For most teenage girls, seeing their private diary for sale on eBay would be their worst possible nightmare. Secret thoughts about boys, parents, and siblings all available for the world to see. Honestly, what could be worse for a girl trying to figure out who she is, what she is passionate about, and what she believes? Thankfully, when I faced that exact scenario at the tender age of fourteen, there was hardly anything shocking for the thief to turn into a profit. Perhaps that’s why the person who stole my journal during a visit to our home returned it a few weeks later.
I still have the journal. From time to time, I leaf through the colorful paper and adolescent handwriting and see glimpses of how self-conscious I once was. I mostly used the journal to record what I did each day. These entries include bullet-pointed lists of visitors to our home, tasks accomplished, and friends seen. When I read it today, I’m struck by what is missing. I was afraid to say the wrong thing—to confess my inner desires even in a diary. I didn’t express any of the feelings and fears that were a constant part of my childhood. Rather than serving as a true chronicle of Jinger Duggar’s inner life, my diary was yet another place of performance: a tool where I practiced projecting the version of myself that I wanted everyone—parents, siblings, friends, fans of the show—to see.
What I was hiding from my journal, from fans of the show, and often from my loved ones wasn’t a dark, rebellious spirit. I never dreamed of leaving my family. I genuinely loved my parents and siblings. My parents are kind, loving, and gracious, and they made a happy home for us kids. From spontaneous family bike rides to games of kickball in the backyard to RV trips across the country, they sought to invest in us and be present in our lives. Mine was a sweet childhood.
No, I wasn’t longing for a different life. I loved my life. What I was hiding from the world was my fear.
If there’s one word—one emotion—that best describes my younger self, it’s fear. My earliest memory is a moment of sheer terror. I was five years old. My family was living in Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas. My dad, Jim Bob, was part of the state legislature. One day while my dad was at the capitol building, a tornado touched down close to our house. My mom, Michelle, ushered my siblings and me into the bathroom; there must have been eleven children at the time. A bunch of us huddled in the bathtub. I’ll never forget my overwhelming anxiety as I stared out the window, convinced the tornado was about to destroy our house and my family. Thankfully, the storm passed, but the fear stayed for years. Thunder terrified me. If I heard it, I’d cry, my body would shake, and I’d panic, thinking another tornado was heading right for us. If a storm came at night, I’d wake my parents, occasionally ending up on a cot in their bedroom.
As I grew older, my fears grew in number. I began to worry that someone in my family would get cancer or some other horrible disease, and I’d have to watch my loved one die. I feared car crashes on the road and snakes in the woods. But by the time I was fourteen, my worst, most all-consuming fear was the fear of what others thought of me.
I don’t remember exactly when a desire to please others started to dominate my thinking and decision-making. Perhaps it was when the cameras arrived—I was ten years old at the time—and I realized that millions of people were watching how I lived my life. Or perhaps I was always going to care about the opinions of others and want to hide my imperfections. I am a people pleaser who has always preferred to go with the flow than to share my opinions or make demands.
For years, I thought the best way to please others was to hide my imperfections. This led to some harmful behaviors, including the eating disorder I developed early in my teenage years. Convinced my body was an embarrassment, I ate very little. I’d go days hardly consuming any calories. My weight dropped, but my body image didn’t improve. It almost never does in those situations because the weight isn’t the problem. No matter how thin I was, I wasn’t satisfied with the way I looked. This obsession with body image was terrible for my physical health and it certainly wasn’t good for me spiritually. It was a downward spiral that could have gotten worse and worse.
Thankfully, my eating struggles were short-lived, in large part due to my mom’s help. She listened to me. She asked me to text her what I was eating and how often. She also monitored my workout schedule and even turned this into an opportunity to keep her accountable with working out. It was a great way for us to be partners in taking care of our health.
Then, at the end of any given day, we’d talk about our days. She encouraged me to make wise choices and get the right number of calories to sustain my body and thrive. I didn’t feel judged at all. My mom had shared with me what she’s shared with the world: she had struggled with her eating, too, when she was my age. I felt no judgment from her, just love and care. I knew I was going to be okay because she had been through it. It helped me to know that I could eat sufficient calories in a healthy way—grilled chicken, rice, salad, vegetables. Mom gave me the confidence to know I don’t have to avoid food to be pretty.
I struggled with self-image because I feared people. I was terrified of the weather and sickness because I feared death. And at the foundation of these fears was a truth about my identity: I did not love God.
