Many families have traumas. And many of those families are home to abusers.
But very few people have as infamous of a creep as Josh Duggar among their ranks. It is not an enviable position.
Josh’s crimes are enough to move Jinger Duggar to tears.
In her memoir, Jinger discusses another downside to Josh’s crimes. One that weighs on her mind, even if it might not be anyone else’s first thought.
Becoming Free Indeed is a thought-provoking title for a memoir. Particularly for someone who has parted ways with a fundamentalist cult.
Though critics say that Jinger has simply traded one extreme iteration of Christianity for another, she clearly sees IBLP for what it was.
And her book makes it extremely clear that she sees her eldest brother, the disgraced criminal Josh Duggar, for what he is.
In December of 2021, a court of his peers found Josh Duggar guilty of receiving and possessing CSAM — child sex-abuse materials.
He had used peer-to-peer software to download photos and videos of little girls’ lives being ruined. And he did it for his own sick sexual gratification.
Josh’s wife, Anna, was using a special Christian spyware monitoring program to keep tabs on him. But Josh found a workaround at his office computer.
However, he was so focused upon avoiding Anna’s detection that he seemingly forgot to hide his activities from actual authorities.
Fortunately, this meant that investigators were able to catch him.
Despite Josh’s own history — of having preyed upon little girls in the past, including his own sisters — he tried to pin the blame upon an employee. Fortunately, no one (except perhaps Anna) bought it.
That includes Jinger, who clearly does not believe that President Biden (or Trump, or the literal actual devil) has framed Josh.
In Becoming Free Indeed, she confirms that she has not spoken to Josh in about two years.
And she characterizes the “backlash” against Josh over his actions as “correctly severe.”
To Jinger, this is about more than just the victims — little children who will never get to have normal lives, because of what men did to them. Men who record their brutality for men like Josh.
“Even if he [weren’t] a public figure, he would still be in prison for his actions,” she notes in her book.
“But because millions know who Josh is, his sin gives Christ a bad name,” Jinger laments.
“Those who oppose Christianity can point to Josh,” Jinger worries.
She writes that a critic can cite Josh “as evidence that anyone who claims to walk with Jesus is a phony.”
Jinger is not wrong here. We will note that, of course, no one person represents all members of a faith. Relatedly, one can oppose the theology or societal impact of a religion without vilifying adherents of that religion.
It may sound insensitive for Jinger to worry about the image of Christianity when there are real, human victims.
That said … perhaps there is some nuance here. We can understand that this is her worry, since she is a Christian. And she clearly sympathizes with the victims.
Perhaps Jinger can take comfort in the knowledge that Christianity is a majority religion, and thus people are less likely to blame Josh’s actions on Christianity and all Christians. People of minority faiths have no such luxury.
Jinger Duggar: Josh Made All Christians Look Bad With His Crimes! He’s Helping … was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.