The Duggers Documentary

Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke.

I'm Pastor Cameron. And this is the Uncut Podcast. We have uncut, honest conversations about faith, life, and ministry.

Today we're going to be talking about sort of a, what we hope to maybe be a relevant

topic. seen or heard about this documentary.

What, what, where is it on?

It's on prime. It's on Amazon prime. So it's a Amazon original or whatever unique to that streaming platform.

Shiny, happy people, right?

Documentary documenting the, I don't know if it's the rise and fall of the Duggars as much as it's just the fall of the Duggars and

sort of some of the part of it. Yeah. I mean, part of it, I haven't seen it.

Cameron has watched all of it. I'm familiar with a Fair amount of the material that's probably in there, but not some of the details perhaps right I would say that,

the documentary is as much about,

the IBLP the Institute for basic life principles and the.

What is described as a parachurch ministry of of a man named Bill Gothard,

and those who essentially follow those life principles, and there's certain features to their lives

and families and faith that are pretty distinguishable.

But the poster child, so to speak, or the poster family for the IDLP

was the Duggars, is the Duggars, maybe, I don't know.

Whether or not you like ever watched the 19 kids and counting or was that on TLC TLC. Yeah. And

then all of the fallout from what happened with their oldest son, Josh. And like this documentary

kind of comes out of all that stream of things. Yeah. So probably like upfront, it's worth saying

one, if you're like, hold up, I don't want any spoilers for this documentary that,

you know, you don't, you want to watch it without any sort of like spoilers or whatever, like, um.

Warning, spoilers, spoilers. Um, although there's nothing really,

yeah, I don't know as much as a documentary of recent events can be spoiled for you. Um,

you know, I mean, I guess like if you're super, super, like you,

you were not involved or you didn't know any of that stuff while it was happening,

it might be all brand new news to you and you might want to sit down and just

watch the documentary, but, or you might not, or you might not,

like we're not necessarily endorsing or recommending.

Oh, I'm going to talk about that. Yeah.

And then the other bit is that the documentary does deal with like,

like topics of abuse, um, sex and other things of sensitive topics and things like that.

So we don't have like planned out exactly what we're going to say we're going

to talk about, but it's fair to say since the documentary deals with some of that, that,

that will possibly at least probably come up in some of our conversation.

So if you're listening with kids or you're not prepared at the moment to listen

to a conversation that might result revolve around some of those topics,

Like maybe come back to this or skip this episode if you feel like that's not a good space for you. So.

Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I would.

Would start out by saying that I have really mixed feelings towards.

Documentaries like this in general yeah so I haven't watched it I watched about 15 minutes of it and go ahead and finish your thoughts I have a I have a larger thing about documentaries that I just want to say right in the framing tool.

Yeah I don't necessarily.

Like watching things like this or think that they're particularly helpful,

in actually either clarifying or working through some of the issues and situations that they present.

It's the same with like the Hillsong documentary. That's how.

Which I did watch that one. I did not watch that one. Yeah.

And I don't know if it was intentional or non-intentional that I didn't watch it, I don't know.

But there's a sense in me where I feel like because some of these documentaries run pretty parallel,

to a lot of the life that I live, faith and the church, scripture and family and all of that,

that I want to watch them to get a sense of what the conversation is around it.

Certainly not that I'm like, you know.

I think that part of the problem, I don't know if it's a problem,

part of the thing with documentaries that I don't particularly like is that they, on the front end.

Uh, communicate implicitly an unbiased perspective on the issues at hand.

Like these are just the facts you decide, you decide at the end how to paint the picture.

But the reality is, is like documentaries are really creative storytelling that has

an aim and has a bias and wants to lead the viewer to the place of the conclusion.

Now I'm not saying, that's not to say that like, oh, there's too much bias in this particular

documentary and I don't believe it.

I don't, like I said, I'm not, I'm not an apologist for the IVLP.

I'm not an apologist for the Duggars. Like, it's like, it's some of the stuff is disgusting.

And, but I also want to be aware when I watch things like this, which is why I both like,

I'm interested because it runs parallel with my life, but I, I, I dislike watching it because

it's very clearly slanted in a direction.

Skipping over, like skipping across the surface of deeply, deeply nuanced issues.

And then, so if you're not really entrenched in the issues, it's impossible to have

a unbiased conclusion.

You just kind of take hook, line, and sinker, whatever the documentary producers want you to see or believe.

So. You put... Um...

