Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Debelak
Ohio:
This raises a very important point in this whole discussion. You found your Christian faith in a dynamic way (though, yes, I know you were raised in the RCC). Second generation are raised in the culture of their faith and may or may not find the spirituality.
For second generation - really in any group, but its highlighted in a faith-based group - the default is "faith as cultural norms," and it requires a lot to find a genuine faith, if ever. It is not hard to spend a life involved with, pursuing, preaching and working for a "faith" that is just based on cultural norms (albeit Christian and well-intentioned).
But, as you note, it is hard even as a "first generation" - in large part precisely because the group dymanic can be such a respite from the harsher, unloving world from which you emerged. Presicely because of how nurturing and loving a group can be, it makes one even more susceptible to abuse, if and when it enters...
I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but that's what I hear from this post. Always willing to be corrected... 
In Love,
Peter
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Peter, your "rewording" highlights the dilemma of "good" kids raised in a good home. I never was a "good" kid, so it's hard for me to relate. I was reputedly the black sheep of the family. They still tell stories about me.
Still God was so merciful to expose your phony Christian performances even when others were cheering you on. What if you had learned to be content with a Christ-less life? I do think it takes more maturity to see through our own hypocrisy, shrouded in good performance, than just a dark life of sin.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Debelak
I agree, Ohio that when the abuses come, they come through leaders. But they have "accomplices," in believers who don't know their own spirit and/or conscience. This is often because learning one's spirit, one's own "ownership" of their faith, wasn't an emphasis by the "leaders" in the first place. When the "group" is an entity unto itself, abuse seems much easier...
If leaders are led to "start a work" because they are commissioned from God, a teaching that empahsizes individual responsibility to the indwelling Spirit will require Christians to seek, to determine if its God's will to get involved - rather than getting involved simply beacuse they are a "member" of the "leader's assembly."
The alternative is: "Our 'church' has decided to pursue X." If I'm a "member" of church X, it is quite possible, even likely, that I defer the "is the Spirit please with this?" question to the fact that my "leaders" suggested it. In my "membership", I have a certain level of deferring my spiritual seeking to the group's decisions.
It's a subtle difference in practice. But it is EVERYTHING, as far as I'm concerned.
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Perhaps we are identifying the same dangers from different vantages. As I read this post, I question whether the members "
defer" to leader's new work because of a group culture which inhibits personal freedoms, reinforced by lieutenants who constantly sing the praises of their leader. Perhaps certain spiritual men in the group have effectively been "silenced." Young believers are much like young children. They learn much through positive feedback. When a group culture has been so shaped by worker agendas and personalities, it becomes almost impossible to follow the Lord sincerely from a pure heart.
My wife did not spend her early Christian life in the GLA. One day she commented to me on Titus' ministry, asking "
why does he never say anything good about the church in Cleveland?" Her question caught me off guard, because growing up in the GLA, that's all I knew, thinking that was normal. I never realized how deformed I had become. Like others, I was trained never to trust myself, rather I was just "Mr. Zero" and "Brother Nothing" as I had heard for years. See how the group dynamic is shaped by bad teaching?