#342 - Jinger Duggar Vuolo | Disentangling Faith From Fear

Foreign. So sometimes we feel limited in life. Right. And I think the last place that God wants you to feel limited is in your relationship with Him. So that's why I'm super excited today because we've got an amazing guest to talk with us about her own journey, about stepping into that free freedom, stepping into that life without limits. And we've got an amazing, amazing woman who has really traveled her own journey, Ginger Duggar Volo. And she's talking about her book Free Indeed. And we want to talk about this whole journey being free indeed. So, Ginger, thank you so much for hanging out with us.

Thank you so much for having me, Hannah.

This is going to be so much fun. And also, I just believe it's going to be so, so freeing for people, because I think one of the main things that believers can really get hung up on is, am I being good enough for God? And talk with me about, like, I want to hear about your own journey. Like, we all saw you growing up. We saw, you know, you and your brothers and sisters and your life, and not that there is anything bad about that, but I think you really had to come to a place where if you're going to make your family's faith, your faith and how that's going to show up in your life. So talk to me about how you grew up and that moment when you were like, I want to explore this for myself.

Yeah. So it's been quite the journey. I grew up in the public eye, so from the age of 10 years old, my family had a TV show. We were on a couple of documentaries which turned into a reality TV show that just ended a couple of years ago. So I've been on TV all of those years. And also I was raised at a home where my parents always pointed me to Jesus, and they wanted me and my siblings to know about Jesus and know about the free gift of salvation found in him. So I'm so grateful for that. I'm so grateful for them seeking to point me to God from an early age. And at the same time, I also realized there were some harmful teachings that I followed. And we got into the teachings of Bill Gothard before I was born. My parents were introduced to it. And so I grew up thinking that life was a very delicate cause and effect sequence, because this is what Bill got third. The teacher that I followed said he would say, it's a very delicate cause and effect sequence. So if you do, if you follow my principles, these seven basic principles, your life will be guaranteed success. And if you don't Then your life will be one disaster after another. So I fell into a fear based view. Not a healthy reverence of God, but a terrifying view of thinking, okay, if I, even as a believer step out of line any, any way, any point, not following these teachings, and then God's going to destroy my life.

What were some of those teachings?

Those teachings, a lot of them were just man made rules based on outward standards. And so whether that was modesty, which the Bible speaks about modesty, but modesty being an issue of the heart. But Bill Gothard would say it's, it's about, you know, women only wearing dresses, staying inside the house, staying under this umbrella of authority. So if you move out before you are married as a woman, that would be sinful and you're opening yourself up to Satan's attacks so you can work outside the home, no college. And then also courtship was the way to go about any relationship, he said. And also music standards, he had a very specific guideline for what that was. So you couldn't listen to praise and worship music with a certain drum beat because it's, it would bring disaster upon you. And so I remember a couple different times where there was music, drums playing. Like one time there was drums in a car and somebody turned on this music and I thought, oh no, I'm gonna like, what if I'm in a car accident because of this? Because Bill Gothard told a story previously about a young man who listened to drums in the car and he was in a car accident and died because of it.

Oh my goodness. And you know, those teachings, although I love what you say, that the heart was good, the heart was directing you to a relationship with Jesus, but because of the fear of that cause and effect, right, that it's like I've got to have something to plant my feet on that gives me some stability in this world. And sometimes those teachings that we think are going to help us to create some type of, you know, expectation in this world, some type of confidence in our, in our behavior, can be so limiting. And I just believe the last thing God wants for us is to be afraid to know him better. Like, like we can't hold on to those kind of beliefs and go further into the intimacy of God.

