I managed to listen to Jinger Duggar Voulo’s book “Becoming Free Indeed” while being a stay-at-home mom this week. Billed as a tell-all book, it barely covers any of the behind-the-scenes of the Duggar household, but instead is focused on being a takedown of Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles.

The audiobook is read by Duggar offspring 6 of 19 in her sweet little voice as she systematically tears the patriarchy she grew up under a new one. Well, an old one, because the open secret everyone but the Duggars acknowledge is that half the motivation for watching the show was wondering when the Kool-aid would wear off. Most of the viewers are struggling to raise their 1-3 kids without emotional and financial ruin, so we didn’t believe their hype. Plus, the long skirt thing was just too much.

The show came to an end when the older brother went to jail and their glorious church leader was disgraced when 30 women came out with accusations of harassment. Nevertheless, Jinger spends most of her book systematically disentangling her Christianity from that circus only to jump from one frying pan to another hot nonsense of John “Women who preach in the church are a disgrace” MacArthur.

I am not judging her though, because it’s hard to separate your faith from family and culture. I am not sure that any church in town has a theology that is in perfect alliance with scripture. We live country that’s not sure it wants to acknowledge the full humanity of women or people born on the wrong side of a line on a map. At best, her book reminds us we all have some inner work to do.