A Powerful and Tragic but Flawed Look at the Ugly Side of Fame, Shame, Control, and Legalism
I am still struggling with my opinion on Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, the Amazon documentary about the Duggars – the family from the popular reality show 19 Kids and Counting. A reality TV family is not something I am interested in, generally, and I did not follow the Duggar’s show, in particular, so a whole series about them is not something I would usually watch, much less review. I also have no desire to add to the pain the family went through, particularly the children. Yet, the actual topic of Shiny Happy People goes much deeper that TV stardom and examines issues that are hugely important for every Christian, church goer, and parent. It thoroughly investigates the authoritarian, abusive, and non-Biblical teachings and culture that formed the very broken family whose dramatic fall was watched by millions. One the one hand, the series is insightful, well made, intense, and heartbreaking. It does an excellent job exposing the patterns of control, deception, and abuse that lurked behind the shiny happy façade of the picture perfect family depicted on the show. This could be extremely valuable to every Christian as this sort of harmful religion still shows up all too often in churches and Christian communities. Jesus is not afraid of dealing with the lies that try to distract Him from following the will of the Father and we should not be either – even when it hurts. On the other hand, while Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets certainly has its strengths, it is also subtly but dangerously misleading and manipulative. It takes the real pain and suffering of the victims of abuse it documents and exploits it to push what seems to be a very biased agenda. The true bad actions of high profile individuals are used as a springboard to make unsupported accusations about those with whom the makers disagree. It is broadly very “anti” – anti- conservatives, anti-homeschooling, anti-Christians, and anti-gender roles, and manipulative in advancing its agenda.
The series is, therefore, quite a contradiction – both potentially very valuable in some respects and harmful in others. Ultimately, given the power of the emotional appeal involved and how it is deceptively wielded, I cannot broadly recommend the show in good conscience, as result. At the same time, I honestly wish I could and was saddened by the missed opportunities represented in the series.
What if I am Having Doubts? A Pastor’s Answer
Selling the Appearance of Perfection
The Duggar family and their show, 19 Kids and Counting were a worldwide sensation. The program featured the day to day lives of the very large Duggar family led by dad, Jim Bob, and mom, Michelle, and including their 19 biological children. A big part of its appeal was in its uniqueness. Where most reality programming tended to focus on the strange, the cringeworthy, or the famous, 19 Kids and Counting went the opposite direction. It offered tired, busy, and worried America a vision of a calm, joyful, and content life in the modern world – even with 19 kids. The Duggars were presented as the real life version of the TV “perfect” family. Their show was like the reality version of a modernized Father Knows Best or The Brady Bunch, complete with fun outings, humor, weekly dilemmas resolved through advice from the wise dad, and morals of each story. The family was perpetually very ordered, very moral, and very Christian. The parents were always presented as loving, patient, smiling, and wise. The kids were unfailingly all clean cut, orderly, and obedient on camera. They were also highly motivated, moral, and talented in many various areas. Importantly for a large part of their fanbase, the Duggars not only said that they were Christian, but they also homeschooled their kids, prayed, read the Bible, and claimed to have a biblical world view which they advocated for everyone. In a world where change was rapid and society felt threatening and out of control, it seemed like tuning in offered the world a bit of certainty, hope, and safety, To the faith community, in particular, not only did 19 Kids and Counting provide clean entertainment, but it also seemed to validate the choices of many Christians. The Duggars became emblematic of the type of life many Christians were working hard to obtain, but had no idea how to achieve. They were the unofficial mascots and life coaches for many Christian parents – despite the many warning signs that were apparent even from watching the highly scripted reality show. The Duggar empire included the show, books, TV appearances, motivational speaking, and much more.
It was all so aggressively Shiny and Happy – who could not like it? This is where Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets comes in.
Let Go of Striving to Earn God’s Love – Day One Challenge
The Cost of Perfection
The documentary goes behind the smiling faces on TV to reveal the secrets lurking – some unpleasant, some ugly, and others outright disgustingly criminal. Through interviews with one of the Duggar children, Jill, family friends, and others, Shiny Happy People starts at the beginning of the pivotal relationships that formed what came to be 19 Kids and Counting – Jim Bob Duggar and Michelle Duggar’s and Jim Bob Duggar with Bill Gothard and the Institute for Basic Life Principles. The story of the Duggars cannot be told without examining the impact of Gothard and his highly influential movement.
Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. 1 Peter 5:2-3
Jim Bob and Michelle started following the IBLP early in their marriage and its teachings, materials, culture, and world view directly dictated much of what you eventually saw on 19 Kids and Counting. This included everything from from their large number of kids to how they dressed and disciplined the children to how Michelle Duggar speaks. These all trace back to one man, Bill Gothard and his opinions about what was good for families. The documentary shows how Gothard, through IBTL, taught a sort of rules heavy, shame filled, performance focused Christianity that could be as attractive and appealing as it was deceptive and miserable. Though the series does not explain as much, Gothard used many of the common tactics of false teachers and those seeking to build their own kingdoms to build his organization. His programs were built around concepts and things that seem good on the surface and sounded biblical, generally, but were either altered and twisted to serve his agenda. He changed the definitions of words involved in Bible verses, overemphasized parts of Biblical concepts to diminish others, and misapplied true verses in ways that made them effectively false in order to advance his own power and control. The show demonstrate how he used these tactics to create a culture of dominating leadership, fear, pressure, and guilt. He set himself up as the only conduit to God.
33 Chilling Bible Verses on False Teachers
Building Our White Washed Tombs
Significantly, Gothard also made liberal use of the tactic that is often the most effective in the conservative realm of the church, misapplication of the Old Testament on New Testament disciples.
Now, I know the Old Testament is wonderful, God breathed, helpful, and just as much Bible as the New Testament, so please don’t misunderstand me here.
Let Go of Your Fake Identity – Day 4
It is true that the Old Testament has much to teach you as a Christian. However, every verse from the Old Testament has to be first understood properly in its original context AND then applied through the lens of the New Testament. This second step is particularly crucial to avoid inadvertently using the Old Testament to infringe on the Gospel of Jesus. The Mosaic Law, for example, was given by God to Israel to dictate their every day life, but its ultimate purpose was point them to the impending arrival of Jesus. Therefore, if you attempt to place the Law on the Church, you not only have to ignore its original context, but you must take away from the arrival and work of the Messiah, Jesus. As a result, though broadly applying the the laws and rules of Old Testament to yourself tends to make following God seem more concrete and achievable, it actually often leads away from Christ and towards man. Specifically, trying to gain righteousness through keeping it is a subtle but clear affront to the Cross of Jesus.
I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. Galatians 2:21
Despite Paul’s clear direction from Galatians 2, leaders like Gothard wield the Old Testament to subtly impose absolute rules and harsh standards on you through which you are called to prove your holiness. They use true scripture dishonestly or sloppily to try force you to live like Jesus never came and the purpose of Mt. Sinai was never fulfilled on Calvary. Jon Bunyan has a great depiction of this deception and temptation in his classic, A Pilgrim’s Progress. The protagonist, Christian, is called out of the world and is traveling towards the City of the King. As he does so, he eventually realizes that his journey is much harder than it should be. The reason for his struggle is the huge weight of sin on his back representing his retaining the burden of his own sin, condemnation, and shame. He is also traveling in the shadow of Law, represented as Mt. Sinai, called Legality Hill, with its many rules looming over him ready to crush him at the first wrong move.
“You cannot be justified by the works of the law, because it isn’t how one follows the law or the good things they do that rids one of their burden. This makes Worldly Wiseman nothing more than an illegal guide and Mr. Legality a cheat. The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan
You see the impact of this tactic prominently on display in many of the clips of the 19 Kids and Counting reality series shown in the documentary. You may think the Duggar girls just dressed a bit oddly in the show, for example, with their long dresses with full sleeves and buttoned collars. I am not criticizing how they were dressed or the style – that is not at all my concern and everyone is free to dress as they choose. Rather, it is the family choosing to do so based on the IBLP teaching on modesty mixed with Deuteronomy 22:5:
A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this. Deuteronomy 22:5
The problem becomes clear when you examine how this Old Testament verses is used and the messages teachers like Bill Gothard attach to it in order to motivate strict compliance to their rules. It is a kind of Biblical carrot and stick motivational process. First, it was drilled into each of the Duggar girls that wearing a dress proves your goodness and that you were not wicked in your heart. If you want to please God, you have to dress modestly like God’s woman – as defined solely by Bill Gothard. If you did so, then God will bless you and your family spiritually and materially. Your outward dress also was very important in that it provides an example to teach others about Jesus. As you can see, that is a tremendous amount of pressure exerted to get the girls to comply with what were, in truth, arbitrary definitions of terms from one guy who never had a wife or daughter.