Exactly. Yes. You said it so well, Hannah. That's exactly what I think this journey has been for me has been disentangling truth from error because there, there are balancing truths in scripture. And I think I fell into believing that this was all about, even as a believer, that God was either going to be Pleased with me or not, based on, like, these superstitious feelings. And so, for instance, Bill Gothard told a story of a woman who had a sons and husband who went off to sea and died at sea. And he said, this pastor went in to counsel this woman, and she's like, why did they die? Bill Gothard steps back and he tells this story from the pastor's perspective. And he was agreeing with them. He said, oh, yeah, it's because she had a picture, a painting of a boat on her wall, and that made her then want to go out to sea. Therefore, that's why they died, placing the guilt on this woman for something that the Bible speaks nothing about. So that type of superstitious teaching left me terrified of God. Even as a believer, I would think, okay, if I have a feeling maybe I'm supposed to stay home and read my Bible today and not go out and have fun with my family. What if I go and I. And then maybe God's going to punish me for that. Maybe he's going to punish me for some sin I've committed that I forgot about or didn't know. So it's like, you don't. You don't feel like, you know, it's expected of you from God. And the Bible's clear about what is sin. The Bible is clear about holiness and all of those things. But when it comes down to building your theology, building your life on man's opinions, that's not healthy. Because we want to have a rightful view of God, one of awe and reverence in seeing who he is and what he desires from us, from the word of God, not based on just a tradition or a rule.

Yeah, absolutely. Because holiness is a matter of the heart. And. And we get so caught up in behavior that we think, this is my measuring stick. And now that. That fear and trepidation walking through life, what if I mess up? I think that's why, you know, through Jesus. That's why God said, now you can come boldly into the throne of grace, but we can't come boldly to the throne of grace because of that sin mentality. I believe we can either have a grace mentality or sin mentality. Like we can be afraid of, what if I screw up? And here's God saying, no, no, no, I don't remember that. I want you to remember. What I'm remembering is that grace that covers you through Jesus and that just kind of allows us to breathe, and it opens up space in that relationship. And then we can come boldly into the throne of grace.

Right.

That grace, that favor. We can't have an intimate relationship with someone that we can't be vulnerable with.

Right. And the grace of God is a gift. It's a free gift. Which I think is something that Bill Gothard would say it at moments within his 60 plus hours of seminars. He would say that and then I, he, I tell this story in my book. He would also say at the same time he would say, well, before you come to God, you need to clean up this mess. You couldn't bring this mess to God, which is the exact opposite of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that if we confess our sins, that he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all of our unrighteousness. So it's not a works based thing. That's not how we are going to be saved from our sin, how we're going to know Christ. It's through our brokenness and coming to God and saying, I can't save myself. There's no good work I would do. It's only filthy rags before holy righteous God. So my perspective on that, I had it in my head that salvation was not by works. But Bill Gothard would deny that in his teachings.

Yeah, it's like, it's like saying you have to get cleaned up to come to God is like me saying you have to wash off to get in the shower. Because, you know, and that, yeah, but that verse, when you talk about cleanse us from unrighteousness. Actually if you look at the Hebrew, that verse, cleanse is a perpetual verb, like constant cleansing. It's like we're under a waterfall of his grace. So at any moment, like we have total permission to screw up. And here's the thing, Ginger, that blows me away. We would think if we're more aware and scared and fearful of our potential to sin, that we wouldn't sin. But that's why the Bible calls it the law of sin and death, because it just pulls us into sin because of that resistance and that fear. But then Jesus said, no, I'm not getting rid of it. God is perfect and there is judgment, but guess what? I came to fulfill it and now that judgment is all on me. So now you have the grace to just live in freedom. I just. Your book Free Indeed says it all like we are free indeed.

Yes. That's such a beautiful thing. And I just think it's, it's interesting how I had elements of that in what I knew to be true, but then how it played out in my life was Very different. And that's that some of the stories that I talk about in this book. I know many people weren't raised in the same setting that I was, but they have similarities. If they followed a teacher who claimed to speak for God but didn't. And it wasn't like the turning point for me. It wasn't even until I started to see other people outside of my circle who were pleasing to God. And I thought, how is that possible if you don't have all these outward standards that I do? And their lives weren't falling apart like I thought they would. They loved Jesus, they were walking in a way that was pleasing to God, even though they didn't have these small, you know, outward changes that I thought were necessary for them to be pleasing to God.

