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Step 1. Present a test that supposedly measures one’s love for God. Every Christian young person desires to love God, of course, and will be excited to confirm their commitment to their Savior!
Step 2. Present scripture out of context that insinuates that one is God’s enemy if they fail the test. This heightens the spiritual stakes of the test, and makes it a much more serious matter. Helpful Hint: Be sure they don’t realize that God didn’t actually write the test.
Step 3. Present the test. The test should consist of a list of false dichotomies in which either choice (with one exception in the given example) is biblically acceptable. It’s especially helpful if both sides are even biblically encouraged, as in the second and fourth questions below. However, one of the answers must always sound more pious and godly than the choice on the other side. This will ensure that all who take the quiz will “fail” it.
Step 4. Conclude the test with another out of context scripture which will confirm that because they failed the test, they have left their first love and that God has something against them. This will result in severe guilt and anguish. Again, be sure they don’t realize they are feeling guilt over loving things that God created for them to enjoy, such as friendships, fellowship, music, and literature.
Step 5. Present a 10-day workshop that will help them deal with the newly created guilt by making a bunch of commitments and vows to deeper godliness, all of which cause them to sacrifice their God-given Christian liberty in order to fit within a man-created system of religiosity.
Step 6. Rinse and repeat. Once they’ve bought into your system, it will be hard for them to get out. The only way this will happen is if they figure out that God’s love isn’t conditioned upon their behavior, and that the only path to holiness is to walk daily within His sustaining grace. Once they figure that out, you’ve lost them. Sorry.
NOTE: The following example of this plan in action comes from page 8 of the Institute in Basic Life Principle’s Journey to the Heart curriculum. Journey to the Heart is a 10-day retreat program for young men and women aged 13-30, taught by Bill Gothard and other members of his staff.
Thank you so much for writing this, RG. The mindset that we can earn God's favor and approval by the "stuff" we do (or don't do) is so invasive and pernicious. It's parasitic to true love for Christ and strangles the outrageous freedom of the Cross.
So now every time a person does anything in the first column they will be feel just guilty that they are not loving God enough.
Wow! Communist regimes would be so jealous because they have trouble getting all their people to submit all the time- but they get to use guns.
Very, very true! This so embodies the mindset with which I was raised, and which was taught in ATI.
I felt guilty much of my teenage years... well, partly because I was a teenager... but also because of teachings like this. It's nothing new, just Gothard's standard teachings in a chart form. No purposeless socializing! No dating (which included talking for an extended time -- say, half an hour -- to a member of the opposite sex)! No novels! No reading comics in the paper! No talking about non-edifying subjects like movies! (What are you doing watching movies, anyway?) No forming "cliques," being defined as "two or three girls having a conversation that doesn't include everybody around them")! No writing in a private diary! Pretty much anything I did for pleasure turned out to be less than God expected of me.
So it's pretty nice, all these liberating years later, to read over this chart and instead burst out laughing that it gives your love for God an actual number value.
SaraJ, I'm just sorry I believed and followed all the advice about friendship. There was only 1 time in 4 years of working for the Institute that I dared to invite another girl over just out of friendship (i.e. we were in no "natural groups" together, and if we were, we weren't the only ones in the "group" thus meaning all of the group would have to be invited.) It was the only day in all those years that my housemates were absent. If they had been in town, I was convinced it would have been "clique-ish" not to include all of them. I loved my housemates, but I didn't feel I could get with anyone else I might happen to admire and want to spend time with, just out of friendship, because that was selective and clique-ish. Being someone who enjoys going deep in a one-on-one relationship, I regret the friendships I missed out on because of the emphasis on always being in "natural groups," which was defined as any group formed randomly by work or housing assignments and NOT formed by natural affinities. Kinda unnatural, if you think about it.
This one definitely hits a nerve for me.
A well-meaning person approaches things like this with the mindset wanting to love God more.
