Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt
I will present some more evidence that Lee's methods of instituting hierarchy and top-down control were already well in place in the 60's. One of Lee's ingrained tactics was taking control of a group of believers and getting them fully under his authority. This was before and after coming to the US. There was no lull in this behavior.
|
This much is enough. I believe it is the truth. And it is fully off topic here. You know this better than anyone else.
I just got a PM from a frustrated member. I realized that the problem here is not that the expanded definitions of idolatry and demonic influences are wrong, but that they are being misapplied.
I will provide a parallel that should make the case. In Matt 5, Jesus expanded the definitions of adultery and murder. He even commanded that to fail to teach it was to become least in the Kingdom. And so we diligently do so.
But what do we do when someone is caught in the very act of lusting after a woman in his heart? There's the problem. You can't do it. You can only deal with actual, all-out adultery. The expansion was to place boundaries in each person's heart and mind so that they did not do everything but "do the deed." It was to stop the "slippery slope" to open sin. It was to make us clear that it was a matter of our heart as much as a matter of deeds.
But when it comes to matters of the heart, the only judge is God. And the only other person who clearly knows is the sinner himself. Even if the temporal punishments of the OT had been left in place, there would be no "stone the person who lusted in his heart" because it is an unknown. It remains a sin that can be publicly dealt with only at the level as originally defined.
Now the issue in the heart may play out in mistreatment of a spouse, physically, mentally or emotionally. It may result in a reduction of affection and abandonment. It may even lead to full-scale adultery. Those can be dealt with. But the underlying sin in not ours to claim as true because it is the heart and not something tangible and visible.
I used this quote on the BARM shortly after joining there, I believe with reference to the BBs being just more WL. "
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." It is beginning to have a new twist. No matter how strongly you point to the rightness of taking this current approach, rather than being righteous, and loving, we are becoming just like them. It is beginning to look like the last chapters of Animal Farm. And some of the things being said about the people here really makes calling anyone else's words and deeds "demonic" quite hollow.
"
We have met the enemy and he is us."