Shiny

We need Jesus every single day in order to live the life to which He has called us. Legalism won't do it; in fact, Paul took the Galatians to task by trying to live by faith and setting up rules for themselves to follow in their own strength. Romans 3 teaches us:
21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference;
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus...

While the law is described in Galatians as a "tutor" so that we may come to know Christ, once we are under grace but trying to keep a set of rules that we think pleases God, it becomes an exercise in futility and can be, as it's been said, exhausting.  We don't have the capability to keep the Law. Under the New Covenant, we are called to walk by faith, believing in Jesus, being in a right relationship with God, and allowing His Spirit to empower us to bring Him glory. 

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God has written His Law on our hearts - His heart is reflected in His Word. The Law was given so that people might recognize what pleases Him, but as Galatians 3 states, it is not intended to save a person; that is done by the work of Jesus as we accept Him. We can read these words:
10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them."
11 But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for "the just shall live by faith."
12 Yet the law is not of faith, but "the man who does them shall live by them."
13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree"),
14 that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

But, legalism, which Jesus called out when He saw it, cannot save nor satisfy us; it can choke the joy right out of a believer who tries to live by it.  

There is a tactic of the enemy that is insidious, but not surprising.  And, if we're not careful, we can find ourselves doing it.  It's simple: find a person or small group that is engaged in behavior you don't like and characterize, or mischaracterize, entire large groups of people by the mistakes or misappropriations.  We see it all the time - associate people or groups of people you don't like with erroneous behavior. 

That seems to be the aim of a documentary series that has been made available on Amazon Prime.  It's called, Shiny Happy People, and it purports to be a behind-the-scenes look at the reality show family, the Duggars, even including comments from one of the 19 children in the family and her husband.

But, in its wake, according to Ministry Watch, the documentary cuts a wide swath of criticism through organizations and people with whom this family associated.  Warren Cole Smith notes:

In 2015, Josh Duggar publicly apologized for having “acted inexcusably” following reports he molested five girls, including some of his sisters, by fondling them. TLC announced that the show was officially canceled and would not resume production. A spin off show, “Counting On,” aired in December 2015 and was cancelled in 2021, due to Josh Duggar’s arrest for child pornography. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his crimes.

All of this has, of course, been tabloid fodder for the past dozen years. In the beginning it was a “feel-good” story of a large and happy family, and more recently it was a train wreck from which we could not avert our eyes.

The problem with treating the story as tabloid fodder, which this new documentary continues to do, is that it will likely prevent the church from dealing with important issues.

For example, “Shiny Happy People” either ignored or edited out reasonable voices that could have added much insight and nuance to this story. The very subtitle, “Duggar Family Secrets,” suggests that what was in the documentary was previously not known, or had been somehow silenced by a powerful fundamentalist or evangelical cabal.

The "star" of the documentary, as Smith contends, is not really the Duggars, but the founder of the Institute of Basic Life Principles, Bill Gothard.  Gothard was removed from the ministry he established due to inappropriate behavior, and Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their family were very active in the IBLP movement, likely to a fault.  But, a lot of "straight lines" have apparently been drawn by the series that are not there. 

Warren, who had researched and even interviewed Gothard during his time at WORLD Magazine,  called out "the producers’ inability to differentiate between various tribes within evangelicalism and fundamentalism. The documentary tried to suggest that the Duggars and Gothard were at the center of a vast network of organizations that included TeenPact, Patrick Henry College, the Family Research Council, Generation Joshua and the Home School Legal Defense Association, and others. The documentary did not include interviews or statements from any of these organizations, though their critics — including Alex Harris, Josh Pease, and Kristin du Mez — were on full display."

Jared Longshore writes on the Reformation and Revival blog:

The reason the Duggar family and this particular documentary catches the eye is because it touches upon both structure and spirit. These are age old principles with an age old relationship. The structure of the traditional family—the Christian family, the real family—testifies to a structured world, an ordered cosmos.

We live in a time when there is quite a movement to burn down the ordered cosmos, which means deconstructing the divinely ordered family. Leftist revolutionaries have been after this for decades. Kate Millett, one of the leaders of second wave feminism, was gunning for this back in the 60s when she held here meetings and chanted about destroying the American Patriarch. How would she do it? By promoting prostitution, abortion, and other sexual perversions.