But at the end of this, do you love God more? Do you feel more secure in God's love for you and more in tune to the Holy Spirit's work in your life? I don't - I feel judged and condemned. I feel the pressure to conform to outward appearances. I feel like I should take a power drill and lobotomize myself so that I won't take any "delight" in talking with friends, listening to friends, or listening to music.
This is the bait and switch of legalism - it's not about growing your love for God (the bait), it's about measuring you and finding you wanting (the switch). Once again, you are defective; once again, you fail to measure up.
Instead of pitting God against these "competing" things, it would be better to encourage people to walk in the Spirit in their daily life. Love God and be thankful to God as you listen to music, do your daily work, socialize, relax, pay the bills, and do the things that need to be done. Whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God (instead of whatever you do, feel guilty and stop doing it).
Matthew, that was my experience too. It left me loveless, joyless, peaceless . . .
Hmmmm. Some fruit, eh?
I came away from teachings like this with the idea that I was never allowed to have fun. The only way to please God was to totally disconnect from my emotions (all except guilt and shame). That the way to be sure you were pleasing to God was to be constantly suffering in some way. Because suffering is how we learn and grow. And that is the main goal of the Christian life, right? To become more pleasing to God by doing things that He wants? Giving up everything that I wanted was viewed as yielding to God more.
I am now learning that God has given me good desires that He longs for me to relax and enjoy. It is not more spiritual to give up what God has made me good at doing! Isn't that what the unfaithful servant did? He hid his talent. The master wanted him to invest it. Use it. Make it grow. Not hide it away and deny its existence. When God gives me money or abilities, He wants me to use them wisely, take full advantage of them to make them more profitable. Not for selfish use. But to give to others.
If my emotions are buried, how can I use them to encourage others? To sympathize with others? To rejoice wih others? Isn't that what Scripture tells us to do?
I'm still amazed at the idea that we can somehow increase our love for someone by being brow-beaten over how we are *supposed* to feel about them. Does this work anywhere else? (OK, so the same method does get applied in the courtship and marriage teachings . . . )
How about *showing* us Jesus? Maybe if we ever actually heard about Him, we would love Him for his own sake, instead of because we'd been given a guilt trip for not doing so.
>Does this work anywhere else?
White guilt.
Thank you for addressing the issues with Journey to the Heart. I never went on one, but was at HQ around the time they were first being implemented. From what I knew of the material I was highly concerned that it was just another guilt trip to get young people to live more “godly” lives. Now I know I was correct. Though by all outward appearances the program seemed to be getting “results” because of the supposed outbreak of “revival” at each of the Journeys, there was something about them made me uncomfortable. I remember Gothard saying he started the Journeys with the intent of addressing the heart because he had been focusing too much on surface issues. Funny, because the quiz above looks like it addresses surface issues to me. It’s also interesting how around the same time he wanted to start focusing on the “heart” there was a big crackdown on the rules at HQ, namely outward appearance. Thankfully, I had already planned on leaving, and the crackdown only made me glad that I was. My heart hurts for all those who have been lured (or forced) into going on a Journey, because I was once where they were, just in a different “program.” The quiz really touched a nerve for me too because I remember the days when I would have been guilt-tripped into thinking that I really didn’t love God because I desired friends, liked to read novels, enjoyed various forms of secular music (think bluegrass, ragtime, and Broadway musicals), and enjoyed going shopping. I hope that all those who have ever gone on a Journey will one day realize how much God’s love is about what He has done for them and not what we have to do to please Him.
In a slightly different context, this sort of "list" is the classic behavior of an abuser in a violent domestic relationship. The concept of "love" is used to progressively isolate the victim from his/her friends and activities.
Try it! Substitute your spouse for God in the list. Just a little creepy, perhaps?
Good point.
I find the concept of God carefully "measuring" our love for him, more than a little off.
The Law was not given as a way for God to measure our love for him, but to show us how far short we fell, and how much we needed him!
