Quote:
Originally Posted by SpeakersCorner
I posted here to defend Titus Chu. He has been pilloried, excommunicated, reviled, slandered but that man, now in his upper 80s, continues to labor to “build the church.” In many ways he has been a model to me in trying to do the same.
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SpeakersCorner,
I appreciate you coming on this discussion forum to defend Titus Chu, and write of your perspective. And I don't doubt your sincerity. But I must also write of what I have seen and heard, as well. I will make 3 comments and then discuss.
The first is that Jesus taught the great commandment was in two parts, to love God and to love one another. The two are deliberately paired, and can't be separated any more than two sides of a coin. Yet in the Local Church we got "build the church" and we lost our love, and the great high peak vision was really nothing but a cover. How people treated each other was not building the church.
The second is, to interpret the Bible, avoid egregious errors. Don't interpret a verse in such a way that it voids another verse. Each verse fits with the rest holistically. Don't be unbalanced, having supposedly crucial verses and ignoring so-called natural verses. Don't interpret a verse using one rule, and then interpret another verse differently. Be consistent in hermeneutics. Any first-year seminary student would get this drilled, yet these men never went to seminary. Some verses they'd hold as if it were the key to heaven, other verses they fled from like Dracula from the dawn.
The third point is on what I used to call Culture, but it's more accurate scripturally to call it Tradition. This is to do something reflexively, habitually, repeatedly, automatically, because that's what's always been done. The Local Church would take great pains to make a big deal of being biblical, but when "wrong" scripture verses hit their ingrained tradition, they dropped scripture like a hot poker. They'd freeze in meetings if someone quoted the "wrong verses".
It starts with Watchman Nee, who set the table for the rolling fiasco that followed. He was held to be the Spiritual Human, who was discerned by no one.
*So, he'd do things that made no sense, that violated Biblical principles, that reversed earlier positions, but he was the inscrutable Spiritual Human. He could stay with a woman not his wife, and the poor sap Elders of Shanghai couldn't see that he was with his mother! Such unspiritual men! Such a natural view!
And how was Watchman Nee taken down by Ruth Lee for managing for-profit business with his unspiritual family members, supposedly to fund the gospel? Then restored by Witness Lee and Ruth Lee, according to WL's biography? Why was a female the kingmaker of the Little Flock and then 70 years later, females were unable to speak in the Local Church, because "women should be silent, and learn at home"? Not to mention Dora Yu, Peace Wang? How can an interpretive line be so mangled and self-contradictory and nobody noticed? Because the leaders were Spiritual Men, discerned by none, that's how. It was a sham.
And Witness Lee taking church members money to run a for-profit motor home business run by his own unspiritual family members, again supposedly for the gospel. "Even when he's wrong, he's right" was the refrain. Trust Witness Lee, he's got the inside track to God, and even though it looks wrong, it has to be right. He's the Spiritual Man.
And yet, Paul had written, when you prophesy,
some others can discern. Yet that was one of the "forgotten" verses in the Lord's recovery. "Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said." 1 Cor 14:29 NIV Paul could discern Peter and James, and vice versa. Read Galatians 2 for example. But when Witness Li prophesied, nobody could discern. There was no mutuality in the Local Church. Tradition would not allow.
And I daresay it was exactly the same with Titus Chu. Nobody could call him out, but WL. I saw WL dress down TC in public, where TC had to admit, "I am ashamed" for not being strident in the New Way. It was a kow-tow session, in a Chinese Guanxi Network. Everyone in the room had to see who's the Boss. Then I heard that TC would do the same with underlings, who went back to their home groups and did the same.
Yes, TC (and WL and WN) could be "tender, nursing mothers" and you saw that. But that was to get you in the Network. Once you were in the inner ring, you got "perfected". From MEB to WN to WL to TC to the poor sap who wasn't Spiritual Man. I don't doubt that TC saw WL do this unto Jane and Sandee, unto John Ingalls and many others. He was not unawares. Many of us witnessed this pattern. Too bad for them. Duck your head and hope nobody calls you out. That's a guanxi network disguised as a church. No love. Without natural affection. The "church" part if for recruiting. If they said, "This is a Tong run by a Chinese warlord" the recruiting would suffer. So they faked like it was a church. They did a good job, some still believe it years after watching the brutalization, hypocrisy.
*Chang, P. H. (2017). " The Spiritual Human is Discerned by No One": An Intellectual Biography of Watchman Nee (Doctoral dissertation, The University of Chicago).