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by Dr. Bob Cosby Years ago, when I was a young evangelist just starting out, a dear pastor friend of mine told me, that he was going to come into a windfall and that he wanted to pay for me to attend the Institutes in Basic Youth Conflicts seminar by Bill Gothard. Since I have never been one to turn down a gift, I accepted and a few months later I attended my first seminar in San Diego, California. To say that it was a valuable time would be to grossly understate the facts. Very few ministries have impacted my life in as positive a manner as this one did. Over the next several years, we attended the Advanced Seminar, All Day Pastor’s Seminar and every seminar put on by the IBYC. We read the “Character Sketches,” “The Pineapple Story,” “The Rebuilder’s Manual,” and all of the books they produced. We even kept copious notes in our “Life Notebook”. Bill Gothard broached some subjects that had not been dealt with for many years. For one thing, Bill tried to raise some standards for dress and conduct in a time when doing so was almost universally considered to be "legalism.” The present movement toward Biblical “courtship” and away from romantic dating really began in his teachings on moral purity. He stood against contemporary music in circles where he was almost a lone voice. He preached on paternal responsibility when the norm was matriarchal. He stood against churches being in debt when all conventional wisdom encouraged debt. I think my father hit it on the head when a year after I attended my first seminar, he attended and his comment was, “This is revival material.” For my wife and I, the most important area that Bill “pioneered” was in home schooling. When Cathy and I first started home schooling it was because God had called me to an evangelistic ministry, and I did not believe in traveling all over the world while leaving my family at home. My father had made the same decision when I was young and I will be eternally grateful that my father chose to leave evangelism rather than be away from his family. If we were to continue in evangelism it meant we would have to home school. At that time the idea of home school was almost unheard of and we felt it a great sacrifice to do so. However, in time we began to realize that maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. We began to see things happen in our home that we believed to be very positive. We didn’t say anything about them because we were afraid of sounding too radical, but we were pleased none the less. Then I had the opportunity to attend an All Day Ministers seminar in Atlanta and Bill began to teach on the advantages of home schooling and I sat in the audience dumfounded. Many of the things he was saying were things we had already experienced and to hear someone else articulate what we had experienced was indeed a thrill. So when Bill announced that they were starting a home school program sometime in the future, I signed up immediately to get the information. Some time later, we received an application for the Advanced Training Institute of America and to make a long story short, we were one of the 102 pilot families for the program. We had the opportunity to attend the training seminar at the Northwoods Conference Grounds in Michigan and were in on the ground floor of the program. An evangelist friend once told me, in a conversation about the IBYC seminars, “Don’t check your brains at the door.” This was excellent advice and as we attended the various seminars we were constantly aware that Bill Gothard was not the sole authority for faith and practice, even though he had some excellent materials. In time we began to realize that Bill had some vocal critics. Some of the most vocal criticism comes from people who never attended which tended to lessen their credibility, but some were people who had attended and had seen through some things. Our position, when we were chosen to be in the program was that we would “chew the fish and spit the bones.” In the mean time, Bill was not without his own problems. Bill has never married, basing his doing so on 1 Corinthians 7:8 “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.” There have been reports of major problems developing from this position but the real problem has developed in the fact that his ministry has become a family ministry and he has never had a family. He is the coach who never played the game. Sometimes the result of this curiosity is funny. When we were at the Northwoods for our training seminar, Bill decided to get off on birth control and by the time he was through, he had prescribed that all married couples be, for all intents and purposes, celibate. When Cathy and I got back to the room she almost incredulously asked, “What did you think of that?” To which I replied, “You can tell that boy has never been married.” On the one hand what he said was so ludicrous, it does not even bear any description. On the other hand, we were not going to miss what we perceived as a tremendous opportunity for our children because he was stupid in one area. Some of the things that arose from this lack of practical knowledge was far more serious. Since he had no idea what it was like to