Bill Gothard’s DSM for Legalists

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m in therapy sorting how out I managed to slip in a deep depression and how I can keep from returning there. Part of the puzzle is the ways I’ve misunderstood God’s personality.

In my late adolescence, I worked at a Christian camp as a counselor. I want to be careful with my words here. I truly love those people and believe they have a deep love for God. A few of them taught me spiritual disciplines that continue to deepen my faith to this day. In spite of the beauty of the people and the undeniable good that camp from the place, there was a brand of rigid spirituality taught there that I can only describe as ham-handed and destructive.

The leadership at the camp venerated Bill Gothard, the ultra-conservative leader behind the “Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts” which was later re-branded the “Institute of Life Conflicts.”

Grandiose, for sure.

My therapist wasn’t familiar with Gothard, so I tried my best to quickly explain the book as being the DSM for fundies.

The DSM, for the uninitiated, stands for “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” Think of the DSM as the hypochondriac’s L.L. Bean catalog. It’s an encyclopedic volume of every recognized mental malady under the sun.

Bill’s red book was a catalog of sinful behaviors, a diagnosis of the root sin, followed by a three to five step procedure to redemption. Seven steps if you fouled things up in royal fashion.

Becky asked me if I still had the book. I pitched it years ago,  which is a shame. I think there’d be value in walking through it page by page and identifying the distortions I cut my teeth on.

I’d make note of the Chinese finger trap of authoritarianism. It was impossible to question the party line without discovering that one had “a broken and wounded spirit.” The questioner was marginalized as a rebel and incapacitated from doing further harm.

I’d doodle a picture of Mary Poppins dancing on the “Umbrella of Authority” to childishly poke at a brand of patriarchalism that makes Mark Driscoll look like Alan Alda.

But its Bill’s diamond illustration that I’d take careful aim at. Gothard teaches that we are all like diamonds being formed under the pressure of suffering. However, he argues that when we sin its like discoloring a portion of the uncut diamond. It’s irreperable. All that is left for God to do is chisel that section of the diamond off and discard it.

Translation: The wages of sin are permanent, diminishing, and irredeemable. Yes, forgiveness is there. But so is permanent smallness.

There’s something about me, and I can’t blame this one on Bill, that has difficulty differentiating between sin against God and failing myself or others on an emotional, instinctive level. Last year, I did the later. Flamboyantly. And despite the truth I know about God, that big, red book sat open in the corner of my mind, open to the page with the clip art illustration of the diamond, telling me that my life would forever be permanently smaller.

Meanwhile, the God of scripture inspired words like “fall down seven times and get up eight.” He turns murderers into heads of state and his personal ambassadors. He tells adulteresses to “sin no more” while leveling his worst anger on the Pharisees and their damned red books.