Category: Cult

My Weigh or the Highweigh

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Back in 2017, I wrote this blog post about the church community begun by Gwen Shamblin Lara. I considered it a handy-dandy tutorial in how to recognize a cult. I’m not the only one who thought so, either: there are, I believe, two documentaries talking about the cult and allegations of abuse that came out of it.

I haven’t watched either one, because I’m less interested in her cult than I was in the way she made a name for herself in the 90s: she designed and taught a Christian weight-loss program. A friend told me about how, at Bill Gothard’s “training center” in Indianapolis, all of the girls in her group—most were teenagers or very young adults—were put on Gwen’s Weigh-Down Diet. “I was nearly anorexic by the time I got out,” she said.

In 2021, I saw the news that Gwen Shamblin Lara, her current husband, and a few other church leaders (including her son-in-law) were killed in a plane crash.

I give all of that background to explain why, when I saw her original Weigh Down Diet+ book in the thrift store, I was curious enough to buy it. I wondered just what thousands of church people—mostly women—were taught about how to lose weight in 1997.

(Note: I often see people give Content Warnings before discussing diets, eating disorders, weight-loss, and other food-related topics. Just in case that’s something you would appreciate, please be aware that these subjects are brought up in a shockingly casual way.)

(Another Note: Every time she mentioned the title of her diet and workshop, she inserted a cross symbol. In order for me to do that, I have to upgrade my WordPress account and activate a plug-in. I’m not doing that. We’ll have to settle for the + symbol.)

On one hand, I’m the target audience for The Weigh Down Diet + I am, after all, a middle-aged woman who carries around extra weight.

On the other hand, I’m not the target audience because I don’t care all that much about food. I like eating, but ultimately what I’m after isn’t the food itself; it’s the comfortable feeling of being full. Food doesn’t have an inherent pull for me. I’d be just as happy if could photosynthesize everything I needed. In this book, Gwen is definitely addressing people for whom food is a major pleasure and pain. Indeed, I’m not sure she realized there were any other kind of people.

But since I’m about thirty pounds “overweight,” that makes me eligible for Gwen’s diet. So I read the book as if it applied to me. It didn’t take me long to come to the conclusion that this woman should never have been giving eating advice to anyone.

She wasn’t unqualified. She was a registered dietician, so she had been educated in food science. But one aspect of her personality came through loud and clear: once she decided on an idea, nothing could shake her from it. She decided at some point that the food-science field had gone badly wrong because they didn’t acknowledge God in any of their studies and recommendations. Since she held that missing key, she felt justified in questioning every conclusion they put forth, and deciding when she was right instead of them. (Which was always.)

But that wasn’t what first stood out to me. What first raised a red flag was how she described her body. She said that extra weight always concentrated around her waist and never to her legs where she really needed it, so she looked like “a potato on sticks.” It made me sad that that’s how she saw herself. Then she moved on to talking about her eating in college, and a whole host of red flags unfurled. She was horrified that she’d put on ten to twenty pounds since her high school days—you know, back before she was a full-grown adult—but at the same time, her university meal card gave her access to food twenty-four hours a day. She could not stop herself from eating all that “wonderful food.”

(Now, I’m speculating here, but I’ve had cafeteria food, even at a university. It’s adequate and sometimes good, but not wonderful. I suspect that she came from a background of deprivation, whether from poverty or otherwise, and it wasn’t so much the amazing food as the unlimited access that she couldn’t handle.)

She tried various diets and “exchanges,” but couldn’t stick to them. She’d often “use up” a week’s worth of points in one weekend. Then came the chillingly casual sentence, “I knew no end to fullness, and I tried throwing up my food after a binge, but I was not coordinated enough.” She admits that despite her light tone, it was a “a very insecure time for me.”

So she sought out nutrition and therapy to deal with her obvious issues… oh wait, haha, no. That’s not what she did. What she did was find a “very skinny” college friend and study how she ate.

This friend—whose only health qualification was that she wasn’t fat—sat down to eat her first meal of the day, around noon. She chose a McDonald’s quarter-pounder and ate about half of it. Then she decided she was full, wrapped up the rest, and threw it away. Gwen was amazed, and resolved that she, too, would be a “thin eater” and would learn to stop eating as soon as she was full.

This was the revelation that finally got her weight under control. She lost those twenty pounds, and they stayed off. She got married and got pregnant three times with very big babies, but always lost the baby weight. She had the secret, and this secret would work for anybody. Anybody. If you are overweight, that means you’re a chronic overeater, and the only solution is to stop eating when you’re full. If you have trouble doing that, God will help you. Stop making excuses. The end.

Of course, it wasn’t the end, because Gwen wrote a whole book and created a whole workshop on this idea. So what, exactly, was the Weigh-Down Diet+? (Never forget to add that little cross!)

To be honest, the basic premise isn’t bad—especially for 1997, when restriction dieting was practically a requirement of womanhood:

  • Eat for hunger, not for emotional comfort
  • Wait until you’re hungry
  • Eat half the portion you’re accustomed to
  • Eat until you are full, then stop
  • Eat anything you want; no eliminated foods, no diet foods (except diet drinks between meals)

The idea is that you separate actual physical hunger from emotional or spiritual needs that you may be interpreting as hunger. As you get to know your body, you can recognize hunger cues and also discern what food your body is really asking for. So you eat to satisfy your body, which means you eat less and lose weight, and you never gain it back again.

