Churchhoney

You're not telling me anything that I don't know. I never said that there were no open IMB missionaries in Nepal. In fact, I said that there clearly were -- but that IMB also makes very plain that they want more people on sites than they can get officially IMB-related visa permissions for, so they have constructed other programs that help them get those additional people -- sometimes by having those people lie to get in. Everything you've posted is about completely different programs than the ones I've been writing about-- some of them involving people who are full-fledged IMB missionaries who they obviously send in with missionary-related visas. It seems as if you've not read a word of the stuff that I've found and posted, since you're not addrressing it at all. I'm not talking about people who are officially missionaries or the people volunteering in the short-term programs you've also linked to in this post. I'm talking about the pre-missionaries -- the missionary apprentices, the not-qualified-for-missionaries young people who work as support staff. I'm talking specifically about the two-year "Journeyman" program in which some people participate under "creative access." This particular program is clearly a way to send more people than countries (such as Nepal) would accept in the above-ground IMB missionary staffs or on six-month tourist-type visas. And everything about this program sounds exactly like what Derick did and how he describes it now, on LinkedIn. To supplement those staffs with worker bees, they clearly send people into countries under cover -- "creative access" -- to assist the regular missionaries. And those people are clearly told to make up another reason for being in the country. There's only one way to interpret this: "Creative Access helps you enter a culture that is closed to outsiders’ attempts to directly bring the Gospel to its people or is legally hesitant to allow an outsider to take up residence. Creative Access helps you get your foot in the door. Examples would be ESL training, sports, community development, business opportunities, etc." This is a particular two-year program for college graduates ages 21 to 26 in which they are directed to go into the country under a false pretense in order to beef up the ranks in that country of people who are there officially and above-board under the IMB banner. That's what I'm talking about -- as I've posted over and over, so I'm going to stop now. .... And the other programs you mention here have no bearing on this program. You're at liberty to believe whatever you want about what Derick's doing. But, in fact, there is a two-year IMB program in which 21 to 26 year old college graduates are instructed to lie in exactly the way he's lied about his Nepal experience. I choose to believe that he probably participated in that program! But, of course, it's also possible that he did something entirely different. . http://www.imbstudents.org/programs/jman/1023.aspx#.VhgmWSuW4o0

Yeah, I suppose that's it. I just hate to always come to conclusions like that! So I still hold out a teensy smidgen of hope that because he's sort of a weenie who'd be afraid of getting called out by Cross Church for lying, he wrote it in an inadvertent rush of stupidity caused by the quasi-fulfillment of one of his probable lifelong dreams -- being truly commissioned by Cross Church as a full-fledged IMB-approved missionary. ..... Derick seems to so much want to be part of things that are bigger than himself, from the FBI to the Duggar family to the Baptist missions, that I can kind of see him getting carried away with that and just being stupid. But unfortunately I expect you're right about which explanation is correct. And, I agree, really outrageous because it's so blatantly untrue. And because, whatever his reason for writing it, it certainly would have had exactly the effect you say it would.

Yeah, me, too. I think that's by far the most outrageous thing he's done. I'm surprised that he didn't think carefully and choose way better words on that one.

Depends on how good it is as pasture land. We don't see much evidence that the Duggs have gotten much to grow on their side of the street, do we?

I think they did. I also think I remember that, since then, though, they've made other posts (perhaps kind of inadvertently) still pushing the twin thing -- maybe through the name contest, or something? Could be wrong about that, though.

They don't look at the evil media. They just make all their money by being broadcasters on the evil media.

Yeah, that rings a bell (or a silver dollar).

Well, they probably left the room. Maybe he was sad about that. And another person becomes part of the "I have to falsify my life and my feelings because of teevee" miasma. Constantly lying and constantly having to figure out what lie is needed in each situation has got to be very very bad for people.

