Duggar Family Pastor on Josh's Molestation Scandal: God 'Can Forgive Everything'

[RandySF]

The famously conservative Duggars seemed to be models of wholesome family life, but son Josh was hiding a dark past: He allegedly molested five young girls as a teen. Subscribe now for an inside look at the Duggars' dark family secrets, only in PEOPLE.

Amidst the Duggars' family crisis, one of their pastors is speaking out about the recent allegations that Josh Duggar molested five underage girls when he was a teenager.

The Duggars' pastor, Dr. Ronnie Floyd, 59, of the five-branch Pinnacle Cross Church in Rogers, Arkansas, tells PEOPLE, "Everyone does wrong, and what was wrong was very wrong as to what was testified to and it's completely unacceptable.

"But I'm thankful, whether it's him or any other one, that I serve a God who can forgive everything.


http://www.people.com/article/duggar-pastor-josh-duggar-scandal

[pkdu]

1. Everything ..except for being Democrat of course. Nt.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. yup

[Kalidurga]

2. Well almost anything

-he can't forgive anything that isn't completely heterosexual orientation and "pure" upon marriage.
-men and women who operate outside gender roles even if they are heterosexual
-poor people if they end up needing welfare
-any democrat that does anything wrong ever
-Hollywierd
-peace activists
-vegetarians
-hippies
-single mothers even if they are widows if they end up needing public assistance
-anyone who has had an abortion, thought about having one, paid for one, held the hand of someone getting an abortion,
is pro-choice, has had a "dubious" miscarriage, or who has used any kind of birth control that keeps that little sucker from
ending up in the uterus.
-people that use the word racists cuz they are big ole racists
-people who don't want poor people to starve
-people who want a living wage
-people in debt
-people who need medical insurance
-people who advocate for LGBT rights

at least that is what I gather from those who follow RW Jesus.

[angrychair]

7. everything is forgiven for the "right" people

If you are going go through all the trouble to create religion and a sky daddy and good place to live and a bad place to live...well you have to make sure the "right" people get into the right neighborhood and all the "other" people know their place.

[BrotherIvan]

8. Exactly right

Add anyone who believes in a different religion.

[Kalidurga]

24. or the wrong brand of Xianity

how many are there? Like 2000 or something?

[BrotherIvan]

25. Who even knows

I wish they all actually just listened to Jesus.

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. --MKG

[imthevicar]

3. I keep waiting for them

to blame his "Temptress" sister.

[Arugula Latte]

5. ...

[Beaverhausen]

6. There is nothing "allegedly" about this. He confessed

[riderinthestorm]

9. A corollary of "It's Gods will!" So shut and endure

A vicious circle of Christian theology.

[jmowreader]

10. God isn't who he should be worried about

If the authorities can prove he knew about the molestation and didn't report it, there are criminal penalties for his inaction.

[6000eliot]

11. "P.S. Kill the gays."

[Journeyman]

12. It's not God's place to forgive or reconcile: Those young girls must come to their own terms. . .

Josh Duggar's involvement with those girls and by extension this situation, along with the involvement of his parents, should cease. Those girls need neither false piety nor the self-serving behavior of people who care not a wit for their welfare.

Let God mull on that and act accordingly. He used to be fairly adept at smiting. Let Him prove His worth before He helps a preacher peddle phony forgiveness.

[beam me up scottie]

13. "their reputation in Arkansas is that they are a very Christian family"

"All of us were surprised by the news because ... their reputation in Arkansas is that they are a very Christian family.''

Floyd said his "evangelical Christian ministry is alive and well'' despite the scandal. The Cross Church has rapidly grown to five campuses and the Pinnacle Church holds about 2,000 people. "Things like (the scandal) have happened before and will happen again,'' says Floyd.

Right, cuz christians don't do anything immoral.

Ever.

Must have been another one o' them closet atheists.

Or he had a crisis of faith and came back to gawd.

[countryjake]

29. Or the devil made him do it.

Questioning these zealots, such "good religious family" types, on why so-and-so might have committed some totally despicable immoral crime, will invariably get you a response that satan had something to do with it.

It's usually the standard pat answer for fanatics.