I don’t think that’s such a bad outlook. Granted, everybody approaches food differently, so you’d have to take into account allergies, tastes, coping mechanisms, miseducation, etc. But it seems like a good baseline approach. If Gwen had stopped here…

…but she didn’t stop here. The Weigh-Down Diet+ (that cross starts to look kind of weird after a bit) goes astray almost immediately.

The first glaring problem is how Gwen regards thinness. “The motivation to be thin is not vanity,” she explains. “It is natural. God has programmed us to want the best for our bodies.” So if we just let our bodies be our guide, then we’ll naturally lose weight. Because – you’re following this logic, right? – because everyone’s natural ideal God-ordained weight is “thin.” Your body “knows that you are overweight and, therefore, will only ask for small amount of food.” Your body “loves the decrease in volume of food!”

If you’re not thin, it’s because you’re ignoring your body’s design. You overeat, and you need to stop that. Gwen did! She wrote that she got to the point that she found the thought of overeating “repulsive.” And that’s not all she finds repulsive. The terminology she uses when talking about how “we” or “you” overeat is very telling:

  • “Try to stop guzzling from sixty-four ounce thirst busters.” Note that overweight people don’t drink, they “guzzle.”
  • “Before the Weigh Down Workshop+, your stomach did not know if it was going to swallow 10,000 calories, or just swallow a liquid diet drink…” Ten thousand calories? If someone is eating that much, it’s probably due to factors that a mere “workshop” is not going to address properly.
  • “If you are looking for good health, then know that the single most related factor to disease and even early death is overeating.”
  • “Try looking up from the food. Enjoy the company. Have you ever been at a dinner where all you saw was the tops of people’s heads as they had their faces buried in their plates?”
  • “Instead of ripping off the top of the package and then throwing your head back and dumping the M&Ms down the hatch…”
  • “Don’t tell me you haven’t broken in a buffet line or jumped out of the car to get ahead of the next group of people going into the same restaurant.”

She insists that all food is good, but only when physically necessary. The first step of the Weigh-Down Diet+  is that you don’t eat until you feel a real hunger cue. This, she explains, can take anywhere from forty-five minutes to thirty-six hours. If you haven’t felt a hunger cue in three days, she suggests eating a small meal anyway. She also touts the spiritual benefits of fasting (tossing off the casual note that if you have anorexia, you shouldn’t skip meals). She reminds her followers that it’s okay if they feel a hunger cue but can’t eat at that moment; it’ll come back, don’t worry! If you wake up hungry in the night, try praying instead. While she does have special (short) sections for conditions such as diabetes, hypoglycemia, and medication, her overall attitude is that not eating is better than eating. What could possibly go wrong with this idea? Nothing, because less food means more thin!

She absolutely shuts down any suggestion that a person’s weight could be linked to genetics, or that personal trauma might make it difficult to overcome unhealthy eating habits. These ideas merely trap a person into giving up, because what’s the use of fighting against genetics or trauma? No, Gwen clears out all this modern permissiveness with her workshop and book and weird cross symbol, to inform you that it’s just a matter of loving God more than you do food.

That’s the second very big problem with this diet. Gwen proclaims that it will work for absolutely everyone. But a key concept in her method is that the way you learn to resist emotional eating is that you turn to God instead of food. If you feel tempted to eat when you’re not hungry, you should pray. You learn to replace the pleasure and fun you associate with food, by cultivating pleasure and fun in God. Her recommendation for those who suffer from bulimia, for instance, is “Replace the intensive desire to eat with an intensive desire for God, and the bingeing will end. As a result, the bulimia will subside.”

I’m sure that, somewhere along the line, at least one person pointed out that none of this works if you happen to not share her faith. But Gwen decided that it was the right answer, so everybody else is wrong. In Gwen’s world, thin people loved God, and loving God meant you became thin.

There’s no middle ground, by the way. Either you’re a “thin eater” who can stop in the middle of a candy bar if you feel full, or you sneak food and binge until your stomach hurts. Either you’re unselfish with your food and time and love, or you’re a totally self-centered cretin who takes the biggest and best food for yourself and doesn’t care about how anyone around you feels. Either you love God to the point that you have flirty conversations with him, or you worship the refrigerator and don’t care about obeying God.

(She claims in the second half of the book that she discovered this secret of weight loss when she started obeying God. But, um, Gwen? I read the first part of the book. You discovered this secret because you wanted to be skinny.)

The second half of the book actually has very little to do with food, and everything to do with bringing your thinking into alignment with Gwen’s particular brand of 90s Christianity. She’d start out talking about eating, then veer off into how we should accept trials and suffering, including in a marriage with an unloving spouse or a miserable job. She brings up addictions and depression, then she wanders into a rant about how “self-care” is really just an excuse to be selfish, and how women are natural caregivers and will never get tired if they’re doing what they designed to do. Then ZIP we’re back to overeating again! It’s dizzying just to read it. I imagine it was a whirlwind to hear her in person—an intensely cheerful woman with small-framed body, tall blond hair, and utter conviction in everything she said.

She tackled enormous subjects such as dysfunctional families, trauma, addiction, demon possession, and depression. Well, “tackled” is the wrong word. She threw her thin little body into them, bounced off, and then skittered around them by saying that all it took to find freedom was to love God more. For instance, she said that it was illogical that past sexual abuse could manifest as overeating, and it was just “an excuse” for people who didn’t want to give up their love for food—if that gives you any idea of the skill and finesse with which she handled these topics. I skimmed the last couple of chapters because there was no reason for me to read someone talking about things she had no business addressing.