Okay, I see! ... But, yeah, i don't think there's much chance of this one being examined either. S.O.S. -- for all that it looks like a horrifying scam to us -- seems to be fully accepted by a lot of U.S. church people. Because how else would they get all those people coming down on missioncations? Those people are coming from established churches, established colleges, across the heartland of the good old U.S.A. They're plain old 'Murcans of the Protestant stripe, many of them college students, and they firmly believe that doing mime in Central America is doing God's work. That being the case, I would be absolutely shocked if the media actually looked at S.O.S. I think they'll throw plenty of shade at the way Jill and Derick have personally used their money. But, as with the Nepal issue, I really really doubt that they'll ask a single question about the organizations that are involved. Jill and Derick are "reality tv personalities" so we can attack them. But we don't attack institutions that are even vaguely part of the mainstream, for the most part. It's like Bruno Iksil, the London Whale, pretty much taking the fall for the entire banking industry. Honestly, I think we ought to care way more about the Nepali issue. Because this isn't some little fly-by-night "ministry" that takes vacations. This is wholesale 'lying for God" by a premiere institution. I think the ethics and consequences of that are well worth examining. But I don't expect anybody to do it.

I kind of doubt that they will, on this one. But I can see it going two ways. If I'm even halfway near the truth, examining the Dillards in this case would mean calling into question the "creative access" idea and activities plainly promoted by IMB. This would mean not sniffing out some "lie of omission potentially being told by reality-tv people that we now have decided we should write a lot of salacious stories about" but a potential lie-for-God being told by a very large, very well-established, very well-respected Protestant denomination's mission wing. If somebody discovers that he actually was working fully or sort of under IMB auspices, then I actually don't think there's a chance in hell that any U.S. media organization -- tab or traditional -- will pay the least attention to it or raise any questions at all about why he isn't telling us that flat out. Because if I turn out to be right, examining the issue would mean questioning an establishment principle of the conservative branch of America's longstanding Protestant majority. Raising complex and deep questions about what's appropriate for mission groups to do when it comes to the laws of other sovereign nations. If I'm wrong, though, and somebody is able to turn up evidence that he was working for some other more fly-by-night group or on his own, or something, then, yeah, people will probably be tracking it down and be on him about it. ... Even there, though, I think it depends on how fly-by-night the other group would be. I don't see any American media examining a reality-tv person over his ties to a Christian "ministry" or "mission" that has any degree of validity in the eyes of any American church, actually. I supposed it's possible that one outlet somewhere might do so, but then I still expect that what would happen is the same thing that's happened to various journalistic forays into examining the Gothard group over the years. One outlet does a story, and everybody else totally ignores it. Afflicting the comfortable and powerful is not something the American media is very interested in doing, especially when the comfortable and powerful are Christians, especially Protestants. Too much outcry from the comfortable for too little return on the investment.

Right on the money. This is at the root of my obscene level of hatred of Jim Bob and of TLC for promoting this so falsely. I got riveted by the horror of this whole thing when Jim Bob was first making news running for the Senate. I saw one of those red-dress girls' photos somewhere and was completely hooked on the story and horrified by it from that moment on. And when I realized that it was all being portrayed as being like the Waltons, it absolutely sickened me. I've never even watched the show. But it still makes me so sick and so full of hate for Jim Bob Duggar and TLC's phony-ass, lying, evil show that for my own mental health I should have looked away long ago. But I just can't. It's too horrifying an example of how we love to lie to ourselves and how easily the wool can be pulled over our eyes by petty tyrants who promise that their evil tyranny is a soft lovely bed. And have "reality tv's" help to do it. Pure evil, in my opinion.

