Rachel Goes to Bill Gothard's Basic Seminar, Part 2

Monday: The Principle of Design, the Power of Storytelling, and ... Getting Enough Fiber?

I am finally getting back to this series after a perfectly glorious week of camping and off-roading with family in Moab, Utah. Between catching up with seminary coursework and trying to get stubborn, red dirt stains out of my daughters’ camping clothes, I wasn’t able to meet my goal of doing one blog post a week, but I was finally able to finish what would be the first day of Basic Seminar teaching over the weekend. And so, without further ado, let us continue in our Adventures in the Institute of Basic Life Principles Basic Seminar (AIBLPS, for short).

To set the scene: the Basic Seminar took the format of a week-long, evening conference. Monday through Friday, your typical attendee would get off work (well, male attendees, anyway), eat a rushed dinner and drive straight to wherever the Seminar was being held. Saturday was a long day, starting earlier since the 9 - 5 crowd would not be working. You arrive Monday night and receive a roughly 100-page booklet with fill-in-the-blank style pages. You find your seat in a sold-out stadium that is usually reserved for famous rock stars or major sporting events. But tonight, you’re not going to see a sports star and you’re definitely not going to hear any rock music. Tonight, the stage is empty except for a podium, a slide projector, and a lone figure in a perfectly pressed navy blue suit.

You flip open your workbook to the first page. “Find lasting answers by discovering a ‘new’ way of life” it says. A few pages later, illustrated by the black-and-white artwork that is characteristic to IBLP material, you find yourself looking at the seven “Basic Principles.”

The Principles

The Basic Principles are the backbone of the Basic Seminar, and the backbone of everything that Bill Gothard taught. They are, according to Gothard, a set of “universal and non-optional” rules that are the key to living a successful life. What exactly is meant by “success” in Gothard’s paradigm? It’s important to understand that Gothard was not just talking about a spiritually, eternally successful life; a life that would end in hearing God say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” He was talking about success in a very tangible, earthly sense.

In his opening session, Gothard makes this claim:

“To the degree that an individual, or a couple, or a family, or a business, or a nation follows God’s principles - principles of Christianity - to that degree they experience wealth, health, wisdom. To the degree they don’t, they experience traceable conflicts.”

The allure of the Basic Seminar was really pretty straightforward: Gothard’s audience believed that by learning and applying his message, they could experience God’s blessing in marriage, child-rearing, finances, health … basically every category of life.

How was it that Gothard convinced his audience that following the Basic Principles would do what he said it would? The answer to this lies in the power of storytelling. As I look over my notes from the Monday sessions, I would estimate that 50% or more consists of narrative, with much of that narrative being personal anecdotes. In one, 90-minute session, I counted nine anecdotes: that’s an average of one story every ten minutes. The veracity of these stories is hard to prove or disprove. Gothard mostly tells stories about private conversations involving people he counseled over the years; how they applied the Basic Principles and experienced some dramatic change for the better. The people in these stories are almost always conveniently anonymous.

More than one of these anecdotes involved at least the suggestion that something miraculous had taken place after a person followed the principles. For example, Gothard tells the story of a young man who has terrible, disfiguring burns all over his face. Gothard, employing Basic Principle # 1 (Design), advises him to begin thanking God every day for his burns, because the outward disfigurement will develop inward character. A few years later, Gothard is approached after a speaking event by this same young man, who he doesn’t even recognize because apparently after following his advice, this young man’s skin started to heal on its own, much to the surprise of his doctors. The young man exuberantly shares that he is now engaged to be married.

Why is storytelling so integral to the Basic Seminar? Through story-telling, Gothard could create an alternate universe where he controlled outcomes; or at least he controlled what outcomes the audience saw. We learn through experience, but stories expand our opportunity for this kind of learning by opening a window into other people’s experiences. Narrative, whether we realize it or not, works its way into our understanding of how the world works. Storytelling also allows the one telling the story to interpret the events. Gothard’s interpretation of the events he narrated always led his listeners to the same conclusion: the Basic Principles worked for this person; they can work for you, too.

