[OBW]

Peter,

I was going to comment a little on two of your posts, but I'll put them together here and start with the second one.

Originally Posted by Peter Debelak

There IS a long tradition of "church" as its practiced. But that tradition ALSO INCLUDES a tradition of problems - abuse at worst and a subtle, non-intentional stealing of one's responsibility before God at least.

I don't recall where I wrote this. It might have been in my blog and since that got eaten by McAfee anti-virus, I'm not sure the words ever made the forum.

My son (the ThM from DTS) and I were talking last night and we agreed that there is a lot of flack to be expected by the RCC. But also a lot of flack that is not deserved. (This will link to the last part of the bit I quoted above.)

I was thinking about something the other day when it hit me that Martin Luther did not try to speak up to the RCC because he thought all the parishioners around him we unsaved. He did so because he was convinced that they were saved, but the lack of understanding how that was a certainty was robbing them of a level of freedom to move beyond the sense that they may never truly be saved. And the way the RCC was going about their business of teaching may not have been intentional. But that was the effect. Martin luther was trying to help his fellow Christians understand what they had.

Then, because Protestantism became embroiled in battle with the political arm of the RCC, we slowly morphed our understanding of the problem such that we believe that we have to teach it right or we are not saved. I know that I have asked this before, but do we really think that virtually all of the RCC's membership are just marginal cultural Christians and should expect to be in Hell for eternity? I believe that the answer is that, like any place, there probably are some. We might like to think that it might be a larger percentage with the RCC, and some other older liberal protestant groups. But would we be surprised to find that the disparity is less than we think? I have no idea, but I am willing to entertain that we could be wrong.

Then in the earlier post your said:

That an emphasis on individual walk with the Lord and learning to hear the Spirit's voice is preferable to a focus on "group" - just as a matter of emphasis - since a healthy individual walk WILL result in a corporate experience while a focus on "the group" may or may not result in healthy individual walk.

This is one of the most succinct statements of what I believe is an underlying problem with the LRC. The group supersedes the individual with the result that individuals of questionable position and walk are drawn into, and become part of, a group practice that minimizes the importance of the individual, thereby never separately arriving at the level of true spirituality that could drive a true corporate experience. (If this gets lost to a computer hiccup, I could never write it like that again.)