Well, from the point of view of people who believe that there is nothing more important than for as many people as possible to have a "right relation" to Jesus -- then that's more worth breaking laws for than anything else. National governments' laws are "worldly" and therefore must fall before the laws of Christ's kingdom, in their view. And Christ's kingdom is based on everybody having the right slant on faith. (And I think that, in their minds, this absolutely gives them the right to convert Catholics -- or, in deed, anyone who believes in any religious sect other than theirs. So -- yes, you want to convert Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Seventh Day Adventists, etc., alongside Jews, Buddhist, atheists, animists... If you believe in the primary importance of conversion as a mission, then all that conversion activity is not only legit but required by your Christian faith.) And I would bet that at Cross Church it does translate into some -- sort of covert -- support. IMB is Southern Baptist Convention and Cross Church's minister is the SBC president. So since Derick has already been in IMB's sort of apprentice program (I conclude), then it makes sense to me (for the first time) why Cross Church would have given Derick their unofficial but rather prominent blessing for his future work. They couldn't actually commission him or officially fund him, cause he's not IMB currently and because (I conclude) on IMB's orders he's keeping their name out of it. But he is a member of their congregation who's been working with IMB in the recent past (in a stealth capacity), so I'd bet that in their minds it's appropriate to acknowledge him as a missionary and perhaps potentially encourage congregants to make some private donations. At the point at which the church did this, they had no way of knowing -- and probably still have no way of knowing -- how the money is spent. Maybe the Dillards have used their own cash to buy airplane tickets. Cross Church doesn't know if they have and, actually, neither do I. Maybe they believe that Derick and Jill's own money has paid for the tickets. I wouldn't give cash for a conversion-first-and-foremost mission in any case, but many Cross Church people clearly would. The stuff on the IMB site makes quite clear that they too embrace the conversion-first-and-foremost principle. ...I think that the current group Derick and Jill are working with -- S.O.S. -- looks like a like scam. But I can't prove it, and it probably looks like less of a scan to people who believe in conversion-first-and-foremost missions, and the Cross Church people do. ... And maybe Derick and Jill sold them on the idea that they're soon going to strike out on their own and leave that group. They do seem to imply that. And the Cross Church minister knows that Derick is IMB-trained to some extent -- at least to the point of having spent two years working on the qt under their auspices (I've concluded.) I obviously don't accept these people's premises, so I don't arrive at their conclusions about what's legitimate and what's not, just as you don't. But I do think that if we want to understand what someone is doing, it's important to figure out what their premises are, if any. Here we've got three agents -- IMB, Derick and Cross Church -- who, I think, take as a premise that conversion missions are the most important things you can do. So in their eyes, a lot of things are legitimate that are not legitimate in our eyes. I mean, this is the basis of the whole argument about secular humanists that conservative Christians make. I take it as a premise that the human welfare of regular people is the most important thing for humans to worry about and try to promote. And that makes me a "secular humanist" and means that when I look at "missions" I want to see people helping humans in human ways. But that's not the way many conservative Christians look at missions, because they consider the human welfare of people as, at best, a secondary consideration in the world. For them, the single most important value -- eclipsing all others -- is bringing people to faith in Christ. So their view of what constitutes a legitimate mission is going to be completely different from my idea, since I can look at their missions only as a complete outsider, a secular humanist whose values and premises not only differ from but are very much at odds with their values and premises. Ditto for human laws -- I see them as trumped only by the welfare of humans (I'm a humanist) but they see them as trumped by the imperatives of Christ''s kingdom -- which include the paramount importance of missions to convert.