As a teenager, I would have called myself a Christian, and nearly everyone around me called themselves Christians too. I was sure that God existed. To me, He was as real as my family. And I knew that God was more than just the being who created everything; He was also in charge of the world and actively upholding the universe “by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). He not only created the world and sustained it but also guided my life—as described in Psalm 139:
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them. (vv. 13–16)
I’d always given thanks to God for His kindnesses to me. And I assumed that my rank in the Duggar family tree—sixth—my brunette hair, and my personality were gifts from God. But before I was fourteen years old, there was a major problem with my Christian identity.
Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” I had the first part down: I believed God existed. But the second part—seeking Him? I wasn’t doing that. Sure, I recited the prayer of salvation when I was younger. But I didn’t really understand repentance. In other words, I wasn’t truly sorry when I dishonored and disobeyed God. From time to time I felt bad about my sin or worried about what my parents would think of me, but I cared more about my own happiness than the glory of God.
By God’s grace, that changed when I was fourteen. I remember feeling terrified that I didn’t truly love Jesus. So I went and found my mom and asked if we could talk. Of course, she said yes. We went into a little prayer closet in our home. I remember crying and telling her that I didn’t believe I genuinely loved God. I knew a lot about how to act, things to do and not to do, but none of it was driven by a love for God. It was more about a desire to perform, look good in front of others, and follow the status quo.
I was tired of living this way—trying to be a Christian without God’s help. It was draining, and I was exhausted; my religious tank was empty. I realized that I had been wrestling with these feelings for about a year but was just too embarrassed to tell anyone. I was consumed with worry about what they would think of me. They saw me as a Christian. A “good kid.” My pride did not want to let me admit that I had been putting on a hypocritical show. But I couldn’t stand to exist in that hypocrisy anymore.
I confessed this to my mom and started to cry. I wanted to really know God. I wanted to love and worship Him and enjoy a relationship with Him for the first time. I don’t remember what she said to me, but I know I cried out to God and asked Him to save me from my sin.
I had been living for myself, not for God. But that day, a real change happened in my heart. I became committed to living my life to honor God. This change didn’t happen because I prayed a certain prayer with the exact right words. I was simply tired of being a performance artist, a religious playactor, a hypocrite. I wanted the real thing. I wanted a relationship with God. Because pleasing Him was now my top priority, the fear of others no longer consumed me.
I’m still prone to people-pleasing. But making others happy no longer dominates my thinking. In the same way, when I became a true Christian, I didn’t fear death as much. I knew that when I died, I was going to heaven. Of course, I still didn’t want to get in a car wreck, contract a fatal disease, or encounter a tornado, but I knew in my heart that if anything like that happened, I would be in the presence of God.
Despite all this progress, I still struggled with fear. The subject changed, but the intensity remained the same. Specifically, I was afraid that I wasn’t obeying and honoring God adequately. I constantly wondered if God was displeased with me. I wanted His approval more than anything but really didn’t know what it looked like to have a relationship with Him. I wanted to be close to God but was confused about how exactly to get there.
So much of my uncertainty was because I didn’t understand God’s character. Instead of thinking of Him as a kind Creator who wanted me to obey Him for my own good and His glory, I primarily thought of God as stern and harsh. I had this idea that He would be disappointed, even angry, if I didn’t do exactly what He wanted me to do. Even if I didn’t know what He wanted from me in a situation, I thought I could get in trouble for making the wrong choice.
For instance, throughout my teenage years, one of my family’s favorite pastimes was broomball—a game similar to hockey that is played on an ice rink while wearing shoes, not skates. We would play several times a week. I especially enjoyed the game and looked forward to the time with my family. But after the chat with my mom, I started to fear that God didn’t want me to play. I thought He might instead want me to read my Bible, pray, or do something for others, like help my mom around the house. I didn’t think there was anything inherently wrong with broomball. It wasn’t a sin for my siblings to play. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that broomball wasn’t the best use of my time in God’s eyes. I even began to fear that if I did go play and that wasn’t what God wanted me to do, He would punish me by causing my family to get in a car wreck on the way to the ice rink.
Soon, this uncertainty came with nearly every invitation to do something enjoyable. If it was fun, and I had to decide whether to participate, then I’d second-guess myself, thinking I should instead choose a spiritual activity. I’ll never forget the uncertainty I felt when Grandma Duggar would invite me to go shopping, my siblings would ask me to go somewhere, or I’d have free time and want to use it to exercise or relax.