Throughout the book, she cites no sources for any of her claims, but reassures her followers over and over that all this really works. She says, rather confusingly, “How do I know if I am right about this? Just try it for yourself,” and that’s pretty much all the support she offers for her ideas. She talks about how content she is, and her close connection with God, and her happy family. But I’m 46 years old and a weary recipient of many a grandiose promise from smooth-talking speakers with something to sell me. I now keep one thought uppermost: You might be lying.

I also have the benefit of hindsight. I can see how she careened out of the mainstream and created her own church based on being thin and obedient. At least one child died from “discipline” in that church. I also know that she divorced her first husband and remarried. So tell me how all this solves All the Problems?

But she really did claim that. She dazzles the Wei+gh Down+ W+orksho+p devotees with this picture of success:

…You feel more at peace. Someone at work said your face looks different, you are reading your Bible more, and you are communicating with God a lot more. Anger is leaving, and your marriage is better as you are able to love more and think about the needs of others more. You are starting to go through church doors again, and suddenly the preacher has improved his sermons. Even God’s creation looks more beautiful—especially the sunsets.

Gwen Shamblin Lara proclaimed that she was setting her followers free from the tyranny of diets and food. All they had to do was line up for a hefty serving of spiritual guilt and oppression. And really, that’s a pretty small price to pay to be thin.

Gallery of Infamy

Some of the more bonkers quotes from this book.

God did not accidentally leave the Four Food Groups out of the Bible!

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The stomach is a pouch made out of three layers of muscle, and it is located right below your sternum bone—the bone that is broken open in heart bypass surgery. [Note: this is the only mention of heart bypass surgery in the entire book.]

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I even rate bites in each category. For example, I searched around in the pork for the juiciest pieces. Since I was approaching full by the time I got to the brownie, I ate the bites that had the most pecans in them. I left some of every food category on my plate, but the juiciest, best morsels were in my stomach. My plate looked like it had been dissected! And what was left was not appealing. Skinny people eat this way. [But most people… don’t.]

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Skinny people are well aware of their unpopular position in life. [Because people like Gwen hold them up as effortlessly conforming to beauty standards AND Godliness!]

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Ironically, I know the world tells me that I should be dying from eating beef and putting real cream in my coffee, but I am a-l-i-v-e! In turn, some nutritionally-obsessed people who shop in or operate health-food stores look like they are dying! Why? It seems to me the more we try to monitor our health, the unhealthier we get! … Sensitivity to volume is the dietary habit of most ninety-year-olds. You may know some overweight sixty-year-olds. But how many overweight ninety-year-olds do you know?

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Death to self, or our will, is the core of obedience: ObeDIEnce.

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We are not what we eat! God has programmed cows to crave grass—does that mean cows turn into grass? No! They not only remain cows, but they produce more cows and produce calcium-rich milk. … Cardinals are programmed to eat sunflower seeds, but they turn into cardinals. Robins eat worms; mockingbirds eat grasshoppers, and they all live to sing about it.

The Fellowship of the Southern Baptist Convention

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“Your an example of why women should stay silent.”

The putdown was posted by some brilliant wit on Twitter. I said it better, and more grammatically, in The Fellowship:

“I don’t think God wants me to stay silent if I see something out of line.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. God hasn’t appointed you to a position of authority. He doesn’t expect you to do anything except obey.”

In both scenarios — one real, one fictional — a young woman was questioning a pastor about his teachings. And in both settings — one real, one fictional — the challenger was shut down.

The Fellowship takes place in a small Southern cult, where the women must wear long dresses and can’t work outside the home. Not very many people have lived in that specific setting.

But I guarantee you’re familiar with the story as it unfolds.

My newsfeed has been full of the scandal of Paige Patterson, misogynist ex-president of Southwestern Theological Seminary. If you aren’t caught up, here’s the statement by the Board of Trustees of Southwestern as to why they fired Patterson. And well they should have. But what about all the years leading up to this? Surely someone thought he was going too far when he counseled wives to return to abusive husbands? Or any number of other questionable teachings?

On a related note, I’m not Catholic, so didn’t follow the fallout of their abuse coverup very closely. I never was part of Sovereign Grace Ministries, so that didn’t register on my radar much either. But I almost could have lifted my novel material from those scandals.

Meanwhile, the #metoo movement, highlighting the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and sexism, proved the downfall of several prominent men in the entertainment and political realm.

It’s all the same story as my little Southern Bible cult. No one could challenge these men. They silenced their accusers and protected their power.

Your details might not be the same as my fictional Bekah and her struggle to be a woman under an oppressive patriarchal system. But the structure is the same. Authority without accountability, used to protect the powerful.

This structure enables abuse, encourages misogyny or misandry, and its ultimate goal is to protect the institution over the victim. Every time.

The insult I quoted at the beginning was part of a long Twitter battle in which women tried to engage a pastor (again, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, which is in serious need of repentance and reevaluation — and maybe a good disinfectant). You can read the synopsis here.

That particular aspersion was cast by a supporter of the pastor, but don’t worry, the good Brother gets in quite a few jabs himself. The sexism aside, it’s obvious that the pastor’s goal isn’t to empathize, or even engage opponents in a debate — but to silence the challenges to his power.

When I wrote The Fellowship, I was drawing from my own experience with Bill Gothard (Institute in Basic Life Principles/Advanced Training Institute) and Doug Phillips (Vision Forum), and my husband’s experience with an older New England cult. I kept saying, “My little novel is for a niche audience. Not many people will ‘get’ it.”

Three years later, as the voice of the oppressed grows louder and people are less willing to tolerate injustice from those in “authority,” I now realize that my book joins many others in telling and retelling a familiar story. It’s the story of our time.

