[NeitherFirstnorLast]

Chapter 4 Cont'd: Lee - the man and his Paradigm

I've given this section it's title - not Duddy, but it speaks to what Duddy is about to express here in this passage, in a word that was not yet captured by the english speaking world at large at the time the book was written. I don't know if everyone here knows what a "paradigm" is, so for the sake of those who don't, I will give you that definition here:

par·a·digm
/ˈparəˌdīm/: "A worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular subject."

"In a sense, we each have our own set of paradigms or glasses through which we view the world. These personal viewpoints of the "way things are" may cloud our ability to perceive or consider new or different ideas, especially if they seem to be in conflict with our perception of what is reality or "truth." - Grant M. Bright.

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."- Albert Einstein

"What you see depends on what you thought before you looked."- Eugene Taurman



The God-Men, pages 82-83

"Without calling Witness Lee's intentions into question, one can think of several factors that may have led him astray. One has to do with what theologians call 'hermeneutics', or principles of interpretation. Today, many theologians are discussing 'contextual hermeneutics", particularly relevant to cross-cultural communication of the basic tenets of Christianity, by missionaries. Do certain biblical themes elicit different responses in different cultures? If so, to what extent are those varied responses equally valid? Witness Lee is an Asian who relocated to the West at nearly sixty years of age. No doubt certain structural elements in his teaching (e.g., the deification (divinization, if you prefer) of humanity; introspective meditation) are Eastern cultural emphases that seem out of harmony with a Western view of biblical Christianity. Certain peculiarities in Local Church social practices also seem rooted in Lee's Asian heritage.

A second factor may have to do with the nature, methods of composition and purposes of Witness Lee's publications.... Most of Lee's books are derived from lectures delivered in LC training sessions... They were not intended to be theological treatises or essays....

Finally, Witness Lee's disposition toward writing and his method of teaching contribute to the strangeness of LC doctrine. Lee has a penchant for novelty in expounding biblical ideas. He seems to want to distance himself from Christianity in general and from traditional doctrinal positions and modes of expression in particular....

The authors of The God-Men recognize that Witness Lee may disagree with our systematization of his writings. Yet we think that if he were to reshape his oral teachings into systematic form, his own formulation would be congruent with the one we have suggested."

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I wanted to insert my commentary on the word "paradigm" in the opening of this post, to emphasize that what Duddy is suggesting here isn't racism - it's a nod to the fact that one's upbringing, culture, language, family, interactions, and history affect one's view of the world... and that is going to have a very definite emphasis on our interpretation of the Bible. Any Messianic Jew could tell us Westerners that! What seems to be so 'novel' in Lee's 'Recovery' is undoubtedly partly due to the cultural paradigm through which he viewed the Bible - and that is also the reason so much of what we learned has an Eastern flavor to it.

Two men were walking down a busy city street. "Listen," exclaimed one. "What a lovely sound of a cricket." The other looked at him in puzzlement. "How can you hear a cricket amid this din?" he asked. The first man replied, "I’m a zoologist." He took a coin from his pocket and dropped it on the crowed sidewalk. Immediately, the people around stopped and began to look down. "We hear what we listen for," he explained.

Paradigm quotes courtesy of www.brightquotes.com