The rise and fall of Mars Hill podcast in a similar category of like documentary, obviously different mediums, audio interviews, but do you feel like this falls in line with that with kind of the similar thing?

I absolutely do. Yeah.

Except that podcast. I mean, we could talk a long time about that podcast.

And I have a lot of strong feelings about it, mainly because I think that I was hopeful in episode number one

that this was going to be a deeply helpful thing for the church.

And the reality is that it kind of felt to me at the end that this was just a giant witch hunt.

Yeah, at the end, the first couple episodes, I was very hopeful that they were going

to dive into some nuanced, difficult explanations, because the opening mission of it is to.

Again, we're not trying to make this whole episodes about this podcast, but the idea was to,

make it, you know, why do churches or why do our churches keep being plagued with leadership

issues like this one that is typified in the Mars Hill? Right. Where that answer.

What is it about church culture that creates this type of upswell?

Right. And that question at the end is left largely unexplored, in my opinion, and.

Ends up being more of a detailing the dirty laundry of a particular church.

Yeah. And a particular person. Yeah. Really? I mean, it's,

It does translate out to the church and the elders and those who protected him and everything like that and again,

I'm not a Marcel apologist and I'm not a mark. I'm not a mark Driscoll apologist, right?

Advocating no, not at all But again frustrated that there was nuance that was just correct left very very interesting questions that were left very unanswered or unexamined,

So I I personally have felt,

Since particularly since like, you know, people can kind of argue it was like, uh, cause when we say

documentary, right, we think of, you probably think of a documentary that you saw like in,

I don't know, high school, David Attenborough, David Attenborough, like World War II.

Nature documentary. Right. And documentaries at one point had this philosophy behind them,

right, the idea of trying to be as much as possible a unbiased observer, right, try and

tell the story as it presents itself and not try to add interpretive lenses to it, right.

And that was at one point the philosophy behind most people who made documentaries.

Now you can argue as to how well they ever actually accomplished that because the moment

you turn on a video camera, someone is going to act differently when they know they're recorded,

like all those different things, like whether or not documentaries ever achieved an unbiased

presentation of the facts is up for debate, but that was at least the goal at one point.

And I think many of us still have that concept when we turn on a documentary of like, oh, okay,

I'm expecting them to be as unbiased and truthful and present everything kind of fairly and squarely,

Like and what I'm gonna get is the closest approximation to the truth as possible,

That's the kind of mindset that we have when we hear the word documentary in turn on a film. I.

Believe and maybe this is how maybe this started well before This but for me, this was when I became well aware of it was when Netflix

One of the first things Netflix started making when, you know, Netflix started as just making

showing other people's movies.

The first thing they started doing before they started producing their full on Hollywood

blockbuster films for their own streaming service was making documentaries.

Like the first first movies that they made in house and produced on their live stream

service was documentaries.

And I remember watching those early Netflix documentaries and saying, I think this is

closer to propaganda or a thought-opinion piece than it is a documentary.

And so I think with the advent and success of some of those documentaries and what we currently see, not all documentaries, but many documentaries have a particular goal, slant, opinion or viewpoint that is,

kind of unapologetically advocated, edited for, like scripted for.

Um, and so when we sit down, when I sit down to watch a documentary, any time anymore,

if it's a documentary made within the last 10 to 15 years, I pretty much just assume

that this is an opinion piece, uh, that's being edited together to make it as compelling as possible. Right.

It's an expose. Yeah. And so, and, and with that, like if you, if you know how to like, if you know how to look

for when interview clips are kind of edited together. You can see how things are kind of like,

they change the pacing of a thing or they maybe leave out the framing of a question.

You can begin to watch and find the seams in documentaries and see, oh, maybe this was maybe.

Not altered as so as to be untruthful, but maybe altered to be in such a way as misleading.

Right? One of the things that for the Mars Hill podcast that kind of bugged me at times was the

inclusion of ominous music underneath what was not necessarily ominous information, right?

So, you know, and that was when he decided to do it. It's got some dramatic music or something,

And that is telling you how to feel and what to think about what's being said.

And so the inclusion of dramatic music like that, like all that is informing and affecting the way

that you are believing and receiving that information.

Yep. You want to see an interesting...

Example of this, you can go onto YouTube and you can say like, um, movie trailers, uh, edited to

look like horror film or something like that. Type in something like that. And what you can find is

like Disney movies that have been recut with different music and different transitions in

the trailer to make it look like it's a horror, scary movie, scary movie. And you'll be like,

holy cow, I didn't realize frozen was absolutely terrifying. Right.