Awful. what a bold questionnaire. Disgusting. Nevermind that Jesus had friends whom He spent 3 years with... But those were disciples, I guess, not friends.. ugh.
This teaching is part of why I really didn't have any friends growing up. Also, it helps explain why I felt guilty - and sometimes still do - after sitting down to enjoy "free time" that didn't involve some kind of spiritual activity.
FREE TIME? There's no such thing as FREE TIME! Time is a GIFT and we're to use it PRODUCTIVELY! (Hey, I just remembered another common guilt-trip from IBLP.)
Yes, Sara, I loved reading fiction when I was younger. The longer we were in ATI, the more guilty I felt when I was reading anything other than Scripture or a biography. I though I must be less spiritual or something because I just wasn't interested in most biographies. I felt like I needed to redeem the time, but I was running myself ragged with no time to relax.
Yeah, amen, sister! :) This was like my mom's favorite catch-phrase..or I guess, one of them...along with "The good is the enemy of the best" and such things like that...
According to my mom, we are slaves to God, and therefore nothing (including time) belongs to us, and so basically we should always be working...basically, we should always be doing the opposite of what we feel like/want to be doing...I guess maybe that sounds confusing...
That perspective that the good is the enemy of the best has so often led to paralysis by analysis for me. I have to remind myself that it's easier to steer a moving ship. Not that we shouldn't carefully consider and weigh options, but an all-or-nothing perfectionism often does not lend itself to getting the job done. Often what people really need from us is not an Olympic level of perfection but a fair effort at getting the job done and moving on to the next task.
I couldn't really read the list because it brought back such feelings of failure, worthlessness, guilt. I sometimes go around and around in my head wondering how I missed all the true elements of faith and grace that are in the Bible. How did I walk away from the Faith Journal and grasp so little of my faith pleasing God...not my works? Because of charts like this...always measuring my works.
God Himself (Jesus) delighted in being with, listening to, and talking with His friends. And really, if it were so bad to enjoy being with other human beings.... God would never have said, "It is not good for man to be alone." Woman would never have been created. Is God selfish? NO! That's why He created TWO humans and gave those humans the ability to make more humans.
So I'm going to have to decide whether I'm going to love, spend time with, and do things for people, or love, spend time with, and do things for God, because loving people is not evidence of love for God, but rather is evidence that I in fact do not love him as I ought.
I am sure that's not what they were intending when they wrote this but that's exactly how it strikes me, too. It is a good thing to fellowship with others and enjoy their company but a document like this piles on guilt for doing a good thing. According to this test of what "delights" you, how could you ever love God enough? It's a load that never lightens, a burden that only gets heavier.
What's ironic is that Jesus told His disciples "The will know you are my disciples by your love for one another". If spending time with/investing in other human beings isn't showing our love for God, then what is? And how in practice are we TO show our love for God?
Thanks for showing so clearly how subtly we could be led into condemnation. The Title itself is ridiculous "Measure Your Love for God" An impossible task. I can talk to a friend and God at the same time and I do it quite often. I can also talk with a friend to God. And if my husband is enjoying talking to a friend, or enjoying a football game or whatever...I don't take it to mean he doesn't love me.And preferring a poorly written biography to a well-written novel is indication to me that one has not been exposed to great literature. I could go on but I'll stop there.
What a pathetic, disgusting, systematic guilt-trip. I can't imagine spending more than a few minutes with anyone who exemplified the right-hand column of attributes. It would be painful. What would we even do together other than "accomplish things for Jesus" (which - whatever it is - sounds an awful lot like work)? We'd have no common ground to actually form a real, living friendship. But, than again, I can't imagine I'd even find an OPPORTUNITY to spend time with anyone who considered normal, even edifying human interaction to be a distraction from REAL spirituality - activities like "visualizing what God is doing," feasting on "Godly biographies," admiring God's "living epistles," and journaling "for God" (that last one left me speechless). Most of the things touted by this list as pieties require withdrawal and seclusion from everyone and everything in the world. But that's not Godly at all.