Well, tell me about when you first got exposed to this, like this, this freedom, this grace, this. All of a sudden you say you started looking at the Bible in a whole new way and really digging into it for yourself. Tell me about when that happened in your life.

That was, it was interesting. I saw my brother in law, Ben, he kind of joined the family. But along that journey, when he was coming into the family, I would visit his church and they were preaching through the Bible verse by verse and taking everything in its context. And it was, it was a totally different way of viewing the Bible. Instead of like putting, you know, pulling out a verse, making it say whatever you wanted it to say, and then like, oh, is this for me today? What does this mean for me today? And doing that with every verse in the Bible. And it was interesting. There was a, there was a different perspective way of reading the Bible that was like, what is the main story? This is a story about God's work in the world. And I'm not imposing myself into every text. So there was, there was that side. And then also whenever my husband, now husband Jeremy, came on the scene, he was friends with my brother in law, we were introduced. And whenever he showed interest in me, my dad was like, okay, how about you go through these 60 plus hours of seminars at Bill Gothard's, that way you can understand more of what we believe. And it was so helpful. And because Jeremy was able to, he started listening to some of these seminars on his own. And then we listened to some together. And the further in he got, he realized, wait, wait, wait, this guy's not a Bible teacher. And he told me that. And I, and I thought, how could you say that? Because I would never question these teachings. I thought, as Bill Gothard would say, once you know these words. Once you see that it's in the Bible, he would make you make a vow to God to, like, keep certain things. And he said, once you've made a vow, you need to pay it and would grip you with fear in that way. So I would never question the teachings. I would just think, maybe he's a prophet from God sent to tell us the truth that no one else has ever seen in Scripture. Which. Side note, big warning. If somebody has this teaching that they see outside of the Bible and they say no one else has ever seen this, it's kind of a bit of a warning. Like, wait, why are you the only one who can bring this message to us? Right, right.

Absolutely.

It's, It's. It's important that we go to the Word of God for everything. So going through with my now husband, Jeremy, it was amazing because we would pause almost every 30 seconds and say, oh, my goodness, what did he just say? And I. I was so shocked going back through and saying all of these principles that he said were biblical principles are not. I don't see that in the Word of God. Or if I see this verse in the Word of God, it doesn't apply to what he said. It does. And so the. The outward standards and things that I thought were so important, like not listening to the Gettys because they had drums. It was like, okay, I want to take this. This music is glorifying to God. I can listen to that and be pleasing to God. The Bible does not speak about certain beats being sinful and not using drums. It talks about praising Lord with loud symbols. And, you know, it's interesting. So those things started to fall off at that point when I compared it with the Word of God.

Well, how did your family receive this? Because this had to create a little bit of backlash. You know, all of a sudden, these teachings that you grew up with, you're questioning them first of all, which you're taught, don't question authority. So now you're questioning based upon the authority of God's word. So what. What happened?

What.

What were the repercussions of this?

It's interesting because I think I wanted to have these conversations with my parents and with my. Some of my family, because I saw whenever I started wearing pants, for instance, we live very public lives. And so I knew that could come back in a headline or something, saying something against my family. So I never wanted that to be the tone or attitude. And so in a hopefully gracious, winsome way, I just went to them and said, hey, this is what I see in the Word of God. Now. This is my perspective, because I don't see this in the Bible. And, and so I shared those things along the way. When things would come up, I would share that. And I think at the end of the day, it comes down to each one's perspective of the Bible and Scripture. And so we have differences. And to this day, a lot of my family is still in iblp, in Bill Gothard's teachings. And at the same time, I can say, okay, I can see how you would still hold to that, because I remember what it was like to be in those teachings. And so I, I, like, I see from your perspective why you see it that way. So there's. It's not anything out of, like, okay, I'm not upset that I, Even though, in spite of all the teachings I went through and the challenges I face because of it, I'm not upset that, okay, I was raised in these teachings. I don't have any hard feelings or anything, but I just wanted to be able to share from my heart and say, here's what I see in the Word of God. And if they still hold to these teachings as the Word of God, hopefully they'll see, okay, Ginger compares everything to the Word of God. I want to be committed to Scripture and not to a man's opinion. And I think that's the beauty of. That's the beauty of walking with Christ is that people I saw, like, even when Bill Gothard fell, I denied it for years. I said, he, He's. How could this be? He's a prophet of God. This must have been false and not real. I think that it just goes back to the importance of not following a person on this earth, but following the person of Jesus Christ, being in a relationship with God, walking with him. Jesus will never let us down. Other people will. And so I want, even with my, you know, people who were in my community and have seen so much like, they've seen Bill Gothard fall, they've seen my. My brother, sadly, in a place where he. He fell. And just seeing, okay, people can claim to speak for God or claim to be Christians, but at the end of the day, my hope in my. The anchor for my soul is found in Jesus. And so even when other teachers may fall away from the faith, if they were not truly saved, then that's not where my confidence lies. And so I want them to see that too. Even if it takes many years to come to that place.

