[ChristmasGirl]

our mission organization required us to go to 2 bill gothard seminars (as a team). after i was able to recognize our mission as being spiritually controlling and toxic, i then was able to see how Bill Gothard's teachings are toxic.

he presents everything as "7 steps to forgiveness" "10 steps to ________" as if everything has a formula. i think the one teaching that bothered me the most (because i bought into it) is that all anger is a result of not "giving up your rights". this was a big teaching at our missionary base as well (to the point of using that phrase manipulatively). it brought an awful lot of guilt and condemnation into my life. My pastor recently gave a sermon, and i love the way he spoke about anger. B.G. made it sound like if i'm angry, i'm doing something wrong. i should give up my right to __________. My pastor talked about how, many times, we may feel angry because of a difference in values that 2 people have. which makes more sense to me. it doesn't mean that one is right and one is wrong, it just means that you hold different importance on different issues, and so you find a way to reconcile that, either with changing your expectations of someone else, or accepting the differences, or working it thru. you get the picture. I think B.G. puts too much emphasis on things being a 'sin issue' when that's not necessarily the case.