What's so ironic about Bill Gothard's self-important, gospel-snubbing challenge ("Measure your love for God!") is that the Bible's already given us the only measure we need for such an evaluation: "If anyone says 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother" (1st John 4:20-21).
What a contrast. In the mind of Gothard, greater love for God has no one than this: that he put as much distance as possible between himself and his friends. But with God Himself, the opposite is true. While Gothard would shrink down existence until only I and Jesus (and Gothard, of course) remained together in a kind of ethereal bubble devoid of "competing affections," God Himself calls me to reach out and interact with the world He created. I know He wants this from me not simply because He says so, but because it's how He lives. Christ lived in heaven itself - the ultimate holy bubble. But then He left. He came down to this fallen world and dwelt in the dirt and the muck in a fleshly body like mine, socializing with tax collectors and prostitutes and pouring out His own blood to redeem me from the gristly death I deserved to die. God Himself gave up EVERYTHING for me, even His own life ... and now Bill Gothard wants to insinuate that I'm somehow rejecting God if I start ACTING like God? That I've somehow "left my first love" if I "count others more significant than myself" (Phil. 2:3)? That I've become God's ENEMY if I enjoy "being with," "talking to," "listening to," "writing e-mails to," or "doing special things for" my friends?!
What a wretched perversion of the true nature of God.
It's almost as though Gothard views the whole human race as nothing more than a vast obstacle course impeding the path to sanctification. But God didn't create multiple human beings in order to ensure that only those with the 'strength' to ignore their fellow 'distractions' would have the right to boast about their 'love for God' free from 'competing affections'; He created multiple human beings because He loves RELATIONSHIPS. If we're to desire what God desires, then the building and maintaining of healthy relationships should be the number one priority in this life.
And, as someone very wise once said, "It's possible to learn anything in isolation, except maturity."
Yeah, true. And also, it seems to me like the things in the "loving God" column are so abstract, that they don't really even lie equal with the specific things listed on the other side...meaning, it's not even a proper this-or-that choice. (e.g. do I always care for the people around me OR do I fail to notice that my neighbor is sick this week...I believe I can be caring for the people around me and at the same time not notice that my neighbor is sick...especially if I am busy "investing in my family" at home)
To me it seems that someone could easily be doing both at once...(the loving God column and the "vs. loving God" column.
Wow. I see it now. Literally every question on the quiz takes you away from friendships (because we all identify with the section on the left) and into moral dilemas. (Do I read the word 24/7 or can I talk with my friend? If you are a thinking person like me (my mind never shuts off by the way) you quickly come to the conclusion that the reason that you aren't fulfilled without friends (because you can't talk to any) is because you don't love God enough and that you aren't doing enough good deeds.
I'd love to hear the Easter Bunny hop on this topic ...
My daughter's best friend attended Journey to the Heart several years ago. They have just started speaking* for the first time since. Guess that says it all.
(Oh and the reason this young woman needed to talk is because she is going through a Gothard courtship that is stressing her out and is breaking her heart.)
What do Gothard and his "followers" think Jesus meant when he chastised the Pharisees and Sadducees as "whited sepulchres", consumed by their conspicuous external religiosity and legalistic definitions of spititual purity?
I feel so badly for you young people who have had to suffer through this type of abuse at the hands of your own family. I have nieces and nephews who I've observed over the years (from afar, of course, because they weren't allowed to be "exposed" to sinners like me and the rest of our family. Here's a clue to you: take a look at your own parents' upbringing. They are very likely behaving this way because of their own unresolved guilt over their own fairly liberal upbringing. It tends to "skip a generation", so at least your children will not have to go through what you did. You know better.
What a RIDICULOUS quiz!
what does bill do w/ the verse that says "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another"---?we need each other and each others input in our lives,,,bg is so twisted in his thinking.