I didn’t know then that I was experiencing an overactive conscience. In fact, if you had told me that this was an issue with my conscience, I would have had no idea what you were talking about. I didn’t really understand what the conscience was at the time. I mean, I knew I had one, but I didn’t quite understand its purpose.
My pastor provides this helpful definition of conscience:
The conscience entreats you to do what you believe is right and restrains you from doing what you believe is wrong. But don’t equate the conscience with the voice of God or the law of God. It is a human faculty that judges your actions and thoughts by the light of the highest standard you perceive. When you violate your conscience, it condemns you, triggering feelings of shame, anguish, regret, consternation, anxiety, disgrace, and even fear. Conversely, when you follow your conscience, it commends you, bringing joy, serenity, self-respect, well-being, and gladness.1
When I was feeling guilty about broomball, that was not God speaking to me. That was my conscience. I didn’t know I was training my conscience to tell me that anytime I decided to play a game instead of reading my Bible, I was disobeying God. Of course, the problem wasn’t that I had a conscience. It’s a gift from the Lord that we should thank Him for. The problem was that my conscience was too active. I trained it to feel guilty for decisions that the Bible didn’t condemn. In some cases, things that the Bible encourages—such as exercise or spending time with family—would violate my conscience. I remember multiple times when my family watched a fun movie together while I was upstairs reading my Bible, thinking that’s what I should be doing instead.
Mornings could be particularly stressful. I’d wake up and immediately start thinking about what I could do that day to best please God. Often, fasting was one of the first things that came to mind. The Bible talks about fasting as an acceptable spiritual practice, but it never commands believers to fast. Yet if I felt convicted about fasting, I would tell myself I couldn’t have food that day. I convinced myself that if I ate, God would not be pleased with me. This was different from the struggle I had with food a few years earlier. Back then, I was worried about what people thought of me. I avoided food because I wanted to appear thin. My concerns with fasting were because I was worried about what God thought of me. My previous struggles with food didn’t cross my mind when I tried to figure out if I should fast or not, but it did cross my parents’ minds. For that reason, they encouraged me to eat. In fact, my parents directly told me not to fast at that time.
So much of my fear and anxiety after I became a Christian was tied to my overactive conscience. I had created false standards of righteousness: standards that were impossible for me, or anyone, to measure up to. But where did those false standards come from? At the time, I thought my convictions came from the Bible. Now I know that wasn’t the case. Now I know that instead of coming from the perfect Word of God, they came from the mind of an imperfect man.
For as long as I can remember, I followed the teachings of a man named Bill Gothard. My parents introduced me and my siblings to Gothard and his seminars. They started listening to his teachings not long after they were married. And they applied many of his principles as they raised me and my siblings. It’s no exaggeration to say that Gothard was the most important influence in my life outside of my family. There wasn’t a time when I didn’t know who he was and admire him. In my diary that was stolen and listed on eBay, I said I couldn’t wait to go to one of his conferences for the first time. I remember someone telling me they thought Bill Gothard might be a prophet—a modern-day Elijah sent by God to show Christians how to obey God’s Word.
So who exactly is this spiritual leader?
Bill Gothard was raised by Christian parents, and he committed to full-time ministry at age fifteen. He attended Wheaton College, where he received two degrees. When he was a student, he started working with Chicago’s inner-city youth. He continued to do that until Wheaton College asked him to come back and teach a course on youth ministry.2 The curriculum he designed for that class became the Basic Seminar for the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP).3 In the late 1960s, Gothard started teaching his seminars at churches, Christian schools, camps, and youth programs around the country.4 His timing could not have been better.
Throughout the 1960s, America’s sexual revolution had changed the way many people thought about religion and morality. Millions of Americans stopped saving sex for marriage. Divorce became more common. Drug use skyrocketed. Young people embraced rock and roll, and they used this music to express their independence and live a self-absorbed lifestyle. On top of all that, Americans were dealing with racial tensions, the war in Vietnam, and the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
For Bible-believing Christians, this was a scary, uncertain time. Parents feared losing their children to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Bill Gothard offered parents confidence. In his lectures, he claimed he had discovered the key to a successful Christian life. According to Gothard, to enjoy God’s blessing, a Christian should closely follow the seven principles he laid out in his seminars: the principles of design, authority, responsibility, suffering, ownership, freedom, and success.
