The Dillards have gone and done it again!
And by “it,” of course we mean make offensive, horrific statements like it’s totally normal and not at all a problem.
It’s like they’re making a career out of being awful, which is convenient, considering that Derick caused the family their sweet, sweet reality show gig with his bizarre habit of making bigoted remarks about a teenage girl.
In addition to Derick’s continued harassment of Jazz Jennings, he’s been making hateful comments about the transgender community in general.
He’s also still begging Duggar fans for money, and then there’s more general weirdness, like the way he tried to announce that he hadn’t been fired from Counting On a month after the news broke that he had in fact been fired.
It’s all bad. Very bad.
And with this new update he and Jill shared on their blog … well, they’re not making things better.
The blog was a little update on their family, just in time for Christmas.
They opened things up with “We have had the privilege over the last few months to have many interactions with international students and their families!”
If you’re familiar with these people, you can probably tell where this is going already.
They wrote that they helped their church organize a “Thanksgiving dinner in an American home” event where different families welcomed a student from the University of Arkansas into their homes — the students were from “mostly Muslim families.”
“One of the Ph.D students from an Arab country brought her husband and child,” they recounted. “Her husband seems very open to the gospel and even said if they were going to be in the area he would’ve loved to visit our church!’
“We are praying for him as Derick and others continue to befriend him that God will save his soul.”
But Derick isn’t the only one working on converting the Muslim masses — “Jill and the boys have been able to be part of a weekly Arab ladies English class, with Muslim ladies from several different countries.”
“Every week the ladies meet at a friend’s home where they learn to make an American dish, eat together, then read a Bible story and discuss the English language.”
Sounds super.
Their adventures aren’t over yet though — they also wrote that while shopping on Black Friday, they “saw a couple ladies wearing burkas, so Jill stopped to ask them where they were from and invited them to the Bible study.”
“They came that week, and one of the ladies brought some traditional tea and treats to share. When asked if they had ever read a story from the Bible, both ladies said they had not.”
“We are praying that they will return to more Bible studies.”
As always, Jill promoted the blog post on her Instagram, and judging by the comments, the post was not well received.
“Wonderful,” one person commented. “I’m sure you’ve welcomed your new Muslim friends to share the Quran with you.”
“That comment about the Muslim families seems like more of a ‘look we are accepting people please donate‘ comment than a comment about loving everyone and accepting people from different faiths,” another speculated.
“People don’t need to be saved,” a commenter explained, “they need their beliefs to be respected. Approaching people while they are living their daily lives to try to convert them is deeply wrong.”
“Respect is a two way thing, Jill, and asking someone who is wearing a burka about the Bible is not respect and showing understanding, it’s moral imperialism.”
Someone called it “disgusting” that they “can’t just do a nice thing for people,” they “have to use it as an opportunity to convert them,” and another person told them “No one needs to be ‘saved’ but you two.”
And those are all very, very valid points.
How about this: in 2018, why don’t we just promise to do a little better, OK, Dillards? Just a little bit?
It would be hard to do any worse, that’s for sure.
