[OBW]

Looking back through this thread, it is now clear to me that there are levels of control that were being talked about and at some level we were each talking about difference kinds of control while thinking that everyone else was thinking our way about what was control.

There were clearly multiple levels of control at work in the LC. And not necessarily intended as the kind of overt control that DJ was so strongly saying was not present.

Before we go too deep into the kind of spiritual control that was ultimately exerted, we should probably face the fact that those who practiced this control were not necessarily intending to do harm. Many of them — possibly even Nee and Lee — believed what they were teaching. And they may have recognized that their teachings were potentially contrary enough that they needed to bring us along a journey to get us on board rather than just spell out the whole thing.

They would know that to start by telling us that a new, extremely out-of-sync teaching was where we were going would cause us to put up defenses. So they took baby steps. (I realize that for each of us that came along after the groundwork was laid for those already on the inside it might have been more difficult, but the fact that a large group of people were already on board does tent to lessen objections in many cases.)

So spiritually, Nee and Lee — intentionally or unintentionally — used rhetorical tricks to take us through each step of the transformation of our thinking.

Is this control? Not if you think control is about putting guns to people's heads, or kidnapping their children and using the threat of violence against them to get their cooperation.

But that is not the whole of control. In the realm of religion (not intended in the pejorative way that the LC so often uses it), few of us really have the time or resources to truly assert our personal understanding of scripture as being right. Just like aspects of engineering, medicine, and other fields of knowledge, we rely on those who have studied them and continue to do so for our benefit. While there are controversies in almost all fields, the core is seldom in question.

Surely we do have better personal knowledge than those of just 100 or 200 years go. But it is generally not sufficient to be lone Christians without reference to any others.

But when we refer to others, who is our primary source? Those who stand firm to sound teaching passed down through generations and centuries, or those who tickle our ears with new teachings? Are we improved by chasing after so-called "lost" teachings that were never actually taught, but only insisted upon because of inference?

And if the process of learning the lost teachings then opens us up to more and more new revelation, is that evidence of something of God, or of something else?

When the result is that we come to believe things that are not soundly found in the scripture, and in some cases stand in opposition to it, do we need an overlay (like "God's economy") to allow us to assert that actual scripture does not mean what it clearly says, but something else?

Once we have done this, are we not controlled? They may not be able to ask us to commit suicide or do other unlawful things, but there is much control.

Then we come to something like this ridiculous statement by Ron Kangas. Those of us who have been outside of the LC for many years, or were never really on the inside, would never accept such a thing as true. But when your lens for understanding scripture has been usurped in such a way that anything said by the MOTA, Oracle, or whatever-you-want-to-claim is taken even if not just unsupported by scripture, but contrary to it, the thing that you would never do is now changed. Still won't drink poison. But you might never see through the fog of deception.

They need to understand where they veered off the path of sound teaching. And it wasn't Ron's latest crazy saying. It was in a multitude of slight veers off the road as we turned off our minds and allowed disorder into our minds, burying those warning bells that were going off with shouts of "Amen," or even "Oh Lord, Amen, Hallelujah!" The problem is not the words that we spoke. Those were precious. But it was the group euphoria of hearing something special and new. That reliance on emotion displaced our sound minds and led us astray.

And they had us. There was, and still is control.