[beam me up scottie]

30. It's never their fault, is it?

Absolutely shameless.

[countryjake]

31. The supernatural is their get-away-with-murder card.

Beamie, follow this link here and then on to the next...read that Slate article about what one of those quivering broods did to a little orphan girl in my town.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6736363

[beam me up scottie]

32. omg, that poor little girl.

The way she suffered, I can't bear to imagine what she must have been thinking.

And to do this to a deaf child:

Things weren’t much better for Immanuel. When Immanuel began wetting the bed after a few months in the house, he says, the Williamses accused him of doing so on purpose and forced him to take immediate cold showers outside under the hose. He testified in court that he too was sent to sleep in the bathroom. Immanuel was also punished if he didn’t feel the vibrations of one of the Williamses stomping their feet on the floor to get his attention. Often, he was switched on the soles of his feet, and sometimes Carri ran the plastic switch up and down his face—something she said was a joke. Once, during a family celebration, Larry hit him hard on the top of his head, causing bleeding that ran down his face. Afterward he was put outside and the rest of the family was told not to sign with him. At church, a deaf parishioner, Brian Kruick, sometimes tried to talk to Immanuel alone, to see how the boy was doing, but every time he came close, Larry or Carri would take the boy away.

Monsters.

I adopted a feral cat who accepted and nursed an abused kitten the neighbor kids brought me.

No wonder I prefer the company of animals.

[countryjake]

33. That woman kept that plastic "rod" in her bra.

You and me both, as to your last sentence.

That family lived just up the road from us, but nobody knew. I still have guilt nightmares, dreaming that me and my man snuck into their compound at night to rescue Hana from that barn...it always ends with the three of us running for our lives thru the woods....

I only hope that that little boy is able to sleep well each night.

[beam me up scottie]

34. If you had known you would have done just that.

The people who knew that family had some idea, they just didn't care.

Makes me wish I believed in hell.

[countryjake]

35. I can imagine how attuned Immanuel must have been to movement.

Hyper-aware at feeling those "vibrations" that the "good religious family" beat him for ignoring. I cannot imagine not being able to hear them coming with their instruments of "chastisement".

As a child of abuse myself, my senses all became acutely sharpened to any noise or movement, ready to deal with my wild parent at any time, night or day.

When I read the police report that tells how the biological kids claimed he was whipped for not paying close enough attention, I called bullshit on it. They were a pack of racists and I'll always wonder if they had ulterior motives for adopting Hana and Immanuel from the get-go.

[beam me up scottie]

36. I don't think he'll ever fully recover from that kind of abuse.

And Hana will never have the chance.

According to court testimony, court documents, and pretrial motions, Hana’s life was a series of daily and escalating punishments. She had been forced to sleep alone in a barn more than 80 feet from the house; then in a locked, dark shower room; and finally, in a locked 4-by-2-foot closet, where she spent much of the last six months of her life, perhaps confined for as long as 24 hours as her parents piped in Bible sermons and religious music. (Carri would testify that the longest Hana spent in the closet was 10 hours.) After the Williamses accused Hana, who was a carrier of hepatitis B, of smearing menstrual blood on the bathroom door, Hana was also made to use an outdoor port-a-potty behind the barn that the family only serviced once or twice in the entire year she was forced to use it. She showered in the front yard under a garden hose propped up with sticks, in view of the family. Sometimes the family wouldn’t speak to her for as long as two days at a time; if she argued with Carri about the clothes she picked out, she was made to wear nothing but a towel, and sometimes she had to go barefoot. Hana’s braided hair, of which she was proud, was shorn off three times, once for cutting the grass too short. She and Immanuel were both fed different meals than the biological children—cold leftovers topped with frozen vegetables, or sandwiches deliberately soaked with water. Most often, they had to eat outside, away from the family, even in rain or snow. They weren’t allowed to participate in birthdays or Christmas. And they were spanked with a variety of instruments, including belts, a long, flexible glue stick, and a piece of thin, plastic plumbing tubing that Carri kept in her bra. The misbehavior they were punished for included getting homework wrong, not standing in the right place, and sneaking food. The biological children were sometimes spanked too, but not like the adoptees.

Horrific.