That is such a powerful place to be. And I just Want to acknowledge your courage, because knowing that what you could be believing could not be true is a very scary thought, you know, to say that what I've been taught, you know, starting to question all of these things, all of these teachings, the way you understood the personality of God, the way you understood your relationship with Jesus, all of a sudden, questioning these. It is easier to stay in that place of fear than to move forward and recreate your identity. So that was basically what you had to do. And that, that is such a bold move to do that because it's always safer to stay. I know it sounds crazy, but in a place where you're afraid.

Yes.

Because that's all, you know, like, that's all you're familiar with, is like, this gives me something to make sense of the world. But now moving into this, this grace, this freedom, although we would think it'd be an easy move, not necessarily because you had to rewrite everything for yourself moving forward.

That's interesting, Hannah. That is something that was difficult because I was terrified when I first realized, oh, no, he's not a Bible teacher. Now what do I do? Because I, from the age of 14, I thought, okay, I have all of this figured out. I have every answer for every problem. I would look at other families and think, why are their kids rebelling? Oh, I know why they didn't do X, Y, Z. Like, all of these standards that were in my mind, I could look at a situation and quickly judge from the outside what I thought they should have done based on these principles. And so I thought, I know how to raise my family. I know how, how many kids I'm going to have. It's going to, you know, like, I'm going to have all of these kids and they're all going to turn out well. Because it's so easy when someone gives you a black and white answer for everything. And there's no Christian liberty, There's no the Lord leading somebody this way, that way. On, on secondary issues, everybody has to look the same, talk the same as cookie cutters. And I'm not talking about in, in salvation, because that is. Should be the same as believers. But when it comes down to, like, how you dress, you person may feel okay with, you know, like, wearing shorts or whatever that may be. And another person may say, okay, now I can just wear jeans. But like, differences like that, there was no room for it. So I thought everybody is the exact same. You will school your kids the same. You will, you know, only listen to the, the music that is like hymns with no drums like that was huge in my mind. So I said, this is all I'm doing. So whenever all of that, it was exposed in my mind, it was kind of an aha moment. And it was scary because I thought, oh, no, like now how would I even think about raising a family? Relying on the Holy Spirit Because Bill Gothard becomes almost like your Holy Spirit for everyone. And it was a realization of, oh, wait, this is why we have the Holy Spirit. This is the. The Lord is not done working in each one of us and we're not going to be the same. And that's the hard thing in prayer. It made me more desperate in prayer because Now I have two kids, 4 and 2, and I'm thinking, this is, it is scary raising kids in today's world. And at the same time, it's a beautiful thing because it keeps us on our knees, it keeps us before God, which is where we need to be. I'm not relying in my, on myself to say, oh, my kids are going to be perfect. They're going to have all this because of me, because of what I've done by abiding by these principles. I want to teach my kids to love Jesus and I want to show them what that is by my life, by the grace of God. But not, not all these works I'm doing to guarantee the success for my family.

