[aron]

"The time for silence and shrinking back out of fear of being labeled heretical, cultic, or unorthodox must come to an end . . . The believers in Christ become God in and through their organic union with Christ; the believers in Christ become God through regeneration; the believers in Christ become God through organic salvation; the believers in Christ become God by eating God; the believers in Christ become God by loving God; the believers in Christ become God through the function of the law of life." Affirmation & Critique 2002

"Believers in Christ become God by loving God"...?? And my dog becomes me by wagging his tail when I enter the room...?? But I digress...

Part of the challenge of our journey is that we exist in a position where we simultaneously try to reconcile our heritage and yet go forward. Our heritage is, after all, the process of going forward! So we honor the past by leaving it. I've noted that DYL & TC are truer heirs of WL by taking kingdoms for themselves, and drawing people into their own orbit, than the Blendeds, who are essentially curators in someone else's museum.

So we have the uncomfortable choice: honor the past by staying there, or go on and risk be labeled a non-conformist? WL championed the process of orthodoxy, versus heresy, but when his own ideas butted up with conventional thinking he labeled himself non-orthodox. This is one of the uncomfortable legacies of Protestantism. Like Paul, we loudly shout, "I am a Pharisee and a son of Pharisees!" but we are Pharisees who "saw the true light" and moved on.

My argument here is that groups like the Latter Day Saints, the Jehovahs Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, and the Local Church all present their initiates with a "warped present world" scenario, including (importantly) the current religious world, which they then contrast to their "true recovery of the past". So they offer, like WL, a "good land" in contrast with their depiction of "Babylon" or "Egypt" or "the wilderness". Now, they argue, the shadows must fall and the day must break forth. Look at that stark challenge to the status quo of contemporary Christianity: "The time for silence and shrinking back out of fear of being labeled heretical, cultic, or unorthodox must come to an end..."

Unfortunately the initiate may at some point wake up, after passing through the stages of being an avid novice, then a regular, and then a pillar of the New and True Church, and find out that (s)he is still a "stranger in a strange land". As the poet said, "Welcome my son/Welcome to the machine/Where have you been?/That's all right - we know just where you've been/So welcome to the machine." In other words, you thought that you'd escaped the machine, but now find that you're in yet another arm of the machine, stranger than before!

The stranger in a strange land archetype is perhaps this: the True Israelite (Jesus) presents his Jewish hearers with the truth of their own kingdom. He plainly reveals to them an embodiment of the true priesthood, joining man to God, and the true kingship, offering God's supervision of human affairs. Jesus is the heavenly Man who shows fallen, earthbound humanity their way home, to the Father's House. But His delusional peers don't recognize their own Priest and King, and drive Him out, where He offers this reality to new initiates. This was also Moses, also Martin Luther, also WN and then his adjutant WL. (And also Joseph Smith, David Koresh, Sun Myung Moon, etc etc etc). Raised in some shadow of the truth, then the True Light bursts forth, which creates tension with the precipitating shadows.

Orthodoxy, in this narrative, is bringer of both shadow and light. Not fully light, yet bearing it. So there is tension. Or else we ignore tension, live in a museum, and pretend there is nothing to reconcile. It has all been figured out. Which is where the Blendeds find themselves: in a museum. They have the New and True Orthodoxy, and are its champions. "Some day the world will recognize Witness Lee", they say. Deification, partial rapture, one church per city with one apostle (now deceased) presiding over all, through all, and in all. The new orthodoxy.

As another poet said, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" (I know we've quoted this before, but it's so succinct! Short, quick, and to the point).