Storytelling, like personal experience, has a cumulative effect, which is - I believe - why Gothard saw to it that his audience would be exposed to many, many hours of it. In her memoir Becoming Free Indeed, Jinger Vuolo (formerly Duggar) recalls that when her now-husband Jeremy first approached Jim-Bob Duggar, the family patriarch, about courting her, one of the things he was required to do was to listen to at least fifty hours of Bill Gothard’s teaching. The Basic Seminar itself is 25-30 hours, many of which are taken up with narrative. That’s a lot of stories. As I’ve researched IBLP and Bill Gothard in my adult years, I’ve been surprised how many of the stories that I know - stories that were probably told to me by my parents or older siblings - find their source in IBLP materials. These are stories that I’ve believed and repeated to others as true. They are stories that have undeniably shaped my decision-making, even after I began to critically evaluate IBLP.

How Gothard Uses the Bible

Near the beginning of the workbook, there is a three-page, small-print list of scripture references that will be used throughout the Seminar. It creates the impression that Gothard’s Basic Principles aren’t really Gothard’s Basic Principles - they are the very themes of scripture, and to reject them is to reject the word of God itself. And this is characteristic of Gothard: he is very good at creating the impression that he is teaching from the Bible.

Here are a few examples of how Gothard makes reference to scripture, but then goes on to make a point that has nothing whatsoever to do with the verse:

1. Citing the Levitical ordinance against mixing wool and linen (Leviticus 19:19, Deuteronomy 22:11), Gothard teaches that mixing wool and linen causes excessive perspiration, which weakens the muscles.

2. Citing the ordinance against boiling a young goat in its mothers’ milk (Exodus 23:19), Gothard teaches that we shouldn’t consume milk and meat in the same meal. Here he shares an anecdote about a young boy with a broken bone who wasn’t healing because he was being given meat and milk together.

3. And my personal favorite: citing Matthew 4:4 (“Man shall not live by bread alone”), Gothard claims that the Bible is teaching us that we need to eat more fiber. This one is so far-fetched that I have to quote it directly so you’ll believe me:

   [Jesus] didn’t say man shall not live by meat alone, but by bread alone … Dr. Dennis Berken [a “world renowned” doctor who I googled but couldn’t find] … has demonstrated clearly that if we would only consume - like the scripture talks about - greater amount fiber in bread in our diet, that we would not have colon cancer, appendicitis, varicose veins, kidney stones, etc etc …” 

How does Gothard arrive at such strange conclusions? Well, it starts with what he thinks the Bible is for. In session 1, Gothard asks the audience, “How do we read God’s word?” This is actually a really important question. I’m just starting a Biblical Interpretation class at seminary, and much of it has to do with reading the Bible with the interpretive rules that the Bible itself provides. One of the key texts in this endeavor is Luke 24:13-35, in which the resurrected Christ appears to His disciples on the road to Emmaus and opens their minds to the way that all scripture relates to Himself:

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. - Luke 24:25-27

The Bible is a powerful thing, and in the wrong hands it can actually be a dangerous thing. According to the Apostle Peter, it is entirely possible for people to twist the scriptures to their own destruction (2 Pet. 3:16). And those who do this, often carry others along with them. There are potentially as many interpretations of a given text as there are people to read it. We tend to find what we’re looking for when we read scripture. When we look for Christ - and in particular His suffering and glory - when we read the Bible, it narrows the interpretive possibilities and keeps us from getting into weird waters.

One of the most dangerous ways to read scripture is also one of the most plausible-sounding: as a manual for living a good life. And this is exactly what Bill Gothard proposes that we do. Answering his own question, Gothard explains that scripture contains both direct commands, and “case law.” When we read the second category, Gothard says, we must be on the look-out for the “basic principle” that lies behind the command, and we must then apply that basic principle to other areas. It is through this method of Bible interpretation that Gothard manages to go from a temporary ordinance given to a specific people during a specific time, to forbidding modern people to eat meat and dairy at the same time.

For Gothard, the Bible is first and foremost a practical book. He complains that the majority of Christians are not getting the full benefit of the scriptures because they are too focused on doctrine, rather than applying the word of God to real-life problems. At no point in this discussion does he address the fact that the Bible is given to us “so that we might have hope” (Rom. 15:4). Hope, not in our ability to follow a set of “basic principles,” but rather in Christ’s sacrificial death and perfect obedience to God’s law on our behalf.

The Principle of Design

We will very quickly go through Principle #1, which is Design. The principle of design is described by Gothard as,

Understanding the specific purposes for which God created each person, object and relationship in my life and living in harmony with them.