 

Dear ____, Love Sara.

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Dear Blog,

I’m so sorry. Between homeschooling, writing a new novel, and — you know — living, I haven’t had much time for blogging.

Love, Sara.

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Dear Other Novelists,

I don’t understand how you can say, “I’m working on a new novel, and here’s my first chapter!” Everything I write is in a state of flux until its final edit. I mean, I just changed the main character’s name and her bike’s name. Just not ready to share anything yet.

Love, Sara.

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Dear AOL Instant Messenger,

I read recently that you have officially passed away. My friends and I don’t use you anymore, but we mourned your passing. You were the social savior for all of us cult kids in the 90s. I’m not even sure I would have gotten married without AIM access to keep in touch with DJ.

I will wave a sad farewell as that little door-closing sound makes it final slam.

Love, Sara.

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Dear Other Novelists,

It’s going to be an excellent story when I’m done. A friendly white girl learns how racial injustice in the not-too-distant past still affects our lives today. So far I have two love interests, a narcissistic grandmother, and at least three Jane Austen references. Ha, I see you baring your teeth in jealousy. That’s right. It’s going to be good.

The bike’s new name is Imogene, by the way.

Love, Sara.

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Dear Enya,

I found out that you released an album as recently as 2015. You were my guilty indulgence in the 90s, along with AIM. I was supposed to be listening to “godly” music, defined by our Revered Leader as any music that emphasized beats 1 and 3 in the rhythm line. (I didn’t make that up.) But you usually didn’t have a driving rhythm line, so I could justify listening to you — despite fears that you were spewing New Age spiritism all over my fragile Christian soul. Thank you for giving me some relief from choral hymns and harp music.

Love, Sara.

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Dear Misguided Readers,

What do you mean, does my  main character run a cute little shop and interact with colorful characters? Do you really expect me to write cute little bumbling romantic scenes? Do you even need a final piece of folksy feminine wisdom to wrap everything up? Oh horrors, I’m not the women’s fiction you’re looking for.

Love, Sara.

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Dear Grammar Nerd,

Okay, yes, I know. The second sentence of this post should begin with “among,” not “between,” because I listed more than two reasons. Thank you for your contribution. Nerd.

Love, Sara.

Untwisting Scripture: A book for you

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Yield your rights.

Don’t become bitter.

Don’t take up an offense on behalf of someone else.

If these phrases kicked you in the gut… do I have a book for you!

If, however, you nodded along, knowing they are true Biblical principles… well, then, I definitely have a book for you.

Untwisting Scriptures by Rebecca Davis takes a few “Christian” teachings that have been used to confuse and silence abuse victims for many years, and shows how they’re not even valid Biblical concepts. The book grew out of blog posts that Davis wrote as she learned more about people — mostly women — held captive by abusive theology.

Her tone is quiet and straightforward; she doesn’t indulge in snark or personal attacks. She doesn’t have to. All she has to do contrast actual Biblical context with actual teachings, such as this quote from the once-vaunted Bill Gothard from his 1984 Basic Seminar:

“Just because you are alive, you probably believe you have the right to be accepted as an individual, to express opinions, to earn and spend a living, to control your personal belongings, and to make decisions. You expect others to respect your rights.”

Spoiler: Gothard and the others quoted in this book don’t think you have a valid argument. Also spoiler: many of the people who teach these things either protect abusers, or are abusers themselves. Not a coincidence.

In this small book, Davis untwists a lot of strands. From the difference between human rights and human desires (looking at you, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth) to the fact that the Western church doesn’t know how to deal with grief and therefore labels it “sinful,” to the fact that we are supposed to take up the causes of the weak and abused and oppressed—there’s a lot to take in.

(And it’s not her fault that the chart on Page 59 made me want to fling the book away from myself in self-defense. I saw so many charts and graphs in my Bill Gothard days that they just look menacing to me, like the king snake that’s colored like a coral snake.)

Davis made one layout decision, based on early feedback, that vastly improves the reading experience. She set off the false teachings in gray boxes. It’s easy to identify the quotes she’s disproving… or, as she suggests, easy to skip over them entirely if you just don’t want to read the words. Even I, years away from that bondage, still felt the weight as I skimmed those twisty teachings.

I will say that this book targets a specific subculture. Those of us who sat under the teachings of Gothard, Bob Jones University, Nancy (Leigh) DeMoss Wolgemuth, and their ilk will recognize the phrases and terminology. Those outside of this small circle won’t find them as immediately recognizable. But these ideas permeate American evangelicalism. It’s a good bet you’ve encountered the teachings even if you don’t know the names and the terms.

Untwisting Scriptures came out in 2016, not even a year after I released The Fellowship. I mention the timeline because that’s why I didn’t pursue the book when I first encountered it. I was weary after years of struggling through twisted Scriptures. I thought, “So glad somebody is addressing these problems. I’ve already dealt with them. Time to move on.”

When Davis and I connected this summer over our books, I had “moved on” enough to come back to these concepts with renewed passion. So many others are still hurt and grieving. They need to hear a voice that untwists the bonds and gives freedom.

Rebecca Davis’ book is a voice like that. Check it out.

Red Flag Corp

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red-flag-2-1444642-1280x960Sometimes a cult-like group is subtle and hard to pinpoint. But other times a group is obliging enough wave blazing red flags in choreographed formation. I found one such group recently.

