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By the time I was 20 years old, I thought:
• That I had to obey my parents in every way, or suffer attacks from Satan too strong for me to withstand.
• That it was possible to disobey my parents without realizing it.
• That each “rock” song I ever listened to had ceded a bit of “ground” in my heart to Satan, and I had to take back all that ground or I’d leave myself vulnerable to his attacks.
• That it was a sin to date anyone.
• That it was my calling in life to get married and have lots of children.
• That if I married a divorced man, it would “destroy” me.
• That I shouldn’t marry a man younger than myself, because God created Adam before He created Eve.
• That I’d have all those children at home, because hospitals were dirty and dangerous.
• That my husband’s preferences overruled my convictions.
• That God would take away whatever I most loved so that I would learn to love Him instead.
• That I would always be under a man’s authority, whether my father, husband, brother, or even son.
What kind of parents would fence their young adult in with so many fiddly rules? How could they overlook my personality, giftings, and talents and simply declare that God created me to be only a wife and mother, the end, amen? Why would they show me a capricious God who punished even accidental disobedience?
The answer is: they didn’t. Most of those ideas weren’t ones that my parents came up with. A lot of them they hadn’t actually heard, at least not in the form I did. I learned all those concepts directly from IBLP and ATI.
It wasn’t my family that went wrong.
I grew up in a small Southern town in a family of five kids. My father died when I was three years old. Four years later, my mom remarried, and my stepbrother joined the family. As the four older kids entered the teen years, the household was often chaotic. My parents didn’t find much practical help from the local churches, and struggled to deal with anger, drinking, sneaking out, smoking, and finally a teenage pregnancy.
When I was fourteen, my parents discovered the Basic Seminar. Here was the help they’d been looking for! For the first time they heard the Bible taught as a practical, understandable solution to their problems. Now they knew how to protect me and my younger sister from the mistakes they’d made with the older kids.
We enrolled in ATIA in 1991. (It became ATII a couple of years later, and then everybody gave up trying to decide what that last letter should be.) My parents were very enthusiastic about the teachings. They embraced new insights about diet, dress, Biblical interpretation, and character qualities. The teaching on authority simply made sense to them; it explained so much, so well.
But the authority didn’t go to their heads. They didn’t make us do things simply because they had the power to do so. Granted, my stepfather’s approach was as gentle and understanding as a rampaging elephant; but he didn’t lord it over me simply for the satisfaction of being in control, but because he wanted to do right. The four of us–my mom, stepdad, sister, and I–became immersed in the ATI way of life, but we never really lost touch with the community around us.
Where I incurred most of the spiritually damaging ideas wasn’t at home, but when I went away to training centers and “apprenticeship opportunities.” It was there that I learned how easy it is to fall under God’s wrath–simply talking to a rebellious person could endanger me! I “committed” never to marry a divorced man, or a man younger than myself, and worried for my mother, who had done both. I was taught that my worth as a woman was directly tied to how many children I had. But before I could have children, I had to go through a pure, spiritual, emotionally-controlled courtship with a young man who would spend more time talking to my father than to me.
I didn’t discuss any of these ideas in depth with my parents. I assumed they knew and approved of everything I was hearing. I certainly didn’t mention anything negative about ATI, because that revealed a spirit of rebelliousness.
My life changed at age 20, when my stepfather died of liver cancer. Within the next four years, I courted, got married, and had two kids.
All those “non-optional” principles of my younger years turned out to have very little use in my adult life. For one thing, I hadn’t had a good relationship with my stepfather, which I’d been told would doom me to a bad marriage. It didn’t. I listened to music with a rock beat, and didn’t suffer. My husband didn’t expect “obedience” from me, and I couldn’t find all that many opportunities to “obey” him anyway. I gave birth in hospitals, and came home with healthy children. I discovered that two babies in seventeen months was too much of a good thing for my body, and took a break from my high calling of childbearing for a while.
Best of all, God began to break through all those fiddly rules and dark fears, and teach me that He is a merciful, gracious God whose intent is to love me, not punish me.
In the end, I still have my family. We have our pleasures and our problems, but we’re a fairly normal, functional family. It’s ATI that’s fallen by the wayside, and with it–thank God–many of those damaging ideas peddled as God’s word to hungry parents.
It wasn’t my family that went wrong. It was the teachings themselves that were faulty.
Yes! Thank you. My parents were extreme, imagine how much worse all of this was in our family? ATI attracted extreme personalities, indoctrinated them with extreme teachings, the end result was extreme damage to individuals.
Thank you for this article, as I am regularly confronted with this charge when I try to tell people in my family that ATI isn't what they think.
The challenge now is that while we understand we are under grace and not law and that we have been set free from the bondage of the law is understanding the concept of the just shall live by faith. It's not just family we have to stand up to when dealing with sincere but very misguided people but our fellow church members as well. History is full of legalism, Calvin's Geneva, the Amish as examples. Both were/are full of sincere people, just not necessarily correct. When it comes to Rock music folks in my church are honest eneouph to say it's just not their taste in music.
