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Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
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6. From 1978-1981 -- please give me a specific example of this "gross violation". Please do not use Jane Anderson as she left the same summer I walked in. I was unaware of her situation.
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ZNPaaneah,
Regarding your #6, you have designated a certain time and place that OBW cannot speak to; however, I can. You ask for a specific example of a “gross violation,” apparently wanting a person as an example. Well, during your time parameters, it seems obvious to me that you were taken for a ride through a Potemkin village. OBW has stated that it took him a long time to realize the dark side and, then, to finally admit to himself that he had been duped.
I came to this same realization just a few years ago, and I have been out for more than 20 years. Yes, I, in all my male, egotistical brilliance was duped by the Local Church and its head, Witness Lee. Personally, I think that admitting this, at least to oneself, is yet another step in the process of realizing just how much we need Jesus every step of the way.
I believe that in your post you provided evidence that you were duped, too. I state this because Jane Anderson was there in the Church in Houston during the years you were there! You state that she left the same summer you arrived, and you give the year 1978. Jane didn’t leave Houston until the end of the summer of 1979. (If you haven’t read it yet, read her book; it is very enlightening.) She was being shunned by the campus youth (some of whom she had brought into the Church) for at least a year, while you were there. It is quite likely that the same folks with whom you were rubbing shoulders were, at the same time, carrying out the directive to keep Jane at arm’s length and you in the dark.
Jane’s status was on a need-to-know basis, and you, as a new one, well …. You only saw what the leaders wanted you to see. You saw the pretty exterior, but there was a dark side that had emerged, one that some of us who had been in Houston since 1969 saw and experienced. By the time you “walked in,” the campus ministry was controlled by the campus leaders, who were tied in to the elders, who went along with Benson, who didn’t do much of anything important without getting direction from Witness Lee.