This quiz makes me sick. I was gone before Journey to the Heart was really a thing, but the Wisdom Booklet Pre-Tests worked in a similar way. We hated taking it cause it was usually laden with traps.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it was just cleverly crafted by a man to trick you into feeling stupid and uninformed, and this same man who tricked you to begin with will now tell you the way it is... no tricks. Scouts honor."
Hmm...
I can hardly read that list...brings back so many difficult memories of trying to please God with all my might and never being good enough even when I DID do what the right-hand column lists because I always WANTED to be doing what the left-hand column lists!!
Loving friends means spending time with them, listening to them, enjoying life with them - building relationships! - and isn't loving others the second most important thing God asks of us?! How can BG have missed this??
Lies masquerading as truth. God help those still stuck here who don't realize Jesus loves us, unconditionally, even while we are still sinners, and that accepting that love is the only way we can ever love him! This love never changes, even when we fail.
Incredible, and yet I remember the intense guilt that Bill, himself heaped upon us apprenticeship students in Knoxville sessions especially around 1998, I believe. The specific time I remember was when Bill wanted students to commit to 2, 3, 5, or more years of single service by having us raise our hands. I did not, and yet, in that very session, he made us feel like if we only loved Jesus enough it would be a "light burden."
He also pressured us with the feeling that we were unwilling to give "our best" to Jesus if we would not make such a simple gesture of gratefulness to Him. I've just recently been considering these events as coersion which is basically causing a person to make a decision that they without specific pressure would not normally make. This is just wrong, and it doesn't renew the heart--it serves only for Bill to get his way by using people who he is able to manipulate. If he is unable to manipulate you, you are considered unteachable and a trouble-maker. Hmm... Sounds like sour grapes to me! I'm so glad my parents taught me all of those Aesop's Fables when I was little like the Emporer's New Clothes!
Ah! The "God's best" card. He played that one all the time. It's kind of like when you figure out how to trap someone in tic tac toe. So long as you get to make the first move, you can win every time.
Bill would always ask, "Don't you want God's best for your life?" Well, of course. Who doesn't want God's BEST? But what I failed to see was the presumption on Bill's part as to what God's best was going to look like. Years later, I've also come to believe there's probably no such thing as "God's best." If there was, then it would have to mean there was a "God's worst" or at the very least "God's second best."
I remember this clearly from earlier days (in Bloomington, I think) and feeling torn. On one hand, it felt so spiritual to "commit" and "give up" a period of time and yet it also felt presumptuous, as if telling God what the future was meant to be. I think I recall Bill saying something about 1-2 years as a suggested number. With a solemn reverence, some "godly young man" was introduced who spoke about the commitment he had made. When it was revealed that his commitment was 5 years, there was an audible gasp of appreciation.
I wonder if our parents had any inkling that we were being manipulated into making these kinds of commitments? "Coerced" is a good word for it. The atmosphere that was created, the build-up, the promises of God's blessing, the warnings that if we weren't willing the make the commitment it said something bad about our heart. The celebrity of those who would make bigger and bigger commitments. It was not an environment that encouraged careful reflection. It was like propaganda in that it lacked aesthetic distance.
Taking a step back, as a Christian, what are the things that are most important to us? The Christian faith is about abiding in Christ and walking in the Spirit vs. walking in the flesh. regardless of whether one is single or married.
I believe that this commitment to not get married for a set number of years is asceticism. It is error, heresy, heterodox, sinful, anti-Scriptural, wrong.
Check out Constable's notes on 1 Timothy 4 here (https://net.bible.org/#!bible/1+Timothy+4):
btw, I copy-pasted from the text, including all the footnote numbers. That's what the numbers in brackets are, for instance: [184].
I can hardly believe what I'm reading! So many years of guilt have come flooding back...that feeling of never being able to measure up to God's standards for me, that I should not find pleasure in anything (reading, friends...LIVING)but isolating my time to reading the Bible. According to this list, I have no love for God. Thanks to a new church, and a new life in Christ, I know that it's not about my love for Him (which flows out of heart grateful for the grace He alone has given me) but His love for me!
