Perspectives, Jinger Duggar Vuolo, and Faith Deconstruction

The Duggar Family and Me

I always know when something has come out about the Duggar family because suddenly some of my old blog posts and podcasts start being found again. Sure enough, Jinger Duggar Vuolo has written a book titled, “Becoming Free Indeed” telling her story of walking away from the legalism she experienced while being raised in a family who followed Bill Gothard’s cultic teachings.

Jinger and I were part of the same cult; I’m just a good ten plus years older than her. She was starting to show up as a child in TV specials about the time I was exiting the culture and mindset. I’ll be honest, seeing the Duggar parents parading their family around on television back in the early 2000s drove me crazy. Because while they were pretending to be wholesome, happy, and practically perfect, I was pretty sure that I knew what went on behind the scenes.

Because I’d lived it.

I’d seen my friends live it in their large families. I knew the reasons behind the specific standards. I was all too familiar with the anxiety, paranoia, and fear that came with believing in a god who followed strict formulas has he doled out punishment or blessings. (You can find more of my story by searching My Story.)

Legalistic Deconstructionists

I’m glad that Jinger has pulled away from Gothard’s teachings. I feel for her. I know how hard it can be to leave family and friends who think you are now a rebellious heathen. But I think what has struck me the most about the whole thing is the responses I immediately saw online and continue to see.

For instance, I came across a Facebook post where people were criticizing her for not leaving more. They were frustrated that she was still a Christian at all, and offended that in her book she promotes a Real Jesus and claims to have found the truth. (Sound familiar?) I’ve seen similar sentiment in comments on articles and YouTube interviews. A good portion of the deconstruction community is up at arms.

Do these people–who are zealously insistent that their way is the only right way–not see what they are doing? Are they blind to the legalism in their beliefs? Do they not notice that they are still obsessed with behaviors? I don’t think they realize that they are just the other side of the religious coin. That they haven’t actually deconstructed far enough because they still religiously follow black and white thinking.

Deconstruction is unfortunately black and white these days, but it should be gray. We should define faith deconstruction the same way we define deconstructed food, drinks, or even construction. Something has been taken apart to the individual components and then rebuilt.

On one side people condemn all deconstruction as evil and heretical. Ironically, Jinger says she is disentangling her faith not deconstructing because she doesn’t want to identify with that group. I get these feelings too; just give it a few more years and a few more disillusioning Christianese moments and she might change her mind. Yet on the other side of deconstruction you have people just as staunchly believing that everyone who deconstructs must end up in the exact same same progressive mind space as them. Otherwise you haven’t truly deconstructed.

Missing Perspectives

And in the middle of this controversy in my head, I’m doing a study called Jesus & Women by Kristi McLelland. It’s blowing my mind and making me wonder if we are just wrong all around. I’m starting to think that much of the modern sides of American Christianity is just the Pharisees and Sadducees bickering with each other and all of us are missing Jesus.

Ah, Jesus—God who chose to dwell within the body of a Middle Eastern man two thousand years ago. In a Middle Eastern culture. After years of God specifically connecting with, speaking to, and leading a Middle Eastern nation.

And yet we—twenty-first century Western Christians—seem to think that we can casually read a translation of an ancient text and then come up with an interpretation based on a literal understanding of our English words. Even worse, we seem to think that we can either declare our interpretation as ultimate truth or choose to reject the whole of Christianity based on that interpretation. I’m honestly pretty horrified at our arrogance and ignorance.

So here I am three weeks into this Bible study and increasingly sure we are all just plain wrong. Because we aren’t even reading the Bible right to start with.

We approach the Bible with our Western perspective seeing it as something to be picked apart and studied. We look for details in a search for knowledge. We want to know how things happened and are quick to point out laws, rules, and principles. Ultimately we want to know what Scripture teaches me about me. And we are often hesitant to believe things that we don’t totally understand.

According to Kristi McLelland, the Middle Eastern perspective is completely different. The Scriptures were written by Middle Easterners for an audience that was Middle Eastern. This audience comes to the Word looking to be fed. They see story and narrative. They ponder the reasons why God would do these things while seeking to know what the Bible teaches them about God. Middle Eastern believers choose to take God at His word and believe Him before they fully understand.