Reclaim Rest by Accepting All of the Gospel
On the “bad” side, if a woman even thought about wearing pants or a bathing suit at the beach, this showed you were wicked and unfaithful. It set you up in opposition to the ways of God and your dad, your authority. It would also directly cause financial and spiritual hardship on your family because God would not bless you and men to lust after you. Lastly, it would encourage women to choose a life of harlotry. On a decidedly creepy note, not only were long dresses the unbreakable rule for IBLP families, but the show alleges that Bill Gothard’s personal preferences for long curly hair and certain styles of dresses became the standard for how women should look while so attired. Jill Duggar talks about how she used to spend hours every day to try to get the curls in her hair that they all knew Mr. Gothard loved. Pleasing him was akin to pleasing the Lord and families would be rewarded for presenting the right appearance. Yuk, Yuk, Yuk….gross and wrong in so many ways.
Gothard did not limits his control with ruling over women’s fashion issues. He selectively took verses about fatherhood, authority, husbands and wives, family, and children and created what he claimed was God’s design for the family, often regardless of what Jesus said on the issues. His version of family was one that took extreme authoritarian leadership, unhealthy submission, sexism, and anti-intellectualism and mixed these toxic ingredients with intense legalism and a subtle prosperity gospel. In other words, as one of the commentators on Shiny Happy People noted, Gothard’s teaching turned every father of an IBTL family into a cult leader and the rest of the family into his cult. The family’s job was to follow every direction of the father with immediate and unquestioned obedience and to strictly follow every single rule set out by God for wives and children…as set out by Bill Gothard and the IBLP, of course. Not surprisingly, the job of the father in charge to follow Bill Gothard in the same manner. If the family did so, then they would be blessed with not only spiritual blessings, but also financial ones. If the family deviated even a slightest bit, then there would be no blessing and God may even punish you. Life was lived in the shadow of Mt. Sinai ready to fall on the disobedient. The concepts of respect for authority, modesty, discipline, and obedience which are certainly New Testament teachings were warped and twisted adding in heaping amounts of shame, guilt, control, and dominating authority. The description of the “blanket training” method recommended by Bill Gothard and used by Michelle Duggar was a particularly illustrative example.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear… 1 John 4:18
“Blanket training” was described as sitting a small child, a baby or toddler, on a blanket and telling the child not to move off the blanket. Doesn’t seem bad so far, right? The stated goal is to teach obedience and get a child’s heart in shape to obey the Lord when they get older. Again, seems reasonable, on its face and obedience is a good thing – but here is where the warping comes in. The parent then places one of the child’s favorite toys just off the blanket in sight, but out of reach to tempt that little sweet child to move off of the blanket to get his or her favorite stuffy or racecar. The parent also may call to the child or otherwise try to induce them to disobey the first direct command. When the little one inevitably leaves the blanket, the parent lays down the judgment by slapping the child’s hand, spanking them or otherwise punishing them for reaching for the toy. The child is then placed back on the blanket, the parent puts the toy back in place, and the temptation to punishment cycle is repeated until the child obeys without fail. Again, obedience is not a bad thing to teach your child, but not at the price of the love, trust, and relationship that are greatly damaged with this tactic. It does great hard while doing nothing to train the child’s heart – the focus of the Gospel. Mature disciples of Jesus are never formed through distrust, fear of arbitrary punishment, and repression of impulses.
God Doesn’t Call the Qualified, He Qualifies the Called
If you ever have wondered why the Shiny Happy People in your life can seem to say and do all the right things, but also seem to not “get it” and are constantly worried, anxious and haunted, blanket training is clear window into their world. Harsh, arbitrary, and obedience focused spiritual leadership teaches everyone who comes into contact with it that looking good is most important thing in life and the definition of “good” solely rests in the hands of the leader. Counterintuitively, since those in authority have shown themselves to be untrutstworthy, it is safer to fake a smile and fall in line than to face the consequences of trying to work on your own heart. It is crushing to the soul and to real growth in Jesus. On the other hand, it does a wonderful job molding Shiny Happy People.
Israel Demands a King…and I am Israel
The influence of Bill Gothard and his style of leadership can seem shocking if you don’t have children or did not encounter it when you were raising yours. As one of the victims of IBLP notes in the show, it was amazing that a man who had never been married, was not a pastor, had no kids, and was not an elder or leader of a church somehow became “the” authority on marriage, parenting, and Christian life. Yet, his rise to power made sense to me as a parent of four kids. As a result, my heart broke not only for the children who suffered as a result, but also for the parents who became ensnared by his traps…without excusing or justifying any conduct.
