[OBW]

I was pleased that Nigel and company did take on some of Lee's teachings. It is clear that they are not willing to simply eat every meal Lee served.

But on the flip side, as Ohio pointed out, Myer treats Cleveland and the GLA as really no different than Anaheim and the the LSM faithful. They are rejecting one uber-authority but seem unable to see past another.

But the core of the LRC in almost any rendition is the teachings of Lee. The GLA may have chipped away at Lee enough to justify no longer simply following his regurgitation apparatus. But they have left the bulk of it intact. They spend much more time dealing with whether the new ministry under the BBs as expressed by the likes of Minoru, Benson, Ron, etc., have deviated from Lee. But in those cases, they seem unable to discover that no matter how different the BBs and the LSM may now be relative to Lee, being different to Lee is necessary because he was wrong. The BBs may have become worse than Lee. But staying in sync with him is not the answer.

I think that our problem in this analysis is too often that we understand everything in extremes. If we disagree with Lee's take on the curse of Ham and his Satanology, then we have rejected Lee. But the curse of Ham was only one of Lee's tricks to become untouchable. That was what kept the few that realized his unrighteousness in line. But nuanced doctrine after nuanced doctrine that cast virtually identical doctrines in the rest of Christianity in a bad light, coupled with a redefinition of way too many common words in the Christian vocabulary, and a few special doctrines like dirt and dispensing that made everyone feel specially called and therefore superior to all those other mooing Christian cows — those are the sacred cows that no one is really going after.

I can agree that much of what Lee taught was no different from anything taught in your run-of-the-mill evangelical church. But even saying that, it is not quite right because those "no different" things were repackaged in the new lexicon. They got tied to speciality in being part of "God's best." And without those things, there is really no reason for the LRC to be something separate from the rest of Christianity. Or more correctly, no reason for anyone to choose it over wherever they already were (in most cases). Yes, there may be a 90 percent core of common belief and teaching. But that 10 percent made the LRC what it is. And without that 10 percent there is nothing of importance that cannot be found outside of the teachings of Lee, Nee, and any of the other inner-life teachers.

I will allow that some of the other coworkers of Nee have actually provided decent teaching for many people. But when it comes to erroneous understanding of scripture, while Lee leads Nee by many furlongs, Nee was no special source of exegesis. In fact, much like Lee, I think that Nee read as much or more into scripture than he dug out of it. He had a thought and he could reread any scripture enough times to eventually convince himself that it was saying what he wanted. He openly did that in his first chapter of Authority and Submission (aka Spiritual Authority). He did it in skipping by the references to house churches in Further Talks. Those are specific things we have looked into on this forum (or the other) within somewhat recent times. And seeing what I did in those caused me to look at a couple of others on my own. Either I was just unlucky, or Nee (I mean Nee, not Lee) seemed to rephrase or ignore the actual scripture to get to where he wanted to go way too often. Yet he did it in ways that were not obvious.

So back to the critiques of the CBs.

No. If your assembly can continue to thrive on the special teachings of Lee and Nee, you have not really critiqued their work. You have only distanced yourself from the abuses that some of the more outlandish teachings would allow.