You guys, what are we missing? What are we rejecting in our ignorance because we don’t even know? More specifically who are we missing and rejecting? I read a comment on Facebook where a woman referring to the Bible said, “Man got God wrong and wrote a book based on their own twisted understanding.” I hear where she is coming from but I’m gonna push back. God inspired a book about Himself and we read/taught/preached it wrong based on our own twisted understanding.

The first story in my study was about Jesus and the woman in Matthew 9 who had bled for twelve years. I wrote about my thoughts on my Instagram page.

I might have been a total dork and bought a Messianic prayer shawl off of Amazon because the lady in my Bible Study “Jesus & Women” video has one and I was jealous.

I might also be wearing it while I sit here typing. 😆

Do you see the verse in the second picture? It’s Malachi 4:2, “But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings…”

The Hebrew word translated wings is also the same word used as corners in Deuteronomy 22:12 “You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself.“

Prayer shawls. All Jewish men wore them. Jesus would have worn his daily.

In Matthew 9, a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years crept up behind Jesus. She was ceremonially unclean and shouldn’t have even been out in public. She’d been isolated from synagogue and the temple for over a decade. Anyone who touched her also became ceremonially unclean. All of her savings was gone—uselessly spent on doctors who failed to cure her.

But she felt certain that if she just touched the hem of Jesus’ garment she would be healed.

Hem is also translated as corners.

She touched his wings, you guys! She touched the wings of the Son of Righteousness and instantly she was healed!! Jesus felt the power go out of him, turned to see who had touched him, acknowledged her as valuable, worthy, and honorable, and declared, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”

I’m currently just obsessed with this story. I want to touch Jesus’ wings—the tassels on the corners of his prayer shawl. I want the faith necessary to creep up behind him and believe.

@christylynnewood

Then I continued to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman and had another amazing epiphany. I thought I knew the story of the Samaritan woman at the well with Jesus, but then I got the full Middle Eastern background.

There was a 700 year feud going on between Jews and Samaritans. They had literally destroyed and/or desecrated each others temples. There was a saying among Jews that, “Even the spit of a Samaritan is unclean.”

In a shame and honor culture, the Jews gave Samaritans nothing but shame.

In the extreme patriarchal culture of Jesus’ day only men were allowed to initiate divorce. I’ve often heard that the Samaritan woman was promiscuous, but probably she’d just been abandoned five times. She had a reputation. Something was wrong with her. Now she was just living with a man in survival mode.

She experienced such shame that she didn’t even go get water in the morning with the other women. She went at noon, alone, in the heat of the day.

In a culture that saw women as mere possessions, another accepted saying told men, “don’t talk much with women kind.” They weren’t considered worth conversation.

But Jesus waited for the Samaritan woman at the well. He initiated a conversation with her in bright daylight where everyone could see them. He asked for a drink from her pitcher (remember the spit saying). Jesus spoke to the place of her deepest pain and shame—the repeated abandonment. He talked theology with her and deemed her an equal. The Samaritan woman was the first person Jesus specifically reveled himself to as Messiah. Then he sent her back to her village as a missionary.

Jesus took a woman in a place of lowest shame and restored her honor. Biblical justice. And he did it with lavish generosity. Biblical righteousness.

Maybe we don’t get Jesus very well. Maybe we don’t understand God. Maybe we need to stop teaching stories until we know the cultural context. I’m in awe of a God who breaks every social norm and restores broken people to Himself with lavish grace.

@christylynnewood

As I continue to read and hear throughout this study, I am reminded of my trip to Israel back in 2015 where I felt like such an outsider—such a Gentile. It humbled me and made me ready to listen and learn.

I want to approach Scripture with this same humble, open heart. I will continue to reject the man-made traditions and religious extras of the Christianese bubble world. But before I throw away anything historical or orthodox, I’m coming right back here to this place of humility and I am seeking to read with a different perspective. I’ve already learned SO many things. I’ll probably keep throwing tidbits up on Instagram so follow along there for more thoughts.

I’m still all for deconstruction of our screwed up version of Christianity. But deconstruction doesn’t mean you can’t reconstruct a vibrant faith centered around the Real Jesus of the Real Bible. People holding to one narrow view of deconstruction shouldn’t be able to define it for everyone. Tear apart the religious beliefs of your past, but please recognize that there is a very Real God who wants to show you who He really is. 🙂