Now, I have absolutely no connection with Weigh Down, Gwen Shamblin, or Remnant Fellowship. I never participated in any of it; I hardly even had heard of it. (Gwen is not pleased with me, I can tell.) A friend pointed me to the site, and I’m just reporting on what I see here. Which appears to be a group that’s practically screaming “Cult!” Or maybe it’s just “Raging narcissist who would like to be a cult leader.” Either way, it’s very instructive.

Let’s take a tour of these red flags, how about?

One person in the spotlight. If you read the site, it sure does have a lot to say about Gwen Shamblin. She seems to really like posting quotes that other men have said about her. Some of the prose is so glowing that you can just imagine Gwen brushing away a tear and saying, “That is so touching. It’s so good of me to say that about me.” Seriously, I bet she’s very nice in person. No, I mean it. People don’t become cult leaders without having very strong personal magnetism.

The Bible like you’ve never heard it before! “It is noteworthy that although the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of Weigh Down participants had been church-goers for years, not one reported having ever heard these Biblically-based teachings from their home church.” Yeah, it’s noteworthy, all right. The Bible is centuries old and has been studied threadbare. If somebody finds something in it that nobody else has, then you can safely assume you’re hearing more imagination than Godly inspiration.

Promises of Paradise. The site is packed with sweeping claims of how Remnant Fellowship has dramatically broken addictions, saved marriages, and brought families together, all by the “power of God.” In real life, all these areas are an ongoing struggle and don’t always turn out the way we want them to. But a cult promises one-time-and-done miracles to broken and hurting people.

Obedience. The wording can vary, but within the culture of a cult-like group, two pillars support the entire community: authority and obedience. Members must recognize who is in authority, and then obey without question.

“Obedience—obedience—it’s beautiful. Do you want to remain in this love? It’s just like a child who stays by your side and communes with you by obedience and by following what you’re saying.  You have a beautiful relationship, but the one who turns and disobeys does not.  To have a relationship and to have answered prayers is to remain in the vine.  God gives His will to those who are going to obey it.  Why give it to those who are not going to obey it?  It tires you out to tell people or employees or children to do something and you know that they’re just going to stare at you while you speak, but they never do what you say.  Likewise, God gives His will, His beautiful and perfect will and desires, to those who will put it into practice.”

Note that this is cast in terms of obeying God’s will. But where do you learn God’s actual, real will? That would be the person who teaches what “the majority of hundreds of thousands” never heard before.

Blame shifting. Cults never can live up to their promises, but don’t worry, they’ve got that taken care of. When you’ve given them your money and your soul, and “God” doesn’t come through with that miraculous change, they tell you it’s your fault:

“Can you not figure out how to lose weight yet? Then it’s because you’ve not purposed in your heart to do it.  So purpose in your heart to obey what He tells you to do, and then He will show you the way out of your desires that have ensnared you.  Do you really want out of the trap of your own desires? Then obey what He tells you to do. Put it into practice…”

As an entirely subjective red flag, these pictures of doll-like beautiful children with perfectly curled hair put me on edge — particularly as they’re the grandchildren of the great exalted founder. Don’t you want children this sweet and well-behaved? Then get yourself to Remnant Fellowship and prepare to obey.

I consider Remnant Fellowship to be a pretty blatant example of what to avoid. However, anytime you run across a church, a study, or even a pyramid-shaped “business” that promises great results “if you just…”, look for the red flags and consider them seriously. Life is hard, and despite their grand promises to the contrary, cults make it even harder.

Edit: In May of 2021, Gwen Shamblin Lara and several other church leaders died in a plane crash. Her daughter Elizabeth (whose husband also died) has taken over leadership of the church. The website has been extensively updated and revamped since I wrote this post, and interestingly there’s much, much less of Gwen on it now.

The Bible Bait-and-Switch

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lures-537661_1280There’s a certain class of Bible teaching that is mostly about verbs.

Pray this prayer so God will bless you.

Follow these steps so God will protect you.

Hear and obey so God will listen to you.

The teachers in this camp claim to know the hidden ways of God, and they want to teach you to access these exclusive treasures. They usually have some kind of gimmick—a certain prayer, certain steps, a certain way to read your Bible. Then they bait-and-switch ideas to make you think that they’re teaching what God says when it’s really just what they’re selling.

I recently came across someone who sounds a whole lot like a “verbing” teacher. Now, I don’t know anything about Bob Sorge except his titles on Amazon and the Kindle sample of his book Secrets of the Secret Place. So I have no axe to grind or hatchet to bury in his head. I’m bringing him up because all it took was two chapters for me to recognize:

  1. The verb
  2. The gimmick
  3. The bait-and-switch

His verb is to Pray. (He also adds “hear” and “obey” later.) By “pray” he means to sit in quietness and solitude, reading Scripture, and listening for God to speak. Is that bad? No! I think it’s a very good practice to learn to sit in silence—one I’m not good at myself. The Verb is usually a good thing to do, and pray definitely qualifies.

However, he’s got to have a gimmick to sell his special knowledge of God’s hidden ways. Like any good Verbing teacher, he frames it with a Bible verse. I’ve parsed it out below:

Sorge (from his book Secrets of the Secret Place):
“But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:6).

…When Jesus taught on prayer, He gave primary emphasis to the secret place. In fact, the first thing He taught concerning prayer was the primacy of the secret place. In the verses following, He would teach us how to pray, but first He teaches where to pray.

My comment:
This verse, in context, is actually emphasizing the right attitude of prayer. Jesus is saying that we shouldn’t make a big public display of our prayers to show how holy we are, but to pray privately to God alone, without seeking the admiration of others.