Well, see, I'm speculating that IMB may not want people who work with them in certain countries and under this "special access" thing to be particularly open about what they did. In fact, I think that's almost a given, based on this: IMB brings in Journeyman -- young sort of apprentice missionaries who are college grads ages 21-26 -- under all kinds of guises when they're really there to act as missionaries: "Creative Access Creative Access helps you enter a culture that is closed to outsiders’ attempts to directly bring the Gospel to its people or is legally hesitant to allow an outsider to take up residence. Creative Access helps you get your foot in the door. Examples would be ESL training, sports, community development, business opportunities, etc." http://www.imbstuden...px#.VhaSsiuW4o1 That's not Derick talking. That's what may be the world's largest missionary board. And they are flat out saying that some of these folks essentially sneak into countries that don't want missionaries to do missionary work under IMB auspices. People right in Derick's demographic group when he went, and people who do the exact stuff that he says he was doing. If IMB is in fact doing this -- and they say right here on their website that they are -- they absolutely would not want someone later advertising on LinkedIn and television that he or she has participated in this. National governments are opposed to this. IMB, however, believes it's crucial to their mission, obviously. It's exactly like being "under deep cover" as a spy. And IMB -- not Derick -- will not want this to be widely discussed in public and certainly not broadcast or put in a cast-in-stone resume on the Internet. I think that the Cross Church service recently was probably another evidence of this. He most likely did tell Cross Church people that he had already served in the apprentice-type capacity with IMB, and that's why they were willing to talk about him as a missionary at all, I posit. However, telling them privately is not the same as broadcasting across all media that this is what he did. Why would he, personally, not want to say that he worked in an apprentice capacity with IMB, one of the world's most prestigious mission boards, if not the most prestigious? Again, I posit that he would. But I also posit that -- given how they tell us that they operate in many countries, likely including Nepal -- they ordered him not to make this public. To cloak it. For the sake of their mission and not having national governments subject many young people petitioning for entry visas to extra scrutiny when they're known to be American Protestants. They very badly want to get people into those countries, obviously, because they flat-out tell people to lie in order to get in, under their "creative access" program. At the same time, national governments know the very long history of missions and conversion as tools of conquest (not necessarily in all missionaries' minds, but certainly in the minds of the larger cultures they represent), and are just as eager to keep too much of this from happening. They may allow a certain number of missionaries in, but IMB clearly would like to flood countries with more missionaries and missionary helpers to get more work done -- hence, the "creative access" group and other "journeyman" in under student visas and so on. If you sent out people under deep cover -- aka "creative access" -- for a mission you believed was of utmost importance to both Nepalis and the ultimate fate of the world in eternity, would you want your cover blown? No. Derick, who was returning to America to be on television, clearly was a huge threat to blow that cover, wittingly or unwittingly. So I posit that IMB told him to keep his participation in their program on the downlow. And, if he didn't, then he risked destroying even the possibility of a future relationship with them, I expect. So -- my long-winded answer to "why would he lie?" is this: He was told to. Do you think that there's another interpretation of "creative access" that would not entail lying? I admit that when I first saw "creative access" described, I couldn't get my mind around it either -- as an active policy of a 21st-century institution. But the more I thought about it, the less I could come up with any alternative explanation of it to the one I'm positing here. IMB sneaks some people into countries. And -- aside from alerting potential volunteers to that possibility, so they can participate in it -- they don't want to advertise it too loudly, because governments might then make stronger efforts to stop it. I'm not saying that I think this is good. I'm saying that I believe, from all the evidence, that it is IMB's policy, written or, perhaps, unwritten. And that therefore we can't really blame Derick for it, because it's IMB's choice. Not his. .... NSA people don't tell anyone they work there either, and neither do many former CIA workers. I think IMB sees their work as the exact same thing, and, most likely, as being much more important, because it's work not for a single worldy national government but for Christ's eternal and universal kingdom. Obviously I, personally, don't embrace this idea. I'm an atheist and a screaming liberal, as I've said here many times. But neither IMB nor Derick falls into those categories. So I'm sure that to them it seems like the right thing to do. Does it make Derick shady? I don't know. It does make him a person who follows the instructions of a former employer for whom he might aspire to work again, though, and a former employer whom he believes to be divinely inspired and working in the best interests of God. So there's that.

That would require a) noticing another person than herself and b) caring what the other person thinks/feels/wants. Not gonna happen.

Well, that was kind of the tv-friendly meme the Seeweirds have been planting in various pronouncements for months. They're "not a tv family" but they love their tv teasers. What will we have? Girl? Boy&Girl? Boy&Boy? Etc. So I guess people are going along. She doesn't look twinny to me. She's not particularly tall.

Also a valid point! Jim Bob, however, sets off my disgust meter to a greater degree than any human I can remember. So, even though I tend to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, after a decade-plus of obsessively reading about his doings, I don't give him the benefit of any doubt, ever! (or anything that comes out from "the family" -- since I figure that's all him)

Well, I was basically joking -- snarking, as they say! But I also would say that it's not my problem if tabloid "journalists" write stuff based on private citizens' snarking on the Internet. If they do that, they're in no way journalists. They're just copyists trying to fill up a 24-7 media maw. So I won't ever even consider limiting what I write based on whether a tab idiot might pick it up. That's their problem, not mine. And it's the reason that I tend not to quickly swallow the stuff I see in the "media outlets." Because it's perfectly clear that they get a lot of it from Free Jinger, etc. And often they get it from misreading Free Jinger. In my view, private citizens have a perfect right to speculate -- as individuals -- on the Internet or anywhere else. And no duty as to fact checking. Journalists are in a completely different category. They do have an absolute duty to fact checking. So if they take my snark and turn it into a story, very much shame on them, but none on me, in my view. As for whether the Jim Bob deserves what I said ... I can definitely see how there are two sides to that question! But here's my argument: In my opinion he does deserve snark about his lack of truthfulness because, in my view, he's lied and lied and lied for years -- and lied in just the way I'll bet they're doing here. By saying something that will generally be taken one way, while it actually means something else. I think they use misdirection constantly. And he probably lies most of all to himself. And as for the "doing stuff for tax breaks" thing -- Well, it's pretty clear that they have tax consultants working all the time. And with their financial situation, why wouldn't they? Saying the Duggars are probably using a tax break -- to me, that's about the same as saying water is wet. And when it comes to the cows. Well, I know some farmers with cows. And I don't believe for one minute that the Duggars are doing the stuff you need to do to have a dairy or a cattle farm, even a small one -- as they've pretty clearly implied by saying that they have cows. I've seen what it takes to raise cows as a farmer! And I don't think there's any way in heck that the Duggars have made that kind of investment of time, commitment, equipment or expertise. If these are dairy cows, somebody has to be getting up at 4 am to milk them! The Duggars are going to start getting up before dawn? Every single morning without fail? I doubt it. Plus -- aside from a tax break for having them on your land -- raising cows? Not lucrative. A helluva lot of work and setbacks for not much money at all. At all. You're a small-time cattle farmer because you love it and believe in it, not for the money. Does Jim Bob ever do anything not for the money? Would he do anything because of his love of the true country life, hard outdoor work and because he loves working with animals? I can hardly type that for laughing. So.... that's my argument for why my particular snark here is perfectly justified. Other may feel free to disagree! ETA: and if they actually do "have" cows. I feel very very sorry for those cows. For real.