I can say with authority that raising kids (I have 4) is really hard…and scary. It can seem harder and scarier to raise kids as a Christian. Though it may not be politically correct to say as much, the wonderful clarity that comes with being born again can lead to a deep seated fear for your kids, particularly as a new or immature Christian. For Christians like me, who were not raised in the faith and have a background of abuse, addiction, and parental neglect or abandonment, the stakes can seem so high that you feel like desperately crying out for someone, anyone to just show you how to raise your kids to act like they should according to the Bible. It often takes a long time for adult Christians to learn for themselves the destructive allure of trying to be a Shiny Happy Christian, much less understand how harmful it is for their children. No, this is not a good place to be as it ignores so much of Jesus’ teachings, but it is understandably human. False teachers and people with worldly agendas prey on a combination of good intentions, fear, ignorance, brokenness, desperation, and desire for certainty to divert attention from Jesus, hook them to their programs and importance, and build their empire.
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.” 1 Samuel 18:19-20
What is the Point?
The Amazon series goes on to show how Bill Gothard is eventually brought down due to multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse levied against him. These allegations were made by girls whose parents bought into his system so thoroughly that they handed they put their vulnerable children in dangerous positions with him. It shows the contradictions between the stated goals of protecting their kids and their worship of Gothard.
The series also how the oldest Duggar son, Josh, is exposed for seeking to have an affair and sexually abusing his sisters when they were younger. You are taken through how the parents covered this revelation up and then used the girls as tools to defend Josh when their show was threatened without regard to the trauma experienced or being inflicted by their behavior. It then goes further and details how everything falls apart when Josh Duggar is convicted of possessing child pornography. These are all terrible things and I am not in any way diminishing these aspects. My wife and I wept for all of the victims as we watched. Yet, for those in the church who are watching the show, these wretched facts are not the most important ones, in my opinion. Rather, it is the twisted systems, unbiblical teachings, and acceptance of a type of authority that Jesus disdains that I found to be the most illuminating and potentially the most helpful practical aspect of the show. You cannot control the sins that lurk in the heart of all people, but you can identify, reject, oppose, and refuse to consent to the underlying structures that enable them. You can also learn to spot when people are misusing the Bible as a mask to hide their evil intentions and refuse to be part of it.
I have used the term “Shiny Happy People” as a short hand to describe the phenomena of the performance focused church ever since I was saved almost two decades ago. This documentary does a very good job breaking down its components.
The Warning – Be Wise as Serpents
After all the above, why do I have problem with Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets? Put simply, the show subtly makes the enormous leap from showing the evidence why the Duggar parents and Bill Gothard were fundamentally flawed to the unsupported claim that all those who fall in very broad similar categories as them are doing the same things. It lumps every homeschooler, conservative, complementarian, evangelical, and those with similar general values with Jim Bob Duggar and tars them with his sins, without distinction. It unfairly smears the institution of homeschooling, for example, for the stated issues with the quality of the Duggar kids educations, rather than the messed up individuals and wicked system it spends hours describing. I appreciate the makers only had so much time and there are real problems covered, but it appears that this fell in line with an ideological viewpoint expressed through the series. This is evidenced in their choice of “expert” commentators with Kristin Kobes Du Mez as a prime example. If you are not familiar with her work, she is well known for her book, Jesus and John Wayne. The title may not seem troublesome until you read the rest of it – How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. It is no coincidence that this book overflows with many of the same problems as Shiny Happy People. The author does make some accurate and insightful observations in the book about areas where parts of the Evangelical church lost sight of Jesus in their embracing culture. Yet, she uses these examples as representative of every “White Evangelical” and to fuel overly broad and extremely biased accusations against everyone she seems to dislike. She brings this lack of objectivity and tendency to propagandize issues along with her in her commentary in Shiny Happy People, which fits in well with the general tone of the series. Such tactics can be very hard to spot as you are swept along in the emotional tidal wave that flows out of all of the pain shown on the screen.
Shiny Happy People – Duggar Family Secrets is, therefore, a challenge to define. It is potentially very helpful and valuable in some respects, while also potentially extremely harmful in others. I learned from it while also seeing the biased tactics. Ultimately, given the power of the emotional appeal involved and how it is deceptively wielded, I cannot recommend the show to everyone, but think it would be worthwhile to watch for many Christians – particularly those struggling with authoritarian leadership and legalism.
What Grace Really Means: Freedom
Breaking Down the Illogic of Works – Galatians 3:15-25
