could cause all kinds of heartache if not chosen carefully.
When I was younger, I didn’t realize that when Gothard told stories, he was finding truth in analogies, not in the Word of God. Only after he’d tell a story like this and describe the principle the story proved would he finally go to the Bible and find evidence for what he’d just argued.
This is called proof-texting. It’s coming up with an idea you want to promote and using a smattering of verses to support your claim. People do this all the time, but when Gothard did this, I thought he was teaching the Bible because he would reference lots of verses. What he was actually doing was teaching his own ideas and then pointing to verses taken out of context as proof that he was right.
When I was talking with Ben and Jessa a year before Jeremy came into my life, we didn’t discuss Bill Gothard and how much he had influenced my view of the Bible. When I eventually had those conversations about Gothard with Jeremy, I began to realize just how unhelpful—even dangerous—all of his proof-texting was. Ben and Jessa had helped point me to the truth, and Jeremy helped me understand when I was hearing something that sounded like truth but was actually off the mark. On a sidenote, I can see now how God has used people close to me to point me to His Word and His character. Those relationships are a kindness from God that I know He gives to His people. He certainly was kind to me in this way during this pivotal time in my life when so much was changing.
Of course, Gothard talked a lot about parenting during his seminars, so as Jeremy and I listened, we stopped and discussed having children. At one point, he asked me, “Jinger, how many children do you want to have?” Up until that point in my life, if someone had asked me that question, I would have said “as many as the Lord allows.” But I was talking to the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, so I couldn’t give him a vague, cliché answer.
I had to be honest. And I truthfully didn’t know how many children I wanted to have. In fact, I was trying to figure out what the Bible actually said about how many children I was supposed to have. So that’s what I told Jeremy. I appreciated his response. He didn’t give me his opinion. He said he was thankful for my answer and we could figure that out later. So that’s what we did. Then we turned the Gothard seminar back on and heard him say this shocking thing to the adopted men and women in the crowd:
If you’ve been adopted, that means that God has an extra special purpose on your life. I can demonstrate that because look at the many great men and women who were not reared by their birth parents. Here was Moses taken from his parents; here was Samuel turned over by his parents; here was Daniel taken away from his parents; here was Esther, she didn’t have any parents; here was Timothy, lost his father. God says to you, “If you’ve lost your father or parents, I will be a father to the fatherless.” God in special ways becomes your protection. But also, he brings you discipline because he’s got this extra special purpose for your life.3
The Bible doesn’t actually say Timothy lost his father (it simply implies that his dad didn’t follow Jesus), but that isn’t the biggest problem with Gothard’s argument that God has a special plan for the adopted. The Bible never connects the significance of the figures Gothard mentioned with the fact they were not raised by their birth parents. Just because some of the Bible’s characters were adopted does not mean God has a unique plan that applies only to adopted people. God’s plan for adopted people is the same as His plan for everyone: to have faith in Jesus Christ and follow Him. To claim an “extra special purpose for your life” if you were adopted—or extra discipline from God for that same reason—is to deviate from Scripture.
This story is an example of a frequent mistake Gothard made: he built arguments around correlation. In other words, he would find connections in the Bible and tell his audience those connections proved some rule. This is dangerous because, similar to proof-texting, it allows the teacher to find whatever meaning he wants in the Bible. All he has to do is make a few loose connections from Scripture, and he can use those connections to say anything he wants.
When I was younger, I’d open the pages of the Bible every day for at least five minutes, and two tragedies would happen. First, I’d heap burdens of behavior on myself. Looking only for direction for my life, I would come up with new guidelines or rules that I needed to follow. If I couldn’t follow them as perfectly as I thought I was supposed to, I’d declare myself a failure. I would resolve to try harder. The next day, I’d repeat the process again. This was exhausting. It was the opposite of what Jesus said in Matthew 11:28–30: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (NASB1995).
When I thought about my spiritual life, I didn’t think about rest. Instead, I thought about all the things I needed to do and all the ways I had failed. The Christian life was a treadmill, and I was constantly picking up the pace, pushing myself harder and harder. But like a treadmill, there was no destination, no arrival point that signaled the end of all that pushing. There was just . . . effort. I’d fall off the treadmill from time to time, but I’d eventually get back on it. Such a self-focused, effort-driven spiritual life wasn’t sustainable. I’m certain that if I didn’t have the Holy Spirit—if I was not a child of God who was being protected by my heavenly Father—then I would have gotten off the treadmill and never gotten back on. I would have done what so many others have done when the hardships of life and the exhaustion of man-made religion become too much: abandon Christianity altogether.
The second tragedy fueled the first. Because I was placing myself at the center of the biblical story, I did not understand the actual story of the Bible. I could not answer basic questions about Scripture like, “What are the Bible’s key themes? Why did God create the world, including men and women like me? And what story is the Bible telling?”
Bill Gothard and others like him were too busy instructing me how I was supposed to live. He didn’t take the time to explain the most important realities of the Bible.
It’s easy to think that big events in life, like a graduation, relationship change, or near-death experience, will shape you and set the direction for your life. But big events were not the cause of my transformation. The Bible itself was. I finally understood why God’s Word existed. I could trace its main story, and I knew that its main character was God, not me.
During those years, massive events were shaping my life and future. Growing Up Duggar was published. My best friend, Jessa, got married. I met the man I’d love forever. And my family faced the greatest crisis of our lives. But what changed me the most were the quiet moments when I read the Bible the right way. Reading the Bible became an exciting act of discovery that wasn’t about me but about God and His glorious plan for the universe. As I focused on Him, so much guilt fell away, and Jesus became more precious to me than ever before.
I finally understood, for the first time, what true freedom is. John 8:36 describes it perfectly: “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (NASB1995). I also knew there were going to be fundamental changes to how I lived. And not all those changes would be accepted by the community that had raised me.