And so, and all that is, is just changing the editing style, adding different music,

cutting different parts of dialogue to make it sound ominous or scary, right? And all of a sudden

you're like, I'm scared to watch that movie now, right? Cause it looks like that. So that can be

done in a documentary piece. So all that, I want, I wanted to just throw that out there cause that's

It's just like my own personal media literacy thing

that I just, I think we're largely unaware of that shift in media in the last several years that's happened.

Yeah, well, and it also, we also have the dynamic of kind of like natural human tendency.

To want to rubberneck at train crashes, car crashes.

Yes.

To it is we we have a penchant for wanting to view or watch or get in the middle of voyeuristically

seeing the calamity of something else. I don't, I'm sure that there are some really like...

Articulated theological opinions on why we like to do that as humans.

Is it just more complicated schadenfreude? If I can say that German word correctly.

Yeah, I don't know. It's certainly that there's this sense of maybe we like to see

disaster in others because we recognize, even at a subconscious level, our own like, the sinful

disaster of our own souls. And it makes us feel comforted even for a brief moment to see it.

Reflected somewhere else rather than dealing with it in our own lives. I don't know, like,

that's kind of just made up on the spot there.

But because, you know, there I part of the part of the reason that I wanted to watch this one shiny happy people is because

there was a season of life where I was like, I think I even and one of my earliest blogs.

Wait, you have a plug? I did. I do. It's still in existence.

Are you going to delete it after this? You could probably go out and find it.

I think I wrote a blog post titled In Defense of the Duggars, which now is quite embarrassing.

Sure.

But it's also not. Right. because I was operating off of what was presented to me.

And in the earliest reality shows, It was presented as, here's this.

Conservative. I would say marginally evangelical theology. I wouldn't really put them in the

evangelical camp, so to speak. No, they belonged a little bit more in the fundamentalist camp.

But had an obvious worldview of wanting to live their lives and raise their families

the way that they felt or interpreted God desired them to.

And they didn't really care too much about what the world thought about that.

And as a general principle, that's what I wanna do too. I wanna raise my family in a way

that I believe God would want me to,

with principles that maybe the world doesn't understand,

with decisions that maybe the world can never get behind.

And not really care about what those on the outside, proverbial outside, think about how my family looks,

or what my family does, or whatever, because I'm doing it in a sense of faithfulness

and obedience to God.

And so there was this time period where I was like, yeah, everyone thinks the Duggars are super weird.

And it's super awkward.

And it's like, how could you ever wear skirts or not kiss until you're married or anything like that.

And I'm like, yeah, there's things in their life that I'm like not personally on board with.

But I get why they're doing what they're doing, And I, while I don't.

Wouldn't adopt that particular practice myself. I.

Thought I had an understanding of why they were making the decisions that you're making

well like it like if that was continued like if none of the Exposé or any of the stuff that like we now know,

Had happened has happened whatever if we still if that was the narrative that we were aware of

I'd probably be in agreement with what you just said, right?

It's only now that there's a fuller understanding of the of the complete narrative and all the things behind the scenes and all of that

That like that that stance begins to feel a little bit,

Like embarrassing or hollow maybe because we're like well now we're aware of like that's clear that just like with the documentary had a bias

towards a particular slant. The reality show was not reality. It had a bias

towards a particular slant. And I bought it hook, line, and sinker.

So, yeah, I mean like there was a time where I had a sense of like, Like, okay, I...

Like, I'm not going to join the chorus of people who think that these people are crazy. Right.

Just because I get it. Not for me, but I get it. Yeah. Well, I think as we're beginning to approach this, and I think something,

maybe another thing to talk about is that, like, the law, like, we live in a society,

something that everybody says in every podcast, we live in a society, but we live in a culture

society that has lost the ability for nuance and gray. Everything is either black or white,

either or. You're either for me or you're against me. The Duggars are either the greatest thing in

the world since they're proclaiming Christ or displaying a Christian lifestyle on cable

television on their reality TV show, or they're the worst thing in the world because of this,

this, this, this.

They don't let their daughters wear pants. Right. Right. Like we live in it, like you, you either, like you either have to buy one type of

narrative wholesale, or you have to buy the other opposing narrative at wholesale. And I think part

of our, part of the reason we're even having this conversation is because of a frustration over how.

