It was the summer of ’73, a hot and miserable evening in the San Bernardino Fairgrounds, when I stood from a steel folding chair and placed myself firmly under my umbrella of protection. My entire family had gone to hear the man of the moment, Bill Gothard, at his Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts (IBYC), a week-long seminar for all ages. Young, ignorant, and powerfully zealous, I had no clue that Gothard’s principles would gut my initiative, twist my understanding of the Bible, warp my view of God, or hamstring my future marriage.
And yet that is exactly what they did.
The Christian life, Gothard explained, exists as a chain of command with God over men, men over women, women over children, and (I’m guessing here) children over the family dog. Other authorities include bosses and policemen, teachers and mayors and judges. Yes, submission is difficult. But obedience to every authority God has positioned over you will result in a sort of magical shield around your life, your very own “umbrella of protection.” If you can just find your rung on the ladder of authority and stay there, you will live your best life now.
Ah. Of course I wanted God’s blessing and protection over my young life. Who wouldn’t?
Determined to follow this new, supremely biblical teaching to the limits of my immature, teenaged ability, I ceased arguing with Mom, even in her worst, most unreasonable moments. As Gothard instructed, Dad interviewed my dates before we headed out. Yes, Dad did his duty once junior year and once senior year, popular as I was. And I obeyed my boss at Riverside Microfilm without question, even when I knew he was wrong. Work faster, he demanded.
Just as I expected, the corners of the pages blurred and a whole role of microfilm was wasted. Gothard had promised that as long as you followed instructions precisely, your boss couldn’t fault you. However, Mr. Microfilm Boss wasn’t pleased: How is the library supposed to put that in its archives? Despite Gothard’s confident assertions, I did get in trouble and had to shoot the entire role again. I probably would have been fired but for one small detail: Dad owned Riverside Microfilm.
Yet even when the man behind the overhead projector was wrong, he claimed to be right. If you obey but suffer anyway, God is refining you. If your umbrella of protection is full of holes, by no means should you blame Gothard. The problem is you. Your character needs some deep, painful Rolfing, so God has sent some hardship to help you out.
However, Gothard was right about one thing. If you follow his system, you will experience fewer interpersonal conflicts. (You might suffer extreme internal distress, but no matter. Conflicts with others will decrease, which apparently is the point.) And I did experience fewer conflicts, especially with Mom, my primary conflictee.
Shiny Hurting People
Looking back now, of course that was the case. If the goal is to minimize interpersonal conflict, no matter the cost, then Gothard’s system is a resounding success. If one person must forever and always give in, while another shall forever and always get their way, and all of this is predetermined by some imaginary, absolutist, hierarchical ordering of human creatures, then of course there are fewer conflicts.
What’s to fight about?
Nada. Simplemente nada.
And what is the ultimate outcome of all this conflict-free, interaction-less, relational parody?
Shiny Hurting People.
Shiny, because they appear to get along swimmingly in every situation, smiling and obeying and submitting and following whoever resides above them in the unassailable chain of command. Hurting, because they have surrendered their heart, soul, mind, and strength to the literalistic, simplistic teachings of one fallible, overconfident human being.
Watching the documentary Shiny Happy People about Gothardism’s devastating impact on so many, including the Duggar family, revealed that what my family experienced as a week-long blip on a radar screen eventually turned into a comprehensive system of life and learning, thinking and being, now known as the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). Fortunately, in my case, my parents were far too worldly to follow Gothard to the letter.
Bill Gothard was eventually removed from his position at the ministry he founded. The holy single man turned out to be a sexual predator, taking advantage of numerous young women who served at his headquarters. Nonetheless, the ministry goes on, with the board endorsing and promoting Gothard’s seven principles even as they denounce his reprehensible behavior.
The question is, are Gothard’s teachings sound though his person is flawed?
Well, no.
There’s far more nuance in the way the Bible presents authority than IBLP assumes. While I don’t have time to talk about all of that today, I do want to give you a couple of points to ponder.