have all of the interruptions that come from having a large family living in the parsonage, he demanded things that my wife and I simply could not deliver. More times than I care to remember, I came home to find my wife in tears and had to assure her that she did not have to match up with the “perfect” mom as described by Bill. But all of these things can be overlooked because of the meaty teaching in other areas. The most serious error in the teaching of Bill Gothard involves the area of authority and the Christians response to authority. At the time when Bill first began to minister, our nation was filled with anarchy and unrest. If there was ever a time for a balanced and Biblical look into the area of authority, we were in it. Our nation in general, and Christians specifically, needed to be reminded that there are some absolutes and that God had instituted and established certain human authorities. Bill taught the things that most students of the Word of God recognize in the area of authority, that God had established and ordained three spheres of human authority: The Home – Genesis 2:24
But Bill adds a fourth institution of human authority which he calls “business” by using verses such as Colossians 3:22 and substituting the position of an employee for that of a servant. There are several reasons why I completely reject this position. 1) The economy that God instituted was agrarian and not commercial. In fact, Revelation 18:4 gives us a solemn warning concerning our involvement in the commercial system. 2) Business is not based on position but upon contract. Both employee and employer are servants to the contract that binds them. 3) There is no mention of business as an authority. This fourth area will be the source of a lot of the unbiblical positions that Bill takes as we will see later on in the article. 4) A master owns the labor of the servant while the employer buys the labor of the employee. The basic position that Bill takes is that these institutions are placed over us, not only to perfect an orderly society, but that they are there for the purpose of God working out his good pleasure in our lives. Relying heavily on Proverbs 21:1 “The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will,” Bill takes the position that God uses authorities to teach us in the same way that a tool is used by the craftsman. “Each of us has a multitude of character deficiencies that need to be perfected. God uses those in authority to do this. God assures us that the heart of one who is in authority is in His hand, and that He turns it in the same way he does a meandering river by using the pressure of current and time.” There is therefore almost no circumstance where an authority is not justified in what he commands. Even wicked rulers, ruling by and for their own caprice, are considered to be acting for our benefit and are to be obeyed almost without question. The Apostle Paul, writing under inspiration of God in Romans 13:4 tells us “For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Bill would interpret this to mean that governments do good without realizing that there are rulers like King Manassah who in 2 Kings 21:9 “. . . seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the children of Israel.” In a mailing sent to introduce the ATIA the following position of the ATIA was stated: “The curriculum content of ATIA applies the principles being taught to a family’s relationship to government officials and church leaders. Accordingly, every effort is made to comply with government regulations unless doing so would directly violate Biblical commands.” On it’s face we would have no problem with that statement. However we have some real problems with the way this principle is applied. Mark 13:9 says, “But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them.” Here we are told that the eventuality for the believer will be to come into conflict with the rulers. It is hard to be a witness against the King when we are obeying his unjust and unbiblical commands. Even the most casual of Bible students has to recognize that there will be conflicts develop between the believer and government. So what do you do when an “authority” asks you to do something that is wrong? Bill has a seven-step outline based upon the confrontation of Daniel with the Melzar in Daniel 1. 1. Check our attitudes
I do not want to be guilty of throwing the baby out with the bath water so I will preface my remarks by saying that in general, this is pretty good advice. There is no question that there are many instances where there seems to be a conflict between the Word of God and the orders of an authority when in fact the real problem is on the side of the one under authority. However there are a couple of problems with this plan. The first question that needs to be asked is, “Does the person giving this order have the authority to give this order?” For example, King Saul ordered his army not to eat, but Jonathan ate without knowing the order. When Saul ordered his son executed the people overruled him, in essence saying that although he was the lawful King, he did not have the authority to make that order. David was the King but had no
authority to order Uriah to sleep with his wife.
