Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
And my point of starting this thread was that this lack of individual freedom, as I experienced it, wasn't perhaps due to the fact that Nee & Lee were power-hungry usurpers of God's throne as much as they were from a cultural mind-set that put great emphasis on the collective, and on social coherence and conformity.
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For me these go hand-in-hand. As previously noted, I had far more time with Titus Chu than with Witness Lee himself. And the case could be made by many that the true "duplication" of Witness Lee was not with the Blendeds, who were only talented observers and repeaters, but with Titus Chu, who of all Lee's adherents most nearly matched Lee in talent and mannerisms.
It took quite a while to finally realize that the continual public shamings of other leaders had little to do with actual "perfecting" and had everything to do with the establishment and maintenance of the power base. The basis for this had much to do with Chinese cultural norms, both within the leader and the followers, which explains why the demographic "color" of the LC's in the US slowly "transformed" from white to yellow.
I may be "seeing" Lee through the person of Chu, but from all accounts, the picture is accurate. Not just was power-grabbing a primary motivation, but going further, LC leaders demanded a glory -- a
vain-glory (see John 5.43-44) -- that rightfully belonged only to the Son of God, the Man Christ Jesus. The result was a collection of man-pleasers, deteriorating over time with each successive expulsion (i.e. quarantine) of those who refused to pay homage.