Every Human Possesses God-Granted Authority
Dominion – that is, authority – is granted to every human being by God. Every person who has ever lived represents God on earth, as his image, and possesses intrinsic ruling authority (Gen. 1:26). Humans – male and female – are corporately commanded by God to rule and subdue, to exercise authority over the natural world (Gen. 1:28). Yes, Genesis 1 does reveal a chain of command: God at the top, humans in the middle, animals and the natural world below.
Yet, strikingly, nowhere in Genesis 1-2 is human-over-human rule either envisioned or commanded. Despite the assumptions of many, reading Genesis itself reveals that the first man is nowhere designated as an authority over the woman. Nor is he instructed to exercise authority over her, held accountable for her actions, or rebuked for failing to control her. Rather, the man is responsible for and confronted for his own actions. However, one result of the first couple’s sin is that henceforth men would wield power over women (Gen. 3:16).
Making yourself the master of another human being, something Jesus vehemently condemns (Matt. 20:25; Mk. 10:42; see discussion below), began at the fall.
Authority is a God-given and inescapable aspect of our essential nature. Whether we acknowledge it or not, God has set up every human as an “authority” here on earth, with limited and shared responsibility for life on this planet. No one possesses unilateral authority, especially not over another human. No one. This also means that, contrary to IBLP teachings that declare it “rebellion” to set yourself up as an authority over your own life,[1] each individual does, in fact, possess God-given responsibility for and authority over their own person.
Children Are Not Property
Yet Gothard’s system encourages some individuals to treat others as their personal property, convincing them that God has granted them full authority over those under their “umbrella.” So, for example, when Michelle Duggar became overwhelmed by the sheer number of Duggar children (19 Kids and Counting), she utilized her teenage daughters as surrogate parents.
As each child was weaned, Michelle explained in her sweet, baby talk voice, they became the full responsibility of one of the older girls. For me, seeing these teen girls overburdened and overworked, with four or five little ones attached at the hip, was disturbing.
Yes, I can imagine the workload of an extremely large family (I had a measly four children). Yes, I can understand everyone needing to pitch in to manage all that (yet why have so many children in the first place). Yes, I know the rigors of homeschooling multiple children (a paltry 16 years in my case but, unlike the Duggars, it was college prep for all my children, including the girls).
Yet I also know what it’s like to have middle of the night responsibility for the baby when you’re but nine years old, to handle all the cleaning and washing and ironing because you’re the only daughter, to wonder why this is how the family is structured.
Watching the Duggars I thought, What mother treats her own children like servants?
When Jill Duggar grew up, got married, and no longer wanted to be on the show, Jim Bob Duggar tricked her into signing on for another stint. Then when Jill begged not to be forced to go through labor and delivery in front of a watching world, her pleas were ignored. What kind of father does this? And since when does anyone have the right to make those kinds of decisions for someone else?
This is not biblical Christianity.
The problem here is not that Jim Bob abused his rightful authority with heartless rulings, but that he erroneously believed he had the authority to circumvent his daughter’s wishes in the first place, that he possessed a God-given, personal, and direct authority over Jill’s life.
Did you get that? The problem was not with the decision per se, but with the idea that I have a God-given right to make your decisions for you.
Yet my purpose is not to criticize any individual, but rather to expose the need for discernment when it comes to the teachers and teachings that reel us in hook, line, and sinker. Discernment comes as a sharpening process of listening to others – those who disagree with us or our favorite Bible teacher, those we believe reside “under” us that we think we need not listen to, those who stand outside our tribe.
The Duggars could have paid attention to what was happening in their family and courageously stepped outside their IBLP circle. They could have listened to their children and torn down their media empire.
But they didn’t.
God-Granted Authority Begins With the Self
The fact that our authority begins with the self is clear, as God himself does not abrogate our intrinsic freedom to make our own decisions, even when they are evil and contrary to his will. In fact, God himself has intentionally granted us this liberty. Why? Self-governance makes it possible to freely choose to love God, something God values above robotic acquiescence.