Thank you so much for this article! You expressed exactly what I have tried to explain to others many times. That I embraced teachings my parents never even heard about, on all those "apprenticeship opportunities". But I assumed they knew all those things and agreed with them.
Thank you for your article! I could have written almost the exact same thing, just changing a few details. My parents had a very balanced view of ATI/IBLP and yet there are so many things, like most of what you mentioned, that I was taught through "apprenticeship opportunities", including two years at IBLP Headquarters, that are so wrong. What joy there is in freedom and not living by a list of do's and don'ts.
i've always rebelled over the thought that i would be under a man's authority my whole life. it's likened to being Atlas, holding the world on one's back while trying to function. maybe that's why i'm still single. :)
Rachel,
Loved your analogy! A great word picture!
-Eureka
During those years, I wrote a (very bad) novel. It involved a wedding, and I created my own ceremony in which the bride's hand was given from her father to her groom "so that she wasn't out from under authority even for a moment." That's what I thought marriage was supposed to be like. I'm glad to say I've been very pleasantly surprised. :)
Wow, did that resonate! Reading through your list, I couldn't help checking everything off in my head. Especially this one: "That God would take away whatever I most loved so that I would learn to love Him instead." Still working through that one. Thanks for your writing...
I could write a whole article on that one point. It held me in bondage for YEARS.
Thanks for the kind words, y'all.
-- SaraJ
I used to think as a new wife and mother that if I loved my husband or baby too much, God would take them away from me to teach me to love Him more. That they were "idols". I was terrified of this. What a ridiculous notion, and what a small god I knew! So glad I'm freed from that lie.
That implication certainly existed. We know someone who lost her husband and my dad stated that it was because she had made an idol out of him so God took him.
Or the woman who told us that "God allowed our daughter to die in the house fire to get our attention." And we were supposed to flee to his arms for comfort?!
I was interested in your experience, since I've been reading about ATI lately. I haven't had much contact with it, save having heard a few IBLP teachings while at a Baptist church we attended (I don't recall its being majored on in the church, though, because all I remember from it is the "umbrella" analogy of authority). Thanks for sharing!
"I still have my family. We have our pleasures and our problems, but we’re a fairly normal, functional family. It’s ATI that’s fallen by the wayside, and with it–thank God–many of those damaging ideas peddled as God’s word to hungry parents.
It wasn’t my family that went wrong. It was the teachings themselves that were faulty."
Amen!
My family never was that involved. My younger sisters didn't experience ATI, really. I've even been told recently that I shouldn't complain because "You were the one who chose to get as involved as you did!"
After returning from my first year in an ATI training center, I even remember my mom being shocked once or twice at opinions on the Christian life that I mentioned causally, just as a given, and her saying "WE never taught you that!"
I wondered later why there wasn't more skepticism, or warning on their part, about the un-biblical or inaccurate teachings of Gothard...
I think they assumed that they had taught me to think more critically than they had. Three years in a TC went a long way in forcing me to think for myself and examine what I was being told was 'God's Word and God's Will for YOU!" =)
Will, it was something you mentioned elsewhere, along with a discussion with my mom, that got me thinking about exactly where I got all my ideas. When I recently explained to Mom how damaging I considered ATI to be, and gave some examples, she was puzzled. She didn't remember getting the same impressions I did. That's partly because I was young and not used to thinking for myself. But it's also because she wasn't in the culture as much as I was.
Thank you for creating this website. I struggled with so much with all that I was taught through ATI. Now I am happily married, and realize how much of what we were taught was totally wrong. This website gives me some hope.
So true!!! I'm realizing more and more how true this is. My family was basically normal before ATI. Not perfect, but normal. And I definitely believed what I was told by BG even if my parents told me they disagreed with it. He just seemed so sure that this was God's will for us.
Thank you. I dream of one day being able to explain to my parents what ATI did to me mentally without them taking any of it personally.
Sara - ROTFL that your children have been so blessed to never have been introduced to Character Clues!!! What a lame boring game. I was that kid that was always BEGGING someone to play a game with me. Trust me, I stopped begging real quick after we joined ATIA (or is it ATII...?? haha!!!).
Thanks for sharing. :)
Thanks for the article! Yes definitely the teachings were what was faulty. My family was conservative but I think one of the reasons I took longer to heal and had more obvious struggles after we left ATI was because I was the one who read most of the IBLP/ATI materials we bought, not my parents, since I was always a voracious reader. So a lot of what's been written here and elsewhere on RG resonates with me.
The last 6 years out of ATI have been a process of unlearning. As recently as last year, I was struggling with insecurity about my future career (I'm studying science in college and doing very well academically) because I thought God would decide one day to take it all away if I grew to enjoy it too much. I'm still trying to let it sink in that God just isn't like that!
I get the idea that for those of us who grew up in more "moderate" ATI families, our parents were honestly unaware of how we were receiving and understanding these extreme teachings, and thus continue to think that IBLP is biblical. Coupled with the fact that most of the "commitments" we were asked to make were geared towards young people, some very nice parents were left out of the loop altogether.
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