Looking at Recovering Grace’s recent “Response to Bill Gothard,” I wonder how many readers will brush over the handful of paragraphs that try to explain the seemingly small differences between Gothard’s definition of grace and the definition used by almost all scholars.
At least two times, the authors alert the reader that the difference in meaning is “subtle.” While it’s true that we are often just fine when we ignore subtle differences in life, it’s also true that some subtle differences are all-important. Not to be turned aside, but to be dissected and studied.
My Plea
To those of you who see no error in Gothard’s definition of grace: Please pull out your magnifying glass and study the details. Click here to start studying grace.
And please consider this small anecdote…
My wife seems fond of picture frames that have two hooks (or worse, only holes) on the back. To hang such a frame, I take appropriate measurements, make marks for two screw holes, and use a level to be sure the frame will hang evenly. Then I put the screws in place. On the wall, they may look something like this:
Bear in mind that the holes actually would be farther apart than shown. Now I’ll draw a level, dashed line through them to highlight the difference.
Okay, I can do better than that! But those screws are level enough (close counts!), and everyone loves the picture when it’s hung. No big deal. See…
Wait! My wife wants another picture hung on the opposite end of the same wall. Again, no problem. I’ll simply use my level to keep in line with the top of the hung frame…or to keep in line with the screws I’ve already put in place. Either method should work fine.
The surprising thing, though, is that the subtle difference is magnified…so much more obvious…as we move away from the original screw hole. We still have the same angle of error, but as we move further across the wall with more generations of frames, we’re disheartened to see our mistake! The dashed line is where we should be, but our work has been based on a subtly different mark.
Who cares? Taken on a larger scale, these are the kinds of miscalculations that cause buildings to collapse…or space probes to fail to reach their intended planets…or a ship’s captain to run aground. Or, in a family, crush relationships.
Bringing the Anecdote Home
Let’s relate our frames to spiritual matters. My first thought is that the frame on the left would be Bill Gothard. Then, instead of moving across a distance, we move away over the time of your family’s growth, and your family is the one in the frame on the right. You think you’re in line with the gospel, but folks stand back and cock their heads to one side as they try to decide how things went so wrong.
My wife will make me hang those frames again if the room was supposed to look symmetrical and she sees it like this:
Another way of considering our dilemma is that the first anchor is the in-context, God’s-eye view of grace “triangulated” by His Word. The second screw is Gothard’s subtle re-definition of grace and authority. The third screw is a parent’s application of Gothard’s definition. The fourth screw is the child’s attempt to also apply Gothard’s definition to life.
In either way of thinking, future generations of miscalculation lead to personal and family pictures that look more and more out of whack.
Notice that the parent didn’t apply the teaching improperly—at least to the extent that all the blame rests on the parent. The parent followed the same “angle” as Bill Gothard, as he is the original point of deviation. The parent’s teaching lines up with his teaching. His teaching was wrong.
Maintaining Truth
What could we have done differently to maintain true level? We could have taken measurements from the ceiling and floor before we set our anchors. In a room, those are the bounds that give us our overall context. Likewise, in the spiritual world, scripture provides bounds for “the big picture”…the context derived from standing back and looking at the whole.
Working in this fashion, we can gain a view of God’s purpose and direction, and we can then properly define some of the specifics. There are many specifics that God doesn’t give. One He did is the meaning of “grace,” and it’s critically important that we get it right.
Hope you enjoyed the anecdote. If you didn’t, at least you have a better idea of how to hang those silly frames!
That's an excellent analogy. I might be one of the older readers of this site, but I appreciate it so much. I didn't encounter many of Bill Gothard's teachings until I got married. My husband grew up in a big church that hosted seminars in the early-early days, when they were small enough to be held in a single church. He even remembers going to his Sunday school teacher's house to eat dinner with Bill after a seminar. As you can imagine, they put Bill on a pedestal. Years later, we got married in a discipleship-shepherding kind of church that based its "authority" teachings on BG's umbrella concept. Decades later, it's still hard for my hubby to accept the fact that something was off. I'm glad so many people are recognizing the errors when they're young. Thanks for getting the word out.
So true! even before I had gotten into your analogy I was thinking, "Yeah sublte differences matter cause the longer you apply them the less subtle they get." I often feel like I'm splitting hairs when I see a subtle difference but for now I've experienced too many non-subtle relational explosions to return to brushing them aside.
Good one! I think, many of us may not have noticed the subtle differences at first. But as things became more and more magnified, and our lives and families began to spin out of control, that would have been a good time to re-evaluate to determine what went wrong, rather than just assume that the formulas themselves weren't flawed, we just needed to apply them better, harder, more fastidiously! --thereby exacerbating the spiral. Which is what many of our families did, and a large part of the fallout, today. What would have been so wrong in saying, "Wow, I made a huge mistake, and I need to course-correct," and how many of us would have been saved by it?
Great analogy. The give-away that I noticed most easily in Gothard's teachings was how it treats certain 'edge cases.' For instance, with the Umbrella of Authority a widow must return to her parents' house. That contradicts what Paul wrote to the Corinthians.
We need to step back and look at the big picture sometimes instead of constantly viewing the minute details.
That's a great, thought-provoking comment about the edge cases.
Reminds me of this from John 7:
21 Jesus replied, “I did one miracle on the Sabbath, and you were amazed. 22 But you work on the Sabbath, too, when you obey Moses’ law of circumcision. (Actually, this tradition of circumcision began with the patriarchs, long before the law of Moses.) 23 For if the correct time for circumcising your son falls on the Sabbath, you go ahead and do it so as not to break the law of Moses. So why should you be angry with me for healing a man on the Sabbath? 24 Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly.”
The Pharisees allowed the edge condition of doing work on the sabbath in the case of circumcision, if the 8th day happened to be a Sabbath. They would make an exception in the rules for more rules, but not for a person's healing, revealing that they cared more about rules than about people. Jesus revealed that his heart was for people when he healed a man on the sabbath.
Interesting. As I was finishing out my three years at a training center, I kept finding that people wanted some explanation as to why I had no desire at all to be involved in atia/iblp any longer.
Without any training, or in-depth study, I still came up with this:
Mr.G himself does not claim to be an exegete. He makes the Bible say what he wants, basically. All the hundreds of 'little' variations from the norm in his understanding of the Bible end up having rather large effects when it comes down to daily life lived by his principles and regulations. This is especially visible in the TC's.
At this point all I can say is that anyone with that much disrespect for what the Bible actually says isn't anyone I would recommend to others, no matter how much 'good' they've done. That goes for Bill Gothard as much as Benny Hinn. =)