The conversation has been had where there's been no nuance. There's been no, like, there's no,

it doesn't seem like there are very many people who are willing to say,

look, this isn't an either or. This is not as black and white as perhaps we would like it to be.

It's not a Superman comic where Superman is the good guy and Lex Luthor is the big bad

corporate guy. And Superman's right, Lex Luthor's wrong. It's not that simple. It's not a children's

story. It's not a comic book. This is like people, complex. It's like not black and white.

Right. Right. So, I mean, anyway, the documentary itself.

Kind of travels in two different, kind of tells two different stories that are really connected

to one another. It tells the story of the Institute for Basic Life Principles, the IBLP,

which was a parachurch ministry of Bill Gothard, and it,

Parallel to that is the poster family for the IBLP the Duggars that everyone knows because not many people,

Know but the extra layer of IBLP. Yeah, not many people know Bill Gothard and IBLP. They just know the Duggars, right?

Yeah, so but the two Nary can the two be separated. Yeah, and so the Institute for basic life principles.

You know championed by Bill Gothard and his family. I think it was his father that actually started it,

if I remember correctly. Their essential message, if you watch the documentary,

their essential message is that is one of authority. That God has a predetermined,

authority in creation, and that goes from God. And you'll see it several times in the documentary.

It's in their published literature, and they take pictures of it and put it on. It's in umbrellas.

I had someone teach this to me once when I was in high school.

Yes. So you have the big umbrella that covers over everything is God and his authority. And,

then the smaller umbrella that you have is the man or the husband. Not man as in humanity,

but man as in male. Father of the household.

Father of the household. Yeah. Which leaves no room for singleness. Mm-hmm. Which Paul said was.

Was a good thing. Was a pretty good thing, right? Yes. We can do episode on that. We can get into

that. So and then underneath the male or the husband was the woman or the wife. And underneath

the woman or the wife was the children. And it was linear, so there was no going around anything.

Yeah. You know, there was no – and so – And it creates a very strong equation between God's authority and what God says and then what

your parents say.

Or the person above you. Or the person above you. Wherever you sit in the hierarchy.

If the father has entrusted you to the teacher of the school or – right?

Yeah. Essentially, what it does is it empowers every authority figure in your life with the authority of God.

Correct. mates.

A lot of room for abuse. Tremendous room for abuse, which is, I mean, long story short,

exactly what happened. Yep. Exactly what happened in the IBLP, exactly what happened in the Duggars,

home. Yep. And what extended out into their oldest son's life, you know?

Know. So there's the sense of like, okay, because here's the thing, you know, like, do I believe, from a biblical

perspective, that God has thoughts on authority? Yes,

absolutely. Can I do whatever I want, whenever I want? Am I a a man of my own decisions, even opinions?

Well, maybe yes, but I sit under the authority of Christ as my head, okay?

Do I believe that God has entrusted children to me? Yes, I do.

Am I responsible for them?

Yes. Do I have authority in their lives?

Yes, I do, I believe that.

So therein lies the first nuance where the narrative in the documentary is, can you believe?

That the IBLP and the Duggars would promote the idea that you are not independent all into

yourself and that there is authority over you. The nerve of people to be that narcissistic

and even there's the equation of authority with abuse.

They go hand in hand, right? And it's not that simple.

Can authority be used in an abusive way,

to do abusive things? Absolutely, right?

And even Jesus talks about how the Gentiles use authority to lord over people, right?

But how his authority is an authority that leads him to serve others, right?

And so both of those authority structures doing different things.

And so it becomes like this story, the documentary becomes the story about how those who have bought the idea

of authority from the IBLP,

have used it only to make women subservient to men and to make children subservient to their parents.

And it essentially endows, like you said, the men of the world with unquestionable authority,

Authority because to question them means that you're questioning God. You're being rebellious. You're sinning. Yes.

Very dangerous. Yeah, very very very dangerous. Yes. Yeah Because you see you see Christ like Christ says things about even like government authority, right given to Caesar

What is Caesars, right?

Paul talks significantly about how we are to like understand God as

Sovereign over even the sovereign nations of the world right and how we were to like,

interact with governments and all of those things. Those passages exist, but the Bible

also holds this thing where it says, abandon your family if they cause you to not follow Christ.