How anyone can believe that they should be forgiven for such an atrocity is beyond me.


I am so sorry you were abused, I too am a survivor and still have nightmares decades later.

[countryjake]

37. Again, as to your last sentence...

You and me both.

[Lars39]

14. Long ago in the dark ages, I was taught that to 'render under unto Caesar' meant

'To obey the laws of the land.' haven't heard one word of that from these pos.

[Oktober]

15. Yes... We know...

Which is an amazingly convenient system.

Raped and pillaged a bit? How about some punishment from justice system...

Oh.. No need? Jesus gave you a mulligan?. Oh your fourth mulligan?

As long as JC is good, I guess we can let this one slide...

This has always been one of the major flaws in the system. A psycho can live a life of rape, crime and torture and then give it all up on his deathbed for a front line ticket.

I can hand out aid and mediate peace in Africa for most of my career but it's off to hell with me because I didn't acknowledge my appropriate place in the universal pecking order.

[KittyWampus]

16. I'm more concerned about whether the abused victims can forgive you...

and how badly those poor young girls/women have been mindf@cked by these power-mad grifters.

Oh, that's right. I think the abused victims now have their own tv show?

[Mariana]

18. The abused victims' *parents* have a TV show.

I don't imagine the abused victims were given any say in the decision to make a TV "reality" show out of their lives.

[el_bryanto]

17. It's a troubling response

I say that as a Christian who does believe in a God that can forgive. But I forgiveness is given after the sinner has done everything he can to fix the situation - which includes acknowledging and accepting his own nature as a sinner and making compensation in so far as that is possible to the person he has sinned against - I see little evidence that this Dugger has done either of those things. He seems more interested in excusing his crimes than in owning up to them.

Forgiveness also seems tied to being willing to forgive others and to not be judgmental - since the Dugger brand is built around judging, I'm not sure he meets this criteria either.

So from a theological standpoint I'm not sure he's actually made much of an effort to overcome his sin.

Bryant

[romanic]

19. The Pastor

sounds like a complete nutbag and a creep.

[phantom power]

20. God botherers are all about the forgiveness, when their hypocrisy comes to light.

Not so much for anybody else. It's a mystery, I tell you....

[truebrit71]

21. Never trust a person who can clear their conscience of any immoral act....

...by asking forgiveness from their imaginary friend.

[Arugula Latte]

23. I love all the: "Well, God will do x, but not y" or "God will forgive, but only if x happens..."

Interesting how so many have so much explicit knowledge about the workings of an invisible supernatural being for which there is zero evidence that it actually exists.

[Initech]

22. No it's criminal behavior. The Bible is not a get out of jail free card you dumbasses.

[davidpdx]

38. Well put

Unfortunately sex crimes are common and many people go to prison for it (rightfully so), but you rarely hear people calling for forgiveness for other people convicted for the same thing. The only thing you usually hear is something a long the lines of "burn them at the stake". Yet the Dugger clan expects us to believe poor Josh should be forgiven because he is special.

The truth is he will never face any of the following consequences for his crime:

He will never serve a day in jail or prison
He will never have to register for as a sex offender for the rest of his life
He will never be discriminated for the rest of his life based on his past crime for housing or a job (also anyone with a record would be disqualified from most state or federal jobs)
He will never have to pay restitution to his victims
He will never have to be on parole and have his whereabouts monitored or residence searched for years after his release

No, poor poor Josh won't face any of these consequences. We should just forgive the poor confused lad.

[3catwoman3]

26. In the early 80s, I had an interesting...

...discussion with a nursing faculty colleague who had converted from Catholicism to Judaism to marry her husband. We were discussing the Christian convenience of being forgiven by God for all manner of vile acts. In her study of Judaism prior to her marriage, she said she had learned that in Judaism, the relevant forgiveness must come from the people one has harmed.

Makes more sense to me.

[Major Nikon]

27. Funny how that works

[bhikkhu]

28. Forgiveness is narcissistic, how about healing his victims?

That was always one of the problems I had with the christian notion of "salvation", the forgiveness of one's sins. The harm one does is a thing that ripples out far beyond oneself. Wiping one's own slate clean fixes the least important part.