This just makes me sick to my stomach! Now that many years have passed, Gothard's materials remind me more and more of Watchtower publications! For those of you still in the process of deprogramming, research topics like Martin Luther's doctrine of vocation and his theology of the Cross vs. theology of glory, Pietism, higher life teaching, holiness movement.
I'd be interested in hearing more about Journey to the Heart..specifically people's personal experiences. I did attend a Journey to the Heart, and though I personally had in fact a negative experience with it (well, really my whole team did, but I'm not sure how much it actually affected each of us girls)...nevertheless, my sisters (who attended at the same time but were on different teams) had good experiences. At least from what I've gathered from them...
But this also comes from the background of being raised so "ATI-ish" that Journey to the Heart literally seemed "less legalistic, more focused on the heart, more liberal, etc." to me and my sisters. And because of that, we wouldn't have tended to see the rediculousness and problems with the teachings involved. Also, for me, Journey to the Heart was more about the EVENT (i.e. my team, the leaders, our activities, encounters with God, etc.) than about the TEACHING (e.g. sessions, the notebooks - esp. since my team leader didn't really emphasize the notebook.
I have since wondered about other people's experiences from Journeys. For one, I had felt/feel that I am alone in having a bad experience with Journey (since "everyone" is changed by it and loves it, etc. etc.). Just from the personal experience, eg. specific activities, team leaders, etc.
But also now more and more I'm wondering about the general effectiveness and positiveness and accuracy of what's really presented there...and how in general it has affected people (both negatively and positively).
I'm happy to see an article on here about Journey, and hope to see more.
I guess maybe I could even write an article on my experience...
Sending you an immense anuomt of love I know writing this, sharing this, is not an easy thing. I am proud of you.I am so thankful you came to the conclusion that God doesn't force anyone to do anything. I know it's hard to accept that God doesn't always intervene, doesn't wallop people on the heads with iron skillets. (My mom spent years mad at God because He didn't make her father stop drinking, even though she prayed for it her whole life. Heartbreaking.) We all make our choices and sometimes we make bad choices with the best of intentions. It just breaks my heart when I read about situations like yours. I cannot understand how the radical love and compassion in the story of Jesus ends up into crazy legalism and people controlled by men who rule with fear. It brings to mind the verse warning about those who masquerade as angels of light'.
[...] the way, the test they offer reminds me of the test offered here. [...]
I wanted to let the author and commenters on this post know that reading this has been a huge blessing to me. Even though I was never involved directly with Bill Gothard (I found out about this site due to the World magazine article), I grew up going to a conservative Christian school that I am now realizing echoed some of Gothard's teachings (such as the emphasis on Christians needing to conform to a certain outward appearance).
I recall speakers using this line of argument to imply that if we spend more time-- or have more fun-- doing any activity other than praying or reading the Bible, it means that God does not have first place in our lives. I couldn't figure out how to enjoy reading the Bible more, so I figured I had to try to enjoy everything else in life less.
I thank God that I had parents, teachers, and friends who balanced this teaching out, pointed me to Christ and His grace, and modeled His love and joy. I can scarcely imagine what it would have been like to have the discouraging, negative messages be all I heard for years. Reading this site brings me great joy to see the power of the gospel triumph even over oppression like that.
I have learned about myself as I have grown, that my heart and mind easily tend toward legalism-- thinking in terms of rules feels very natural to me, which I think is why I tend to remember those feelings of guilt more sharply than the steady presence of God's grace in my life.
Reading this post was a bit like stumbling across my own version of The Screwtape Letters, because this is exactly the kind of thinking Satan uses to trip me up and get my eyes off Christ and onto myself. It's so delightful to see it laid out and exposed as the manipulation that it is, and how contrary to the gospel it really is!
This site has caused me to give thanks to God for how great His salvation truly is-- that He sets us free! I pray that He will continue to work in all of our lives.