Christians were known as being martyrs and political dissidents because they refused to

bow to Caesar and consider him a god because there was only one God and he was the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we see in the practice of the church, the history of the church, the teachings of the Bible,

this understanding that like, yeah, respect authority as long, but then also like, but,

Christ first, like Christ first. Like there is something that supersedes the immediate earthly authority at all points. And we've got to hold both of those.

Yeah, and the authority of Christ is itself nuanced, not in its ultimacy, but in the way in which it's.

Mediated to the world. There's an authority that Jesus came with

when he comes, like Mark chapter 10.

I have come not to be served, but to be a servant and give my life as a ransom for many.

That's the, he came in that authority, right? He will also come.

Revelation speaks very clearly about the authority in which Jesus will return.

Yes.

Which is a much different authority that as a servant to all, he's coming as the rider

on the white horse, right, with a sword,

and ready to do business.

And it's a passage that gives me goose bumps every time I read it, right?

And so authority is a very deeply held principle very deeply held principle within scripture.

Right, and we ought to, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

We ought to know how to submit to the authority of the Lord and to the natural authority of others in our lives,

but again, not to a wholesale place in which we allow them to abuse us or that they become God or they become,

there is one mediator between God and man, and that's Christ, no one else.

I think the question sometimes comes.

And maybe we talked about this before, we might have, or it might have just been

in a private conversation, I don't know, but talking about like, well, why?

Like we have this really individualistic, I am the captain of my own ship. I am the master of my own

soul. You know? I learned unto myself. Right. And why would I want to follow a God that demands,

that I like am submit to him? Right. What is happening when we ask that question? Well,

Well, here's my take on it, is that we take the ways.

In which the world, men and women in our lives who are sinful, have used authority,

sometimes authority in the name of God, to lord over us and to victimize us,

and to create trauma in our lives, right?

And so we have this experience with authority that creates significant pain in us.

And then we encounter a God who says,

essentially like you.

No uncertain time, uncertain terms, like I am the authority in your life.

I am your God. you are not, you are not a god unto yourself.

What does the clay have to say to the potter? Exactly, right?

And we immediately say, well, It's the same kind of authority.

That the authority of God in my life creates the same victimization to me than the ill-used authority of men and women in our lives. And it is categorically different,

in the same way that justice and revenge is different. Why does the Lord say,

do not repay evil for evil, I will avenge.

I will bring revenge.

Well, why can God get revenge and I can't?

Because he's God. Because he's God, right? And because he's perfect in every way, right?

And we use both revenge and authority only, authority only, not only, but we use it,

we can't escape our sinful use because we are sinful people of those things, right?

God approaches it and uses it with a perfectly holy approach, right?

And so every authority that he exerts, he is the only one that is worthy to exert the authority

because he is the creator and sustainer of all things.

We use the opportunity to try and become gods unto ourselves again.

We're, again, we're recommitting the sin of the garden. Admin Eve.

Sit with God in the garden in perfect communion with him. They, like, for a long time, the tree of good and evil,

the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a confusing concept for me,

and maybe is for you, for anyone who's listening.

But like, why would God withhold the knowledge of good and evil?

Well, he was acting as the arbiter of good and evil. He was the one who set the standard of what was right,

what was good, what was shameful, what was not.

And Adam and Eve are sitting underneath that.

And their decision to say, no, we want that knowledge for ourselves.

We want to be the moral judges for ourselves to make the decisions of what is good,

what is right, what is evil.

Was a decision to step out from underneath of that and to say, well, no, we can be gods unto ourselves.

We have now become like God and arbiters of what is right, what is wrong,

what is wise, what is unwise.

The thing is that they were bad arbiters of it. They called something ugly beautiful. They called

what was beautiful ugly, right? God obviously had different opinions about their nakedness.

Than they decided to have once they'd eaten the tree. And so, when we take authority and we misuse

it when we have authority or opportunity or anything like that, and we do not use that

opportunity to be like Christ to someone, we have then decided, you know what? My own decision and

arbitration of good and right and evil. We are once again eating from that tree

of knowledge and saying, I know what's right, mine is right, rather than saying,

No, how can I be Christ to a person? How can I be grace, love, and embody what Christ has been to me,

to others? If you do that, you're going to end up much better place than if you're trying to be,

what do I think is right and what is the right thing to do?

Right, yeah, yeah, there's a I I don't know that there's a more hard-hearted...

And I guess in my own mind, illogical position to hold than to hold the position of if.

God does not bend to my idea of what authority in my own life is, then he's not worth following.

