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Originally Posted by Trapped
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Thank you. Now the quote makes sense. Nee was doing spiritual diagnostic work. He was describing a mind attacked by an evil spirit. When I was involved in the LCs the "leading brothers" as we called them steered us away from "The Spiritual Man". Of course, they pretty much steered us away from anything but Witness Lee's works any way, so it wasn't surprising.
Secular societry would call all of what Nee is describing as mental illness. There is plenty of evidence that professing Christians are not immune to mental illness. That all the symptoms that Nee described are caused simply by a"passive mind" attacked by evil spirits as Nee conjectures, is doubtful. To me, the big question would be if anything in the book actually helps anybody. But, I'm reading other things and I'm not interested in reading Nee, at the moment.
When I was in the church in Fort Lauderdale, a young brother who attended the meetings began hallucinating, became suicidal and slit his throat from ear to ear. He was rushed to the hospital where they saved his life, placed him on psychotropic medication and stabilized him. I visited him in the psychiatric hospital. He said he was no longer suicidal and calmly said to me that people like him surely need to believe in Christ. The wound on his throat had healed but he would have the scar from ear to ear for the rest of his life, I thought. I never saw him in an LC meeting again.
He wasn't the only person I witnessed who seemed to be afflicted by serious mental illness in the LCs. They were coming to the LC for help. Were they getting it?
Back then, it made me question whether all the meetings, pray-reading and calling on the Lord were really doing anything for any of us. The "church life' seemed to have no power on folks with serious problems.
To me it remains a question for serious reflection. It appears we can engage in all kinds of spiritual practices and have all kinds of beliefs, but, in the end "there but for the grace of God, go I."