In each of these situations, a person would have been wrong to obey the order given because the person giving the order had no authority to give it. Then, step three “Discern basic intentions” causes the whole system to fall apart. Bill assumes, almost universally, that the intentions of the one in authority will always be right. The Word of God and experience will evidence that nothing could be farther from the truth and if it is not true, the other steps are an exercise in futility. If the one giving the order has sinister designs, nothing good can ever come out of obedience. Several years ago in Nebraska, Churches were fighting licensure for their schools and took this approach, assuming that the purpose for licensure was to assure a better quality education. They had their children independently tested and the average score was well in advance of their counterparts in the public school but when that information was brought into court, it was not allowed. The issue was not quality of education, but control. It was upon these two principles that we split from the ATIA. At that time the State of Arizona had a statute requiring that home schooled children be registered with the State. It was our firmly held conviction that the Word of God did not mandate or even allow for such, as education is not a ministry of the State but a ministry of the home. If they had no authority then we could not conceive of a situation where it would be right to do so. And then we looked into the purpose for the statute to see if there was some legitimate purpose they were trying to accomplish and since the courts had already ruled that quality education was not the goal, we could not conceive of any possible legitimate reason for their wanting to do so. When I explained this to Bill’s second in command, our position was dismissed with “Well, we do a lot of things that the government has no business in. For example we get marriage licenses.” Well, it just so happened that we had discovered the real purpose and intent of the marriage license and mailed it back the week before. Needless to say, at this point communications broke down. And then I want to look at the area of business being an authority. The place where Bill errs biblically, is in the assumption that the servant/master relationship in the scripture is equal to that of the employee/employer relationship today. The fundamental difference is in the fact that the servant is, either because of debt, capture or by volunteering, a subject to the master. All of his labor belongs to the master. In the employee/employer relationship, both sides are servants to the contract made between them. The employee is responsible to accomplish that which he agreed to accomplish, while the employer is responsible to the precise terms of the contract. Neither side has any right to try to hold the other to more than was agreed to at the beginning nor can they shirk on their end of the bargain. Both are servants to the contract. The important thing to keep in mind here is that there is no natural obligation. Nobody is born an employee but becomes one by contract. When Tennessee Ernie Ford sang “I owe my soul to the company store,” he did so, not because the “company store” had any Biblical or natural authority over him, but he had contracted so deeply into debt that he had no way to get out. In my opinion, the reason Bill must include business as an authority is because without this as an authority, he has no authority. The IBYC is not a home, (Bill has never even been married), it is not a Church, (a fact that leaves it on very shaky Biblical ground) and it is not the government. The only authority that Bill actually has is in reference to those who have actually contracted to him under the terms and conditions of the contract. It was at this point that we were forced to break ties with Bill. We were in the ATIA for two years and do not regret the opportunity. Overall it was a positive experience that we would like to have continued. When we started we knew that we did not agree altogether with Bill’s position on authority but had no problem in the program because in the beginning he constantly used the word “suggest.” “This is how we suggest you do things.” Where we disagreed with Bill we simply didn’t follow his suggestions. However, toward the end of the second year, there was a subtle change in the language being used. Suddenly it was, “This is how we do things.” The problem was that his way of doing things within the legal structure of the State of Arizona, was to effectively give our children over to the State, something I was not about to do. When it came time to sign up for the third year, I called and asked whether this was a requirement or a suggestion. That question still has not been answered. Bill would never say we had to do it but he made it clear that he really didn’t want us to continue with the program. We finally resigned from the program. That which we had felt was simply a difference in application was seen as a complete divergence in doctrine. Since then, he has begun to include unbiblical relationships into the contract in certain areas anyway. For example, if a parent sends his child to the “college” program in Indianapolis, he must agree not to have any contact with his child for a period of time, and then he can only go to eat every once in a while, or call on a very limited basis. Bill not only uses his contractual authority to rule unnaturally over the home, but tries to overrule the Church. Another of the “pilot” families in the ATIA was a couple who went to a foreign nation as missionaries sent by their local church. Because they were in the program, they offered to act as liaisons for the ATIA and set out to do so. In time, they decided to cut back on their ATIA involvement and Bill promptly ordered them to come home from the mission field, even though they were sent by their local Church! In all of these cases, Bill seems to see his contractual position as head of the ATIA as more important than the real authority in the matter. In conclusion, I do not desire to imply that there is no benefit to the IBYC, the ATIA or any other of the ministries of Bill Gothard. There is tremendous benefit to those who are able to “chew the fish and spit the bones.” However, if one is not careful, he will choke to death on the “bones” of this ministry. Originally published in The Biblical Examiner |