Sorge:
Jesus affirmed this truth twice in the same chapter. He says it the second time in Matthew 6:18, “‘So that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.’” Jesus says it twice for emphasis, so we know this word is absolutely certain.

My comment:
The key word here is fasting. Same point as the verse about praying. Don’t make a big holy display of yourself. Carry out your devotion to God quietly, seeking to please only him.

These verses have nothing to do with where your body is, but where your heart is.

Sorge:
Our Father is in the secret place! Furthermore, Jesus gives us the key to finding this secret place. If you’re wondering what you must do to place yourself in the secret place, Jesus made it clear. To get there, all you have to do is shut your door! When you enter your room, and shut your door, you are in the presence of your Father. Instantaneously!

My comment:
Hard to argue with that, but I’m also in his presence in the kitchen, at the mall, or stuck on I-81 in road construction. Finding God by going into a room and shutting a door… that, folks, is Sorge’s Gimmick.

Sorge:
It matters not how you feel. Regardless of your soul’s climate at that moment, you know with absolute confidence you have stepped into the chamber of your Father in heaven. The secret place is your portal to the throne, the place where you taste of heaven itself. Receive this word and you have gained one of the greatest secrets to intimacy with God.

My commentary:
And there you go! If you Verb, by way of his Gimmick, you gain a secret way to God.

They always have Scripture to back up their points, of course. Here’s the Bait-and-Switch where he leads you in with Scripture, and leads you right on out on his own hobbyhorse:

Sorge:
Cornelius was a devout Gentile who committed himself to the secret place of prayer.

My commentary:
The “secret place of prayer” wording is the author’s assertion, not actually taken from the Bible.

Sorge:
[Cornelius’] piety is described in the Book of Acts as fourfold: he gave regularly to the poor; he lived a holy lifestyle; he practiced fasting; and he adhered to the secret place of prayer.

My commentary:
I looked up this verse, Acts 10:2, and this is what it says: “He was a godly man, deeply reverent, as was his entire household. He gave generously to charity and was a man of prayer.”

It doesn’t say a “secret place of prayer.” Although I’m all for paraphrasing to keep things moving, this particular paraphrase is a seemingly innocuous, but very important, addition.

Sorge:
It was because of those four pursuits that God filled Cornelius and his household with the Holy Spirit and made them the firstfruits of all Gentile believers.

My commentary:
That’s the bait…

Sorge:
It’s as though God said, “Cornelius, because of your passionate conviction for the secret place, your life is the kind of example that I can reproduce in the nations.”

My commentary:
… and switch. He’s shifted from Cornelius and his four pursuits to a “passionate conviction for the secret life.”

Sorge:
…By making Cornelius the catalyst for the redemption of the nations, God was giving a powerful endorsement to Cornelius’s priority of cultivating a hidden life with God. The eruption of fruitfulness from his life must have caught even him off guard!

My commentary:
I feel like applauding. “Yay! That was so clever!” He so easily slipped in the idea that Cornelius was blessed by something that the author made up. Not only that, but God endorses it.

And he goes on to base the rest of his book (presumably, from the title) not on anything in the Bible, but on this idea of his about a “secret life with God.” Ideally, his audience doesn’t catch the shift, so they follow along thinking it’s all right there in the Bible. Even if they take the time to look it up, Sorge has taught them to equate “a man of prayer” with “a passionate conviction for the secret place.”

If this is how he justifies the very core of his teaching, then I’m extremely skeptical of what else he has to say. Anything he says about “hearing God’s word” now makes me suspicious, because what he claims is God’s word is actually his own. Anything he says about “obedience to God’s word” is a blazing red flag now, because if he can mold Scripture to fit his own ideas like that, then what does he think we ought to be “obeying”?

Following a teacher like this leads at best to disappointment, and at worst to bondage.

Pay attention to people who promise you a new way to access God. Watch for the Verb, the Gimmick, and the Bait-and-Switch. If you see it, then get up and leave the room. And shut the door behind you.

A Review: “Gave Me a Deeper Understanding”

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Gretchen Louise at Kindred Grace has posted a review of The Fellowship. 

Different people notice different aspects of the story. Some have remarked on how easy it was to get to know the characters. Some recognize specific teachings or experiences. Some love the often-irreverent humor, and a lot of people held out hope that it wasn’t really lost. (What wasn’t? Hm, looks like you should read the story.)

What Gretchen highlights is the fact that “the familiar” is a very strong force. It’s often easier to stay in a bad but familiar situation than risk a new, possibly better, one.

But I think what stood out to me most in The Fellowship is how comfortable the familiar could become. As much as Bekah loved the taste of freedom, the rules that had bound her for so long were so very compelling… At the same time, I was given a much deeper understanding into the mindset of those who are unwilling to leave unhealthy and even dangerous situations.

Read the entire review here, and linger to browse her beautiful site.

Bleeding Praise

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They opened a Bible and
Drew out a gleaming
Metal sheath, polished silver
Studded with rubies.
They said it was good.

They said the beautiful sheath
Enclosed treasure to
Carry deep inside my heart –
God’s gift for God’s child.
I stretched out my hand.

They unclasped a silver lock.
The sheath broke apart
Revealing a slender smooth
Steel blade, thin and sharp.
I accepted it.

I took the chilled metal blade
Which did not warm to
My touch, and they showed me just
How I must hold it.
Poised over my heart.

Together, we drove it in.
Easily, it pierced
My chest. The handle snapped off,
The blade disappeared
Deep within my heart.

They looked at the bright red blood
Welling from my heart,
Smearing and staining my skin.
Blood is life, they said—
God’s abundant life.

