[OBW]

My family story would, to a point, "add up" to support ZNP. We existed within the LRC without becoming mired in the "New Way" (although my sister did go to Taiwan, only to leave early, and leave the LRC for a while, but eventually return). We (and now they since I am not part of that) defended the LRC but did not partake of many of its extremes.

But what the LRC is "about" is the extremes. But those who are part of the extremes do not pay the bills, so there is an allowance for the marginal. The superiority and "the only way" rhetoric has two functions. It puffs up some to become gung ho and it scares enough others to continue even though they might otherwise leave. The first group are the ones who run the show, define its direction, and relent to make allowances for the second group. And the second group supports the first group. They are convinced that they need the first group to remain what they are.

But for those of us who are or were in that second layer, there is a constant double life. We speak in favor of a system that we do not fully follow. We support it with our money and time, but inwardly wonder what is going on.

And when we leave, we throw off the first group as being the whole problem, yet tend to keep everything that we actually practiced as it if was a directive from God.

But my response was not for the purpose of picking on ZNP, per se. But to point to an aspect of his view that his own words contradict. And his responses to me are actually non-responses. He demands a proof of a "gross violation," yet I was referring to the list that Albert Zehr made in 1989. He demands that I comment on it in reference to a period of time 10 years earlier in Houston. I cannot do that.

Yet he is clear enough to "repudiate" what AZ writes. That is gross arrogance. It is possible for him to say that he did not see it that way. But he has got a lot of gall being so absolute to claim that AZ was simply wrong.

He truly sees that there are terrible problems in the LRC. But then there are certain places where he seems to almost retreat into a mode of defending it. And in this case, it was to defend that in a specific city, 10 years before the thing being written was drafted, he saw an aspect that didn't match, at least for him.

I did not say that his experience was not true. I suggested a different view of it. I did not repudiate him or his experience. But he repudiated AZ's observation. I did not tell him how he had to view it. I suggested that he needed more views, especially before "repudiating" anything.

And I do not return these few times just to pick on ZNP. But I see him as a man at a cross-roads. But he only has his own perspective. He speaks so strongly against aspects of the LRC, then turns to defend it, such as to "repudiate" AZ.

But the reason that I will leave him to his own imagination is that when anyone disagrees with him on any position, he lashes out and sticks to his point as if his manhood depends on it. And he will probably lash out again because I said this. And make my point.

And I don't need to be wasting my time with people who are so confident in their ways that any kind of suggestion that they consider something different receives the kind of vitriol that he tends to spew.

And while I cannot say that God would not lead us into a wilderness, it seems that we are too used to thinking that the wilderness is where the real lessons are learned. But it is only where the rough edges are knocked off and the stiff necks are massaged. The real living is outside it. No more need for manna or striking rocks for water. But we long for the provisions of the wilderness just as wrongly as we long for the leeks and garlics of Egypt.

But one of the worst fallacies of virtually all of Christendom is the notion that, because it happened to me, and after a sequence of events I am where I am, that God must have lead us through it. A sort of "God sighting." But while God will lead us from where we are through the necessary path to where we should be, it is not necessarily true that he lead us into the place that he lead us from. That is often our own overlay to avoid admitting that we don't always listen to God.

One says they had a sense to go to a different university and it results in running into an LRC member. Another has a sense to drop out of school and sell fraudulent investments, only to end out in prison. Then, after that they hear the gospel and become a Christian, only to be picked off by a Mormon on a bicycle and join that cult. God lead one, but not the other. Just because it is "me" the leading is God. For others, it is not God. If someone is lead where I go, it is God, otherwise it is not.

This is not just for ZNP. It is for all of us. I had to grapple with this for quite a while. I now willingly admit that I was not lead by God in so much of my life. And I'm not sure that joining the LRC was better than remaining in the AOG for a while longer. I don't follow their peculiar doctrines any longer, but I don't follow the LRC's either. It might be that anything to get from the AOG to where I am was worth it. But is this "it"? Or am I still on a journey to somewhere else? And if I look back at "here" in a few years and realize I was in a cult, do I need to whitewash today's experience with a claim that I was lead by God? Not any more.

As I titled this post, can any of us say that we were wrong? Wrong about anything, especially the LRC? I can now. But I didn't do it after 14 years in the LRC. It wasn't until 18 years after leaving. I spent more time outside the LRC thinking it was right than I did inside. But I was wrong.