Mm-hmm. Well, we want a God of our own making. We want a God of our own making. So it's like, well, if that's the way that God thinks,

that I'm not gonna follow him. That's a really bad plan. Because if you have enough sense to know

that there is a God and have a belief that he has created all things and that he is the basis for

all existence, whether you align with that sense of ethics or morality or authority or

submission or whatever it is, is inconsequential to the reality that there is a God that has

created all things, that without Him you do not live or move or have being at all.

So to say, I know that there is a God who is supreme, but I'm choosing to say, no, you're not doing it right,

so I'm not going to follow you,

is even outside of a Christian perspective, just a logically fool-hearted, hard-hearted thing to do.

Hearted thing to do.

I don't think that God is very moved by the bluff of, bluff of, well, if that's how you are,

I'm not following you then.

I don't think God's like, well, okay, I'll change then. Well, cause it makes you God. Right.

You know, so it's a. Okay, so back to the documentary. Back to the documentary.

So there's that one, which I think is a very big, big theme, right?

Well, it is the major theme, I think, yeah. Of just like that.

I think it's a, I think it's a IBLP thing is like that first time obedience

that like a lot of just authority, structure.

Obedience inside of the household, very high moral standard.

There's some really disturbing examples, not caricatures, but like actual videos

of IBLP proponents, pastors, preachers,

like showing how to spank a child on stage at a church.

And like, you know, and like demanding obedience the first time and if not, you know, like it becomes a matter of sin, matter of well both a matter of sin, but now like, okay, there's physical correction that must come along side of every instance of disobedience.

Obedience, otherwise the child will rebel up into adulthood

and become.

Become apostate. Apostate, yeah. Not follow Christ anymore. Right, and the.

Well you know, one of the more significant themes or threads within that whole movement is,

I mean, like it is the, it typifies a super.

Super one side one side of the spectrum.

Example of purity culture Right. Yeah, I so I haven't again. I haven't watched the documentary, but I'm familiar if I BLP because of people

I've interacted with in my life who have been severely affected by I BLP

So like I have some secondhand experience or knowledge of it. Yeah, that's where my that's where some of my

my responses and reactions are coming from.

Well, and so if you watch, if you'd ever watched like any of the Duggar documentaries before this one,

or not documentaries, reality shows,

you saw kind of the outworking of that purity culture, right, there's no kissing before, you're married,

you know, no time, zero time spent alone, you had to go, like you had chaperones

on every date you went on or every interaction,

and it wasn't a dating culture, It was a courtship culture where essentially

the father approved the daughter's suitor.

Yeah, and until they're married, they're under the father's authority no matter how old they are,

which leads to young women who are in their early 20s and yet to be wed or engaged,

who can't go do anything because their dad doesn't let them.

I know of families that that happens. Yeah, and so, you know, that,

and then so certainly, like, just imagine,

even the type of, like, culture that that creates around conversations of sexuality,

of relationships, of, you know,

all that's associated there.

And then it's like, I don't, I don't know that one necessarily necessitates the other, but the instances of

sexual abuse and victimization of people in that type of culture seem proportionately very high.

Well, there's a correlation there. I know studies have proven that.

And what I think it is, is it's not so much...

How do I want to say this? This is kind of tricky to say because of what purity culture means.

But it's not necessarily purity culture, it's the shame and guilt of purity culture,

and like the taboo-ness, and the guilt, the shame, the lack of education, lack of informed

decisions, trust, clarity, honesty, accountability, all of those things that is fostered by kind of a

a very simplistic one-note conversation that purity culture has, fosters all of those other

things. And those other things I think are what create the instances of abuse, of sexual

misconduct and all of that. That's how I would frame that. It might be kind of weird to say

that I don't think it's purity culture, but what I'm saying is that purity culture is like what,

it produces. It's a tributary of it. It's a tributary of it. Yeah, for sure. So I'm kind

splitting a bit of a hair there, but I think it's more specific to say not just purity culture,

it's the guilt, the shame, all of those things that come with purity culture that really funnel

into that circumstance, at least from my vantage point.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. And so, you know, the documentary ends up, you know, cataloging,

Some of the.

More public examples of.

Certain look for sexual Victimization that happened. Yeah with the IV LP leader Bill Gothard himself

Yeah, which I know some of right and then on a more granular granular view what was happening within the,

specific family of the Duggars, which is I,

Think I felt you know, so I have the personality where I am like a,

Justice driven person and I I feel like the need for justice when people are victimized

like very strongly, it's visceral to me.