They reproached me for my tears,
Said I must be strong,
Said my heart was rebellious
Said it was Your gift.
I must love the pain.

I loved the pain, rejoicing
In abundant life.
My bleeding and wounded heart
Sang praises to You
In grief and despair.

I cherished the deep-set blade
Having forgotten
That it was not part of me.
Not remembering
That they put it there.

You came near to me and saw
That I was dying,
Slowly, while gasping praises
As each new heartbeat
Tore wider the wound.

You whispered in my anguish,
Said the sharp steel blade
Was not a treasure of Yours.
Pain stopped up my ears
I couldn’t hear You.

You slid Your fingers into
My agonized heart.
Then I knew You were with me.
Fear and pain burned me.
I begged You to leave.

Peace, be still, is all You said.
You drew out the blade.
It was pitted, slimy, dark.
My torn heart closed up.
I cried soft, warm tears.

Quietly You embraced me,
Stanched the bright red blood
With Your own bloodstained fingers
Said You don’t love pain.
But You love to heal.

You washed my skin and my clothes
And bound up my heart.
You shattered the ugly blade,
Asked for no praises.
Told me to just breathe.

Abigail, A Dangerous Woman

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The Bible doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to exposing dangerous women. The first one who comes to your mind, just like mine, is Abigail.

Lest you think we’re talking about two different Old Testament characters, I’ll give a rundown of her story. It’s found in 1 Samuel 25.

In the years before David became king of Israel, he was on the run from Saul–the current king–and building up his own following. They happened upon the fields of Nabal during shearing time. David sent ten men to Nabal saying, “Hey, we didn’t mess with your shepherds or steal any of your sheep or goats. So could you give me food for my men?”

It was a big request. But Nabal was a rich man. More to the point, he was still rich thanks to David’s honorable treatment of his property. Also, David’s men had weapons. Like any reasonable man, Nabal saw that it was to his advantage to pay up his part of the bargain.

Oh, wait. Nabal’s name means “fool.” He did not pay up. He insulted David and told him to get lost.

David got mad and began mobilizing his men for wholesale slaughter of every male in Nabal’s household.

(See, class? We sure do need for men to be in charge all the time because it always goes so much better that way.)

Abigail was Nabal’s wife. When a servant came to her in a panic, telling her what was going on, she swung into action. She gathered up food, freshened up, saddled a donkey, and went out to meet David herself. She apologized for her husband’s foolishness and begged him to spare the household.

David, hotheaded though he was, was actually a reasonable man, especially by ancient warlord standards. He agreed to call off the attack. In fact, he was relieved that Abigail had kept him from unnecessary bloodshed.

Abigail went back and told Nabal what she’d done. Nabal was furious. So absolutely, intensely furious that he had a stroke and then died.

So the household was saved, Nabal disposed of, and David took Abigail to be his wife. Which really was the best a woman could hope for in that time.

Okay, so I admit that at first glance, it actually looks like Abigail is the hero of this story. But one of the tricks of a patriarchal worldview is that it can use one or two details to twist the whole perspective into the proper shape.

To start with, you’ve got to keep the most important principle in mind at all time. That principle is: Authority. Every situation, even a story told for centuries around campfires, must be filtered through the grid of Authority.

Who was in authority in this story? Well, David, because he’d been anointed the next king of Israel. Who else had authority here? Nabal, the husband and owner of the property.

Who did not have the authority to make any decisions or take any action? Abigail. Because she was married, she was bound to obey her husband no matter what.

There are two telling details in the passage of Scripture. One, the servant came to Abigail behind Nabal’s back, and even said he was wicked and foolish. Abigail did not rebuke the servant for speaking against their authority. Two, Abigail made her plans and headed out to see David, but as the story notes, She did not tell her husband.

But… but… she spared every  male in the household! Including Nabal’s worthless hindquarters!

Yet you see what her rebellion–yes, she was rebellious–led to. Her husband died. David might feel like God had vindicated him, but Abigail had to live with the knowledge that her actions killed her own husband.

But… but… Abigail became David’s wife…

Pfft. She became one of his wives. Who wants that? (What woman had a choice back then? Hush, you’re cluttering up the narrative.) And she did have at least one son who should have become king after David, but we never hear anything about him. That’s the third devastating detail in this story: God punished Abigail by not letting her son become the next king.

I’m not exaggerating this interpretation. This is what I was taught as a student of Bill Gothard. He embroidered a lot of the details*, but there’s a long tradition among hardcore patriarchalists to demonize Abigail. She usurped her husband’s place and was the cause of his death.

Girls, do not grow up to be like Abigail!

You should instead hope to be like… well… how about you just don’t read ahead in your Bibles until we have time to explain how Ruth, Esther, Deborah, Jael, etc. are also cautionary tales. Here, instead we’ve rewritten history and also these stories with passive obedient heroines. We’ll get back to God’s Word when you’re ready to understand the truths hidden within it.

Good thing you’ve got men to illuminate it for you.

*Gothard claimed that if Abigail hadn’t intervened, then David would have had the guilt of unnecessary bloodshed on his conscience; years later, when he got Bathsheba pregnant, he wouldn’t have sent Uriah into battle to be killed because he’d already know how wrong that was. I didn’t make that up.

** I hope it’s clear that I’m not claiming all Christian men believe this way. But there’s a slice of Christianity that does. If you’ve never encountered teachings like this, you might not realize the enormous effort it takes to re-read the Bible in its own words, not the twisted interpretation we were given.