These are universal. They are nonoptional. Every single person in the world must build his or her life around these seven principles. . . . If we don’t build our lives around these seven principles, then we’re gonna have these root problems. We’ll have surface wrong attitudes and surface problems, and our life will be one continuous failure from what God knows our potential could be.5
In later chapters, I’ll talk in more detail about these principles—and how they dominated my life—but for now, I want to talk about why these principles were effective. First, they were absolute. Gothard spoke in black-and-white terms. He said there was a right way and a wrong way to live. For those who lived the “right” way—who followed his principles—God’s blessings were guaranteed. Health, money, success, and happiness were available to them.
Second, his principles were practical. They could be applied immediately. Someone could leave Gothard’s seminars with a dozen ways to change his or her life. None of his ideas were presented as theoretical. Even when Gothard claimed what he was saying was based on the Bible, he always stressed practical applications. He often urged people to make a vow after one of his seminars that they would immediately apply what they’d learned.
Finally, these principles were specific. Gothard would teach a principle and then tell you exactly what that principle looked like in everyday life. For instance, when discussing the topic of modesty—which fell under the principle of responsibility, among others—he identified which outfits were modest and which were not. (Long skirts were, which is why my sisters and I wore them all the time—even when we were sleeping or swimming.) That may seem too strict for many, but for millions of Americans, it was comforting and liberating.
These rules were clear and easy to follow. And according to Gothard, following his principles was the same as obeying God. For the nervous Christian parent, these principles were the perfect cure to the moral chaos of the 1960s and ’70s. A few years after he started teaching his principles across the country, Gothard was filling stadiums. He was an evangelical celebrity.
By the time I was born in 1993, an entire Christian subculture had formed around Gothard’s teaching. I was born into that subculture. The certainty of his teachings—the guarantees he promised—attracted many Christian parents in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, including mine. He talked a lot about reaping what you sow. The idea was that if you planted the right lifestyle—in other words, made choices that aligned with his teachings—then God would bless your life and you would reap the lifestyle you had sowed. That method of success gave thousands a sense of control as the world around them seemed to be falling apart.
Here’s an example of this teaching from Gothard:
Life is hooked up in a very delicate cause-and-effect sequence. . . . Here’s a man who wonders why he’s having business problems, financial problems. He doesn’t know that God has a clear relationship between his moral life and his business life. Now there are other relations, too, that would affect business, but that’s just one. Here’s a person who wonders why his children are reacting. He doesn’t know that God has a very clear relationship between his honoring of his parents and the response of his children to him. And in more and more ways, God has a very clear cause-and-effect sequence.6
That lesson was both comforting and terrifying to me. It was comforting because it turned life into a series of deposits and withdrawals. All I had to do was deposit the exact lifestyle Gothard advocated, and I would withdraw health, money, a wonderful husband, and a bushel of godly kids. But this cause-and-effect view was also terrifying because I thought I would experience devastating consequences for any mistakes I made.
For years, I was convinced that Bill Gothard was the finest Bible teacher in America and that his so-called secrets to success were the path to personal fulfillment.7 Through those years, I had a self-righteous attitude. I pitied those who didn’t follow these principles. I thought their ignorance would lead to a life of spiritual darkness. They’d miss out on God’s blessings and protection because they didn’t know these principles.
When millions of people watched me on television during my teenage years, they saw a girl who was putting these principles into action in every area of her life. She was committed. She was convinced that she had found the secret to success.
I certainly had a unique childhood. But my spiritual journey is not that different from anyone else’s. Many were also influenced by Bill Gothard’s teachings. Others have had someone tell them that a certain teaching came from God when it really just came from man. And others have been pressured to follow a set of extra rules, in addition to the commands in Scripture, in order to be acceptable to God. In that circumstance, the question they eventually face is the same one I faced: How do I know whether what I believe is consistent with the Word of God or is a false religious system invented by man? There are often elements of truth mixed in with false teaching. There are good ideas that help to honor God tangled with bad ideas that cause a lot of heartache. How do you know the difference? How do you disentangle truth from error?
For me, the disentanglement process began with understanding what the Bible actually says and comparing it to what Gothard said. Did they match up? Finding the answer required a closer look at Gothard’s seven basic life principles—the same principles I’d been applying in front of a reality TV audience throughout my childhood.