And so I felt both like extraordinarily saddened,

by what I heard and by what they went through. And the victims of that, like just, oh my gosh, heartbroken. Yup.

Angry, super, super, super angry.

And just a whole slew of emotions, all wrapped up in the, also,

the reality of the knowledge that,

there are a thousand and one things that I don't know,

about how it was handled and how it was not handled, who knew and who didn't know,

what they said and what they didn't say, what maybe they did because they thought it was the right thing,

but it actually,

versus doing it because they had a sense of like,

well, I, you know, like,

that they, you know, a lot of, very rarely do people do something that they know is the wrong thing.

Yeah, they make excuses for why it's the right thing to do what they did No one wants to be the villain in the story, right? And so it was like what?

So just trying to wrap my head around Thinking what was the rationalization in your mind for why that was the right decision?

Yeah,

you know like telling your daughters that being sexually victimized.

Was something that was not a big deal and that they didn't really need to worry about going forward.

Thanks for watching.

And then on the other side, like what was the conversation with their eldest son, Josh,

who's now, I mean, I think most people know that Josh was convicted of possession

and I don't know if it was just possession or if it was also like, not production,

or but like the sharing of child pornography, I don't know.

But anyway, was found to be in possession of child pornography is now serving a 12-year sentence,

which is, if you're asking me, not long enough, but who am I at, you know, like justice is the Lord's.

And I think one of the big questions that the documentary,

I think, wanted to lead us to, or not a question, but a conclusion that they wanted to lead us to was,

you see, the IBLP created someone who traffics in child pornography,

which is, I think, really unfair to those who were in the IBLP

and think at the same time, this is disgusting behavior.

Um, so there's not, there wasn't a nuance there. It was only association right towards the guilty.

Yeah.

Well, yeah. And I, so I've watched maybe 10, 15 minutes of the documentary for, like it

was on when I came home one night and I was like, I, the episode was ending.

I was like, I can't watch more of this.

Yeah. Cause I was just getting angry.

I just was like, I need to wind down for the day and I can't, I can't stand to

watch it. And again, we're back to this desire to make things black and white, to make them

un-nuanced, either or, villain, white hat, black hat, good guy, bad guy, right? And it's just,

like that whole situation from beginning to end was just absolutely mishandled. No one's disagreeing,

I think, or arguing that point. But I think the broad brushstrokes that we want to paint,

everybody with as evil is just not fair. I don't think that's right.

Talk a little bit more about that. Well, so again, I haven't watched the whole documentary. I know the general brushstrokes

of the story of Josh, the oldest son of the Duggars.

But like, I think that there's, when it comes to most, particularly the news coverage that

I've always heard and seen, and everything kind of talking about that, kind of uses language and paints him as...

Only a, like, you know, villain, like as, as someone who's done something absolutely

reprehensibly evil. Now, again, what I'm not saying is that what he did was fine, excusable,

like inconsequential. Like, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that his possession and sharing of

pornography, like, is like totally reasonable or understandable and should just be excused,

Right? Again, I'm entering into the gray here. I'm doing something that not very many people I.

Don't think do. And I'm kind of nervous doing because it's a thing that nobody does. And

when people try and do it, they get lamb blasted. But at the same time, we also need to look at the

story of him and realize that when he began to, I think, sexually assault or his siblings,

he was at the age of 12, I believe, which is like either very, very early puberty. And if we're

talking, he grew up in this hyper purity culture where it's fair to assume he either got little to

no sexual education, um, and his behavior was not handled appropriately. It wasn't taken

to like the correct professionals, right?

Because they're talking about like, I...

They sent him away for like a summer. They sent him away for a summer.

To work at a camp. They tried scare tactics, trying to threaten sending him to prison.

But I was like, but he's a minor.

Right. And what he's doing, because of like his understand, like it's so debatable about his understanding of sexuality,

what is right and wrong in sexuality, All of that is so ambiguous.

Well, and with like his understanding of authority, I am a male.

Right. I have authority. Exactly. I can do like, yeah, exactly.

And so all of that, I'm like...

Is he as a child, because that's what he was, as culpable as a full-grown adult who knows,

who has an understanding of sexuality right and wrong? And when you begin to view him as.

