[OBW]

In case someone misunderstands what I wrote earlier today, let me be clear on a few things.

I am not dismissing "Steve Smith's" sins. They are significant and made him unfit to be an elder. But the real issue is not his sin, but the handling of it by the rest of the LRC leadership, ultimately including Lee.

I am not suggesting in any way that there is any flaw in Jane's account in TOG. And I don't think she thinks I think that either. I find that her writing is extremely level, if almost overly forgiving concerning the early stages of SS's problems. And that is as it should be. There was no sin against her in it and no knowledge of what sin there was at the time.

I am not picking on Steve, although I have done so in the past. And I often do comment that I wish some of his writing more clearly delineated between what others have said and what he is saying (and there is a little of that here, although I think I figured it out). And for someone concerned about the demeanor of someone else — especially picking on their lack of observable joy — I find these posts excessively cold, clinical, and preachy.

But that was not the point of my post.

My point was to wonder aloud if we (most of us) still consider the Christian life in terms of exuberance, bubbles, a tingly feeling, and a sense of awe at the superiority of our knowledge. Despite my serious misgivings with so much I learned in the LRC, the time did open me to be much more careful in what and how I believe, therefore more critical in thinking and listening to much of anybody. And it drove me to a more serious look at knowledge, even doing some "shade tree" study of philosophy, eventually realizing that, while knowledge is very important, it is not what you know so much as what you do that actually matters.

And it is not whether you are upbeat and joyous in a training, or serious and contemplative. It is what you do with it that matters. And to the casual observer, those who will have an idea what to do with things are those who are careful to observe what it is that they are handling, not those who are babbling about anything and everything and concerned about appearances.

In the case of Steve Smith, all the way back to 1977 there appears to be a need by LRC leadership to hide any hint of wrongdoing. The same thing was happening with PL out in California. And the head honcho himself was responsible for that little preview of things to come. Rather than being sure to deal with sin in the midst, and even make an example of a fallen elder, they just shuffled the deck and sent SS to Arlington. Then he moved on to Irving a little later. Always an elder.

That's just wrong. But rather than point at SS for his sin and his character, point at those who knew and just left him in place without any proper discipline or repentance. Those leaders knew. And they knew they did it wrong. Hope has given us some insight into the second time it all came up and they just shuffled him off to East Texas. Out of sight and out of mind. But not for long. It would come around to destroy more only a few years later. SS is not without blame. But BP and several others, including Lee share in the blame. Yet they remain in their places (sans Lee) just as SS did.

In this case, I am a little concerned that this is a little like one of those speeches by candidates for student body president. Most of the silly teen movies and TV shows (including the current hit "Glee") have at least one candidate who has nothing of substance to say, and has not practiced the little he does intend to say, so he gets stuck, then blurts out some cheer-leading kind of jargon to stir up the student's emotions about something irrelevant.

Steve's post is not like that. But I believe that he is thinking back to a time when he, like so many of us, were mostly stirred up over and over again by high-sounding rhetoric that brought us to our feet with shouts. But it was not necessarily a time when we were being imparted something of lasting significance relating to the real Christian life. I'm not saying that there was absolutely no meat in what we were hearing. But that was seldom the real point. It was all about keeping upbeat and euphoric.

When I think back to the Romans training, I don't remember a lot. But when I started thinking about the real meaning of walking according to the Spirit in recent years, I had reason to go back to look at what was written in the Life Studies on that portion of Romans. And it was just more reason to be turning away from Lee. He spent a lot of time ranting on how anything we do in ourself is just the Law as in Romans 7. He makes a big deal about being free from that (Romans 8:1-2) because the law of sin and death is defeated. Then he has little to say about walking by the Spirit except to call is the "spirit" and then move along.

In hindsight, I think that there is not much "joy" in daily, hourly, minute-by-minute realizing that our natural tendency is to walk according to the flesh and there is significant effort on our part to keep the Spirit in sight and walk that way. So we need a theology that allows us to wait until we get more dispensing to to step out and walk. In the mean time, we just seek out dispensing and joy.

And second-guess anyone who does not seem joyous. Even write them off. Treat them as a plague. Leprous. Unclean. A must to avoid.

So if you are Steve Smith and you want any hope of change, you have to hide your failure and act the part. You can't ask for help. You can't resign your eldership and seek counseling. You have to just go on and wait for the dispensing to overcome your sin.

And we know how sound that advice is.