This means that when one person positions himself as someone else’s personal authority, whether he bases his claim on IBLP or even the Bible itself, he has stepped into a place reserved for God. In other words, he has usurped Jesus’s authority as our only Lord and Master.
Authority in Other Realms is Shared
In other realms, beyond our own person, we share authority. God granted to the first human couple a joint responsibility for life on earth. Since that time, humans have been trying to figure out practical ways to share authority. Unfortunately, we have often come up with systems granting one individual extensive or even absolute authority over others, like emperors over empires, kings over lands, owners over slaves, or men over women and children.
Yet the biblical concept of authority is not power over others, but rather a shared responsibility to care for some shared domain, whether that is the earth, the community, the church, the workplace, or the home. In no sense does proper authority refer to wielding personal power over another person.[2] Jesus made that clear when he rebuked James and John for asking to sit at his right and his left in the Kingdom.
Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. (Matt. 20:25-26).
I know, we’ve all been taught that Jesus was referring to the manner of ruling, a sort of lording it over attitude instead of ruling in humility and gentleness as we ought. However, the context reveals that the Sons of Zebedee are not asking Jesus to be permitted to have bad attitudes as they go about their business of ruling over the other ten dudes. They are not requesting the right to abuse power. They’re not looking for Jesus to approve of their gloating over their Jesus-granted authority.
They knew better than that.
So what did they want? Simply to be the guys in charge, the ones in authority over the others, Jesus’s Josephs, his seconds-in-command who manage all the difficult work of making all the hard decisions as they direct the Kingdom Jesus keeps talking about (Matt. 20:20-28). And they want to get this settled now, before Peter steps up to rival a Sons of Thunder dynasty. No more Peter, James, and John, they must have been thinking, but just James and John.
As New Testament scholar Grant Osborne observes, the word often translated “lord it over” (katakurieuō):
…does not have a negative connotation of abuse of power but rather a more general thrust in terms of the general authority wielded over others… Christ is saying the disciples are interested in authority rather than servanthood and have become just like the Gentiles they despise.[3]
Jesus does not take kindly to his friends’ request. No, he rules out the baby with the bathwater. Sorry, guys, You’ve got it all wrong.
Systems of Shared Authority
Yes, there is a need for civil and church and family and workplace leadership. However, the idea that all or most of the authority in each domain must reside in the hands of one person – or even a select few – is false. Sure, such unilateral control may make “leading” simpler, but that does not mean such systems are either godly or biblical. When Bible passages designed to limit the power of people who already hold too much power are taken to establish systems of power, we have an abuse of Scripture.
Instead of attempting to baptize worldly systems of unchecked power, we need to follow larger biblical principles and establish institutions based on shared authority. This is, after all, what God did at the beginning. As a result, we envision governments based on checks and balances, groups of leaders, and the rule of law, and a workplace where bosses do not own their employees. We follow the NT pattern of establishing a plurality of elders in a church, rather than giving unilateral control to the senior pastor.
We comprehend that the family is most likely to achieve the biblical ideal of unity (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:31) when husband and wife share authority in the home. We also acknowledge that even children possess a level of rightful authority over their own lives and that when parents overstep those bounds, dismissing their concerns or dictating their tastes or controlling every move, we sin against our children and provoke them to anger (Eph. 6:4).
We recognize that although the biblical world was hierarchically ordered with excessive power granted to certain individuals, Scripture does not demand that we construct our world in the same manner.
At least we ought to.
Photo by Joy Stamp on Unsplash
[1] From the video “Going Deeper: Exploring Authority” under the section entitled “Authority: Our Response to God-Ordained Leadership” on the IBLP website.
[2] See Marg Mowczko’s related article “Authority in the Church,” where she discusses spiritual authority and explains that the idea that such authority is something we exercise “over” another person is false.
[3] Grant R. Osborne, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 741.
Sarah J. O'Connor 