I'm a big advocate of this, and this is something that a lot of people really,

really struggle with, particularly when it comes to issues of abuse is when this

language loves to come out. There's no such thing as a monster. I mean, that's my, like,

it's a pretty hard conviction. There's people do monstrous things, but I don't want to go so far

as to say that someone is inhuman or that someone at, because the Bible doesn't tell us that someone

at some point becomes no longer a image bearer of God. We're all created in the image of God.

We're all bestowed with some level of dignity and humanity. That's the basis for.

Christian morality. And so, people do monstrous things. They do absolutely horrendous things.

They absolutely align themselves with evil, with Satan, do terrible things and are deserving of

justice. But they do not cease to be human. They do not cease to lose the inherent dignity. And

when we begin to take people down a peg and say that they are monsters, that they are somehow

subhuman because of what they have done, we are undermining a whole lot of theology, morality,

and so that's a really hard line to hold. Particularly emotionally, because we want

to just say that someone's a monster and I think

My my thought is that like we need to guard ourselves and not just view him the oldest son of the duggars josh as a monster but we need to seek some level of understanding as well not to again excuse excuse not to release of like culpability cuz i i'm also not of the persuasion that.

Well, if we just understand someone's story and all the factors and the reasonableness of their decisions that like, oh, well, then like, okay, we can excuse them of that. No, I believe that we still have choices that we make, right?

Right? Even though there's all of these circumstances, and I think he's probably a victim of his own type of abuse and neglect.

And that his family put him through that has led him down a particular path and,

resulted in certain things being in his heart. He still also has agency.

Yes. Right. Like, like he still made choices. He still made choices.

That's a thing is like when we get as much as like I'm an advocate for mental

health and psychology and all of those things being incorporated into faith and

all of that, one of the unhelpful side effects of some of that language and

some of the things is that we've, well, by empathizing and understanding we can

come to a place where we see that they're no longer morally culpable. Like they're just a consequence of the things that happen to them or their effects or

the orders. Like no agency still exists. Yep. Right. 100%. So if I can just trying

to venture that out into the gray a little bit and say like... Yeah,

essentially,

The earliest example that we have of Josh walking down this pathway of like, this is not okay. Not okay behavior where those responsible for him or in here's your language authority over him extraordinarily mishandled in his upbringing, right?

It's education, it's context, it's all of these things.

That there is, that it is a part of the story.

It's a part of the story. We're not gonna say that it's causing anything

or not causing something else,

only to say that what he did was horrendous.

The story is very complex. The culture that he lived in was not favorable to a strong therapeutic response at the age

of 12, which is what he needed.

And whether or not the lack of proper response produced what happened later in his life,

I don't know that anyone can say, I think causation versus correlation.

Who knows? Contributing factor. Right. But he still has agency.

He still has agency. And as an adult who's married and has children.

Yeah.

I'm not willing to dehumanize him enough either to remove agency and choice from him.

Yeah. Right, because you could dehumanize him two ways. Right, by making him just a unsympathetic monster

or also by just making him into like a,

you know, totally understandable, inevitable consequence of the things that happened to him with no agency.

Right. those results in something that's less than human.

And I think it's, and I, and the reason I, I, I even venture to say all of that at all is because of like, just an awareness that inside of, like, inside of very hyper conservative Christian families where sex is not well taught, or taught about at all, or educated, that, like,

like things like that, or adjacent to that, or misunderstandings, shame, all the stuff that kind

of happens when you have children coming of age, beginning to understand sexuality with zero

helpful direction. Sometimes things happen and things like that happen often at a higher

correlation inside of conservative Christian families than outside. And so it's worth saying

that. I think it's worth venturing out and saying like this is not necessarily, I,

don't know, like I don't know who's gonna hear this podcast and what everybody's

history and experience with all of that is and so I think it is worth venturing

out into that and saying like and holding, I don't know, holding a little bit of space for the...

The difficulty of all of that and the nuance of that. Yeah. The difficulty of walking a hard line all the time.

Yes. And so, that's what I think. And I think that's worth doing because I think people might.

I don't know. I know lots of people who've grown up in circumstances like that with sexuality was

taught in a puritanical way. And there's lots of things that happen inside of that that bear

long-term consequences on people's lives if you're one of those people so sorry,

yeah genuinely and compassionately so sorry for your experience and what you

what you endured and what you may have gone through or may not have gone

through because of it mm-hmm yeah I think that's probably a good part point to stop today.

Yeah. It's not the most uplifting or conclusive place to leave, but that's probably where

we should end the conversation for now. As always, we'd love for you to comment.

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