Would you buy the Wisdom books?

[Coco]

I love how it goes from "when my room's a mess and I don't even care" to "when my world feels helpless and beyond repair"...... Cause that's a logical sequence...... If you're a depressive neurotic clean freak......

haha! i had the same thought :D

[Jana814]

I love how it goes from "when my room's a mess and I don't even care" to "when my world feels helpless and beyond repair"...... Cause that's a logical sequence...... If you're a depressive neurotic clean freak......

Those lyrics are creepy. Granted I have a good friend who is a neet freek but she is not religious by any means. However, I think that is how she feels.

[Jana814]

You can read a sample wisdom booklet online. IBLP publishes it.

ati.iblp.org/ati/about/curriculum/wisdombooklets/documents/wb4sample.pdf?show=true

Thanks for the link. How big are these wisdom booklets usually cause the one in the link is 64 pages. Are they all these big.

[Antimony]

The Ten Unchangeables is hard to understand but very confusing. What are these lyrics about? It's just a list of unchangeable characteristics? Is it saying that mental capacity and time and history and gender are unchangeable unwavering characteristics? Why is this even song? What is the lesson? I can't hear nine at all.

I am so glad the music I heard as a child was better than this.

[Coco]

The Ten Unchangeables is hard to understand but very confusing. What are these lyrics about? It's just a list of unchangeable characteristics? Is it saying that mental capacity and time and history and gender are unchangeable unwavering characteristics? Why is this even song? What is the lesson? I can't hear nine at all.

I am so glad the music I heard as a child was better than this.

Gosh you and me both. So thankful i didn't grow up ATI. Mennonite was bad enough lol I couldn't understand that song either, but found this site looking for the lyrics: wideopenground.com/the-duggar-family-and-ati/

I recently read through the book The Duggars: 20 and Counting. I remember meeting the Duggars at an ATI homeschool conference about 15 years ago. Because I grew up under the same program the Duggars are involved in, there were a lot of ATI lines that jumped out at me in the book. I am talking blatant Bill Gothard, ATI, IBLP lines. (If you don’t know the acronym, they are fancy words for Gothard’s Christian programs and seminars.) Here they go.

1. The book refers to the Children’s Institute songs. The Children’s Institute is a children’s program run by Bill Gothard, the founder of ATI. Jinger Duggar alludes to the theme song, the Ten Unchangeables, on page 7 of the book.

Q: How do you feel about what other people may think or say about your family? Have you heard anything that is particularly hurtful?

A: Our parents have taught us to work at doing right and not worry what others think of us. Yes, sometimes we hear some negative and potentially hurtful comments. But when those negative comments come, we are reminded to accept the ten unchangeable things about ourselves that make each person a unique individual: (1) the way God made us, (2) our parents, (3) our brothers and sisters, (4) our nationality, (5) our mental capacity, (6) our time in history, (7) our gender, (8) our birth order and placement in our family, (9) the fact that we grow older as the years pass, and (10) the fact that life is a race against time and the best way to use that time is to serve God and others.

- Jinger, age fourteen.

[Antimony]

Gosh you and me both. So thankful i didn't grow up ATI. Mennonite was bad enough lol I couldn't understand that song either, but found this site looking for the lyrics: wideopenground.com/the-duggar-family-and-ati/

Oh jesus christ. If I was ever unsure that ATI was a cult (which I wasn't) I'd be sure now. The 'mental capacity' line does NOT sound like it is about accepting yourself --- it is classic cults convincing their members that if they don't understand something then they're just incapable so it prevents them from learning more. I am just so much internal rage right now. This is classic discouraging further education. If a child gets frustrated with school work and can't pass, do they say "Oh that's fine, that's just your mental capacity" and let them not try anymore or do the more reasonable thing and find another angle from which to explain it? This is all very depressing.

Also it is just literally untrue. While I don't know if you can increase your mental capacity, it certainly can be decreased (brain damage and the like) so I don't even get this song.

You can also change your nationality??? Or are there not expats in ATI? I guess you can't change your nationality in terms of culture or origin but you can change your citizenship.

Nevermind the million arguments regarding changing your gender.

You can also change your parents. People get adopted. Divorces. You can add parents on. I'm just so thrown by this entire song. None of it makes any sense. This song isn't about self acceptance, it is about keeping cult members in a cult.

[snark_bait]

No, I wouldn't buy them. I'm still amazed that even people who believe BG's crap buy them.

[ILoveJellybeans]

The 10 unchangeables are stupid, most of those things can be changed.

1. The way God made us is so broad it could be about anything. Maybe looks? But your looks can be changed-you can have plastic surgery, dye your hair, get piercings, or even just have your appearance naturally change over time, like just generally getting older, or gaining or losing weight. Or if something happened to you, and you ended up with scars, or lost a leg...

2. While you will always have the DNA of your biological parents, and will never be able to change whose uterus you came out of, it is possible to change who your parents are. Some people are adopted, or have parents who divorce (or one dies or something) and then gain new step parents.

3. Your siblings will always be your siblings, but you can also gain new ones, like if your parents adopted a kid, or if you got stepsiblings when your parents remarried, or if you were adopted into a family who had kids.

4. You cant change what country that you were born in, but you can move to a different country and become a citizen of it.

5. What if you were in an accident and ended up with brain damage? Or what if you got dementia when you were old and stopped being able to do things you used to do before?

6. True.......until they invent time travel :P

7. Although most people keep the same gender for their whole lives, some people's gender identity is more fluid and does change. If they are talking about our biological sex but felt weird about saying it, that can change too with hormones and surgery. But I suppose the Duggars don't understand that there is more to sex and gender than having a penis, balls and the ability to grow a beard and having a vagina, boobs and being able to pop out babies every year.

8. Of course our birth order can change. Everyone was once the youngest child-and for some people, that changed when their younger sibling came along. Every oldest child was an only child once (unless they were one of multiples). Then what if they gain new siblings (by marriage or adoption) who are older or younger than them. They might have been an only child for the first 10 years of their life, but then their parents divorced and remarried, and then they ended up having 12 and 8 year old stepsiblings and being the middle child of three, or were an only child, but then became the youngest when their parents adopted a kid who was a year older than them.

9. Yeah, I will give them that one

10. Yes, life is short....and its sad that fundies waste all of that time being boring.

[RosyDaisy]

I just woke up the feline headship trying to listen to that, and I fear he is going to discipline me.