Each of the seven principles comes with a certain “pay-off”; the pay-off for following the principle of design is “self-acceptance.”

I will probably say this many times throughout this series, but one of the things that struck me about this session was how much of it sounded completely unremarkable, unobjectionable, and frankly, unoriginal. I am going to be drawing out problematic moments in all of the sessions, but I don’t want to give the impression that the whole Seminar is just a rapid-fire sequence of problematic cult-speak. Much of what was said in this session could very easily have been said by a mainstream Christian teacher, or even by a secular self-help guru.

I expected this session to focus on design as it relates to gender, but it was actually only mentioned in passing (although you can see how the things he says could very easily be applied to the area of “gender roles”). Gothard actually spends most of this session talking about coming to terms the specific features of our bodies. He focuses particularly on teenagers’ trouble accepting their bodies; their difficulty accepting their perceived “flaws.” Behind the “surface problems” of self-criticism, withdrawal, depression, etc, Gothard identifies one of his favorite problems: bitterness. People are dissatisfied with their appearance or physical abilities because deep down, they are bitter at God for designing them the way he did.

One of Gothard’s main points is that outward appearance doesn’t determine inward character, or true happiness. He explains why God might give us a less-than-satisfactory appearance:

If God knows that the great potential of your life … is the development of character within, and he sees that in order to develop inward character, he must sacrifice outward beauty, then he will do that. That’s why God allows defects on the outside: because he wants to develop inward character.

However, for someone who says that outward appearance doesn’t matter, he goes on to talk about it a lot. For one, he says that our “countenance” (IBLP alumni will recognize a favorite word of Gothard’s) can be changed by our character. Looks don’t matter, but if you become a better person on the inside, you’ll probably begin to look more attractive on the outside. He also shares story after story where someone applied the basic principle of design and started thanking God for their “defects,” and then somehow those defects were reversed. While saying that appearance doesn’t matter, he also uses the hope of improving appearance as a motivation for following his advice.

Gothard also seems to contradict his own ethic of valuing inner beauty over outward appearance when he talks at length about fixing outward defects, if they are fixable. He frames this as something you don’t do from vanity, but out of a concern that some physical blemish may hinder your work for the Lord. Physical defects may be a “distraction from your message.” He uses an example from his own life, which is particularly troubling for reasons I will explain. Earlier, he had mentioned that he had crooked teeth, which I thought was strange because as you’ll see if you watch any of the Seminar video footage, he actually has conspicuously, unnaturally straight teeth. But here he explains why he had them straightened: he tells of a time when he was speaking to a crowd, and afterward a group of dentists (who apparently travel in herds?) approached him and said, “Bill, we love your message but as dentists we’re distracted by your crooked teeth.” They offer to fix his teeth, for free, and - for the sake of gospel - he accepts.

You can choose to believe or not believe this story (personally, I think it’s hogwash), but the reason why I find it disturbing is because according to the stories on Recovering Grace, offering to pay for dental work to fix “distracting” teeth was one of the things that Gothard used as a grooming technique. When you think about it, approaching someone and telling them that some physical feature of theirs is distracting is a pretty weird thing to do. And offering to fix it for free doesn’t make it any less weird. I experienced something similar when I was 19, working for a man in his 40s whose behavior I now recognize as predatorial. One of the things he did was sign me up, at his own expense and without telling me, for a monthly Proactive subscription - a popular acne treatment at the time. I was too young to realize that he was tearing down my confidence in my physical appearance, over-stepping appropriate boundaries between employer and employee, and doing it under the guise of trying to be kind and helpful. Gothard’s behavior follows the same pattern. His story about these oh-so-helpful, oh-so-generous dentists would have made it seem normal when he did the same thing, later, to young women who came to work for him. Spiritualizing this controlling, manipulative behavior by making it about “not hindering your ministry” only makes it worse.

There is a lot more about this session on the principle of design that I could talk about - for instance, his theory that “Whatever attitude a teenager has to his/her father will soon be their attitude toward the Lord,” or his discussion on “inherited sin tendencies.” And, I hope to get to his re-definition of the word “grace” in another post. But for all our sake’s, I will leave these alone for now wrap up Monday night’s teachings here. Next week, schedule allowing, I will be covering Tuesday, and principle #2: authority.