[Hope]

Originally Posted by SpeakersCorner

Everything in the LC was more intense than in general Christianity, especially during the 70's. The result is you'll see more intense successes as well as failures. This thread has certainly documented some of the intense failures of the LC and its practices. But I would like to say a word for the intense successes.

The biggest success: that it produced a bunch of Christians who really deeply love and pursue the Lord. This very crowd here on the forum is proof. The brothers and sisters I know in the LC are, by and large, as purpose-driven a crowd as Rick Warren could ever hope for. We're idealistic, given Jesus-lovers. You could argue that we'd have been that way anyway, but the LC experience was the common thread we all had and it deserves some credit.

For all the mistakes of the LC I do believe a lot of lives were touched in a white-hot way by God. Sure there was some idolatry. Sure there was some abuse. Maybe there was even some addiction (there, are you happy DJ?). But you could find all these same things in the Children of Israel's experience as they trekked the Wilderness ... and the Lord called that his honeymoon with them (Jer. 2:1-2).*

While I have memories that make me weep at times, I feel like my experience through the LC was glorious: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Something sho' happened in these decades and to me that something was gold.

SC

*Okay, here's my proof: " 1 The word of the LORD came to me: 2 "Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem: 'I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown."

SC you stated so well what I would have liked to have said.

In Christ Jesus there is hope for us all,

Hope, Don Rutledge