True. Two (at least) can play at that game, though. Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople, as they say.

Well, I think you could see it that way. But I think you could also see it as converting people who are more likely to wield social influence and thus pave the way for more conversions and a more Christian-friendly or Christian-shaped society. ... Could be either or both, I think. Obviously I don't agree with doing this in the least. However, I also know that it's been part of Christian true-believerdom always, basically, and that they can clearly point to scripture that calls for it. I mean, some of the convert-or-die stuff that's gone on for centuries has been just another means of conquest or pillage, but I really think some of it always has been and is today motivated by people's true belief that this is what the God of the whole universe wants. In other words, I don't think that everybody who believes that God commanded this kind of conversion has bad motives.... I find it hard to know what to think of or how to respond to the actions of people who do this but probably do it with good motives. Since I think it's plainly absurd and wrong, I could just say that. But my basis for judging what's ethical and reasonable has absolutely no relationship to their basis for doing so. So I think it's wrong. They think it's commanded. I don't think that everybody who thinks it's commanded is lying. And I probably couldn't convince them that the basis for their ethics is wrong. But if I knew them, I'd try.

Now that we've seen what purports to be a current picture of Meredith, not just in front of a random Lowes but in the TTH, with Michelle, I guess we know Anna's not in Florida at this point, anyway.

Thanks. I sort of figured this was the case but it's nice to have the facts. So now we know the whole story. Duggars don't have cows. Other people's cows are grazing (maybe) on their land. It's being done for tax purposes. And they've once again flat-out lied on social media. Umptyumpth verse, same as the first, not necessarily louder, but always getting worse. They really are something. In fact, they actually settled the West. And pioneered the old Chisolm Trail.

Well, there it is. Are you saying you can get the exemption even if somebody else's cows are grazing? I assume so, given the nature of most of our crazy ag subsidies. ... But is it?

True, although, I guess, not completely true if you consider conversion to be helping people and, in fact, the best of helping people. If you'll notice, the IMB doesn't suggest that these pre-missionaries look for people with any kind of practical needs at all. Everything they suggest involves finding people who may be ripe for conversion and sticking to those people like glue until you convert them. In fact, I'd argue that it pretty much recommends targeting people who are among the less needy -- like university students, people who are interested in sports programs and business opportunities. It definitely doesn't say, Go to the poor, the sick, the old, the homeless, the outcasts and do practical things to ease their burdens. The only practical activity I notice for these apprentices is practical accounting and logistics work to support the full-fledged missionaries themselves. When it comes to the local people, as I read it, it pretty much says, Go to the rising middle class and convince them to convert. So if that's your standard -- and it appears to be IMB's -- Derick has been helping people, I think. So he's not an outlier. He's with the program, I think.

No. But you can be "Creative Access Sister Joan." Which means you are kinda sorta halfway commissioned as a Sister with training wheels. But if your halfway commissioner is questioned about, they'll deny it. It's deep-cover conversion activity.

Yeah, it does. ... Did he mention IMB on the show, though? I gather there are numerous missionary as well as "missionary" groups in Nepal. So if he didn't actually name one, he might have figured it was okay ... and maybe it was, even.