Right, right. Because it's easier to understand. Like, a world of black and white is easier to understand. We can wrap our brain around it. But just like Toto and Dorothy walking into a brand new existence, it's like the black and white doesn't reveal the beauty and the, and the dimension of God. It does. It doesn't reveal the beauty of the grace that we could just surround ourselves in. I mean, if we, we don't have to have a prophet when we have the Holy Spirit. Like, he is our counselor, he is our advocate, he is our go between. And so that relationship, God wants us to come directly to him. And I want to share something that you wrote that I love. It's just one sentence. And where is it? Okay. Contrary to what I grew up believing, the ultimate threat to you and me is not the world. Instead, the ultimate threat to me is me. Like, that is beautiful. Like, you had to come to a place in your life where you had to decide, do I stay on this road or do I go into this unknown field where I get to explore what and who God is in my life.

Yeah, that was. It's interesting thinking back on that season, I was, I Felt a lot of fear walking out of it. But this is also what drove me to want to write this book was really, because I thought even those who weren't in Bill Gothard circles that have been affected negatively by this stuff, by teaching that is similar where somebody has all the answers to life's problems in themselves instead of in the word of God. It's something that I really felt this. I want to share this in hopes that it will help somebody, even one person, to come out, because I know how scary it is to be in that place. And especially today with deconstruction being such a popular thing where somebody will examine their faith and they say, okay, well, since I was harmed by a teacher, since I had a terrible, you know, perspective as a child, I'm going to tear down my faith down to the studs, never to build it up again. And they, they feel like, you know, I can justify this because of the pain I've walked through. And sadly, so many have walked through so much pain inside the church or outside the church and can feel like, well, I'm just going to throw it all off. And that's not where we have to go. Because like I said earlier, trusting in Jesus Christ himself for who he truly is and not putting all of your faith in this man, like when these black and white rules let you down, when your promise guarantee for success or even for wealth, for health and finances that may be promised by a teacher. And you see, it doesn't end like, it doesn't end up how they promised. Jesus does not promise us this easy life of getting out of all the pain and hardship that will endure, but he is there. He is the friendship of Jesus. Being near to our God and coming near even in our brokenness and sin, and trusting in the perfect work of Jesus is our only hope. We are made by a loving Creator who desires to draw near and to be near to the brokenhearted. And so it's sad to see so much brokenness within the church, within the world, but running to Jesus has. It is the answer to life's problems. And so this disentangling that, this journey that I've been on, I'm so grateful to God in His kindness. He has brought me out of this teaching that was based on fear and shown me what it is to. To be near to God, to draw near to him in full assurance, knowing that I am saved by him, that he. He delights in giving his children good gifts, even if that, you know, we may walk through suffering and pain, but he is a Good God.

He is a good God. And that's. And I feel like either side, like, if I'm in this religiosity and I'm scared to mess up and I'm afraid of what will happen if I do, and God will hit me over the head with it, or this place where some people find themselves in, where it's like, religion screwed me up and I just don't want anything to do with it. Either way, that is painful. And Jesus said, in this world, you will have trouble, but take joy. I've overcome the world so we can go directly to him. So what would you say to someone just wrapping it up and they've washed your journey and they're like, ginger, I love the. I love the freedom you have. What would be the first thing I would do today if I wanted to pursue that? What would be the first thing I do?

I'd say for anyone who doesn't have a relationship with Jesus, just to come to God and to confess your sins, to repent of your sins and put your faith in Jesus. It's not about a prayer you pray, but it is just in that openness. I think God sees our hearts. And so coming before God, pouring out your heart before God, confessing your sin, He. He says, whoever confesses your sin will in turns from your sin, will have salvation and so run to Jesus. He is your only hope. And the freedom that comes in Christ for those who are in those settings, it's so scary to walk out, to leave, because of all of the things that are said that could attack you. But God is greater than all of those fears. And I think the more that you see who Jesus is in His Word, then more freedom will come. And it's such a beautiful thing to draw near to God. And so even as scary as it may seem in these days, fear of losing friends, fear of losing family inside that setting, it's so worth it because Jesus is the best friend you could possibly ever have.

Ginger, thank you so much. This has been amazing. Thanks for hanging out with us today.

Thank you so much for having me, Hannah.