Unfortunately, the good intentions and Biblical foundation of IBLP were discredited by the legalism that seemed to be associated with it.  Longshore writes:

The truth is that our problems are not found in the structure. They are found in our hearts. I’m not denying the existence of systemic sin. I am ousting the lie that the problem is in hierarchy, order, structure, and God’s design of male, female, and the natural family. That is the central lie of the Duggar documentary.

Longshore says that "Those behind the Duggar documentary are not your friends..."  A TV Insider article bears that out. 

The article integrates comments from several of the makers of the documentary, Cori Shepherd Stern, Blye Pagon Faust, and Olivia Crist, and attempts to lambast Christians who believe that the Bible offers a proper moral foundation for our country. The deploying of Christian people to positions of influence is somehow bad in their eyes, but seem to be OK with un-Christian beliefs taking root. Case in point - the article says that Michael Farris...

...founded the Home School Legal Defense Association and is the former President and CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund), a Christian legal advocacy group that aims to expand Christianity in public schools and advocates against reproductive and LGBTQIA+ rights. AFD played a major role in the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Farris’s connection to IBLP is detailed in a book written by his wife, Vickie Farris, A Mom Just Like You.

“Her husband went to a Bill Gothard seminar, he came home and said, ‘we’re gonna have as many kids as God will give us,’ basically. I’m paraphrasing, but they became a Quiverfull family,” Stern says. Quiverfull is a Christian theological position that sees large families as a blessing. They abstain from all forms of birth control and sterilization. It’s the philosophy the Duggars follow, as taught by Gothard. Shiny Happy People details how these Quiverfull children were trained to be “arrows” deployed to “take America back for Christ,” as said by former Generation Joshua member Alex J. Harris, who’s also interviewed in Episode 4.

Harris wrote a piece for The Gospel Coalition, in which he said: 

...the Joshua Generation story is one worth telling. It’s an ambitious plot that has been far more successful than most people realize, and it helps explain much of our current political, cultural, and spiritual moment. To the extent someone was trying to tell even part of that story, I wanted to help them do it accurately—ideally paired with a more biblical vision for Christian engagement with politics and culture.

But, Harris seems to distance himself from that involvement now, writing, "there’s no discussion of what a more faithful approach to Christian political engagement might look like."  

The TV Insider piece pulls back the layer on the true agenda.  Get this:

Looking ahead, government regulation will play a huge part in combatting the continued growth of oppressive religious fundamentalism. The “linchpin” in this “whole system of indoctrination,” Faust says, is the homeschooling program. “There was a piece yesterday in The Washington Post that was really beautifully written about a family who had moved out of the homeschooling space and enrolled into public schooling, and what a huge, huge step that was for them as a family because of their greater extended family within their church, within their belief system. If you look at this, and you start looking at the numbers of kids who are homeschooled in this country with little or to no oversight of what they’re learning, that is inexcusable.”

This documentary and the discussion surrounding it illustrates that all of us have our flaws.  While no one lives the Christian life perfectly, we can all admit we need the presence of Jesus flowing through us in order to walk in obedience.

It doesn't come from our own strength - that's where legalism takes root.  Legalism can corrupt the best ambitions.  When we try to please God based on rules and regulations that we set up for ourselves or allow others to set up for us, it becomes a frustrating exercise.  Legalism grows from human understanding of what it takes to please God.  I contend that the Gothard/IBLP teachings have a seed of truth, including proper Biblical authority and moral purity.  But, as the enemy does, he will distort that purity of Biblical truth and cause people to be in bondage to a system that smothers, rather than sets free. 

We can also recognize that you can take a set of facts, expand those facts with conjecture, and craft a narrative that is inaccurate.  The documentary seems to suggest that the plight of Josh Duggar, his immorality, is directly related to his exposure to the Gothard teaching, and, to a degree to the practice of homeschooling, and even to the homeschool movement.  Facts + uninformed opinion (+ destructive agenda) can lead to deception. The Bible says that each person will carry his or her own load - Josh Duggar made numerous mistakes, but quite frankly, he's one of 19 kids - what about the others?  What about Jinger, who has written what appears to be a more compassionate take on her family's lives? She seems to have turned out OK.  What about the other males in the Duggar family?  I haven't heard about other "scandals" in the family. C'mon - people can and should not be painted with a broad brush. Beware of using individuals and small groups to paint a negative picture of a large group. But, who cares, when you can pick and choose content to fit a certain agenda?

We can certainly learn lessons from the Duggar story, but we have to be careful who we listen to.