Speaking of College

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Allison from Presentmindedly just read The Fellowship and commented with the perspective of an “outsider.” I asked if I could turn her comment into a post.

For a little background, Allison and I grew up in the same hometown–attended the same church, in fact–but our paths didn’t cross too much. Public schooled while I was homeschooled, she was a few years ahead of me: always determined, ambitious, and very kind to the younger girls. Recently I was thrilled when she said she was reading the novel, and as usual I find her perspective very valuable.

Her words are in bold, and I’ve added my own observations in plain text. I’m not commenting to disagree, but to discuss two sides of the question. It’s a sort of call-and-response post, I guess.

Allison:
I understand how young people told that they can’t attend college and having that option for their future totally removed from them would want to explore the option of going to college, and how women might see a need for college so that they have a way to support their families should their husbands pass away (or leave).

Sara:
In the Fellowship, Bekah knows that college is not an option if she wants to remain in good standing with the church. This aspect of the Fellowship reflects my own experience with IBLP, which discouraged both young women and young men from seeking higher education. (But it was especially forbidden for women.) A lot of heavily-controlled religious systems push the line of thought that college introduces young people to worldly ideas, which shipwrecks their faith. When it comes to questions about their future, these groups insist that God will provide whatever training is necessary to make a living as an adult.

Most of us spend our 30s scrambling to catch up, or living with the insecurity that one twist of fate could leave us unable to support ourselves and our families (again, especially women).

And we think, if only we’d been allowed to go to college…

Allison:
In my experience and observation, though, college is not necessarily an avenue for job training or even job preparation. I write this as a summa cum laude graduate of the Honors College at University of Southern Mississippi, with a degree in Environmental Biology and a minor in Chemistry.

All those A’s, all that studying, all those classes and labs, and all it really prepared me for was–wait for it–more school. I had no desire to go to grad school and wanted to be a missionary at that point, anyway. At Awards Day at the end of my senior year, my father asked (with slight disappointment), “You’ve never wanted to go to med school, have you?” Nope, never had. Got accepted to grad school but declined it because I went to Romania to serve for a year.

Many people I know graduated with degrees that, while perhaps fulfilling on personal levels, didn’t necessarily prepare them for a job. I had a delightful professor who once quoted somebody else (no idea who now) in one of our classes… “College is the babysitter for tomorrow’s workforce.” I took offense at the time, but I kind of get it now.

Sara:
Although it doesn’t come through strongly in my novel, I’m very disenchanted with the college system. I love the idea of alternative training and seeking knowledge outside the approved channels of learning. But that’s a harder road to walk, and most of us weren’t actually given the choice. We were forced to walk it… often by men who were actually interested in keeping their empires going.

It’s also easier to have the degree and say, “I didn’t need it,” than feel trapped by a life where you can’t seem move ahead without that degree.

Allison:
College did give me opportunities to grow personally and spiritually and to grow up. To discover more about myself, to learn more about how to think critically and to engage in the world. But it wasn’t particularly fun, and although I met great people, I don’t have lifelong close friends from college (and I had counted on that). It was honestly often lonely and lots of hard, hard work. So it provided opportunities for personal challenge and development.

Sara:
This right here is part of what many of us feel we missed out on–some much more extremely than I did.

My parents didn’t forbid college; we sure didn’t have a lot of extra money and I wasn’t gung-ho to go. They believed that the program we were in was a viable alternative (It looked very good on paper, as the saying goes.) So we all bought into the idea that traditional college wasn’t worth considering.

So all that growing, figuring out who we are, what we believe, thinking critically, and engaging in the world — that’s part of the “college experience” that we feel we were denied.

The truth is, of course, that you don’t need college for any of that. But in our subculture, the reason that college was discouraged or even denied to us was to keep us from developing, exploring, and engaging. So that’s how we think of it: if I had been allowed to choose higher education, I might have been allowed to grow.

Allison:
But what college did not give me was what I expected going in–-training, credentials, and an open door to a career of helping protect God’s green earth in some way. God used college in my life, certainly; but I don’t think of my degree as something to fall back on. And I’m not alone in that.

I suppose I’m just bringing this up because I sensed several times that there was a thought in the story [of The Fellowship] of college giving women (and men, too) abilities to provide for and support their families that they couldn’t get without a degree.

Sara:
This was my personal insecurity shining through. I’m entirely dependent on my husband’s ability to bring in income. I consider myself very well-educated; but I don’t have the degree and work experience for a decent job. We do have life insurance (again, possible because of DJ’s money, not mine); but still, if something happened to DJ, I’d be trying to find a minimum-wage job to support myself and my four children.

My dad died when I was three, and my stepdad died when I was twenty. I have no illusions that God keeps men alive just to support their families. For those who have read the novel, this situation is spelled out pretty clearly in the story.

Allison:
Certainly some degrees are necessary for certain jobs–social work, teaching school, physical therapy. But most degrees don’t carry with them an accompanying certification.

Because I’ve been to college, I think “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” But if I hadn’t been to college, I’d probably think, “I wonder what I missed.”

Sara:
I didn’t have enough room in the novel to explore college vs. alternative education. My point wasn’t that Everyone Should Go To College, but that the Fellowship limited and controlled the lives of its people by refusing to let them make their own way in life.

I posted Allison’s comment here as encouragement to those of us who have come out of a controlling system. College wouldn’t have eliminated our struggles, just given us a different set of problems. It’s tough living with the consequences of a choice we didn’t really get to make. But once we’re free from whatever “Fellowship” once controlled us, we really do have the freedom to make our own choices, learn from our own mistakes, and build our own lives.