Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
It is so funny that the kind of judgement of sin that Darby and Nee were talking about is so contrary to the whole idea of loving the brothers and loving neighbor as self. Yes, there is a level of judgement of sin that must go on within the church, but it is not at the kind of granular level that these guys want it to be. Seems that reasons for disassociation were few enough that we only really hear about one case in all of the NT. But I'm sure that Darby's legacy, along with Nee, Lee, and now the BBs would go hard against most of the Christians in the world. They are not in lock-step, blowing the trumpet of their current leader so must be rejected.
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Very well put. It is interesting how some of Nee's teachings can be traced back to the Exclusive Brethren, not that I didn't already know that, but it helps to bring some understanding to why the LCM holds onto certain practices. I was reading the wiki page on the Exclusive Brethren, and one of their practices is for all associated churches to adhere to the excommunication of a brother from a particular church. Sound familiar? Some of the parallels are quite striking.
I agree, this whole business of judging sin in order to achieve oneness is something where they have gone way out of bounds. If there is sin that needs judging (such as what's mentioned in 1 Cor 5), then, yes there is basis to judge. Like you said, they tend to judge things at a granular level, and not just sin, but also anything that they perceive to be worthy of judging (which they might also label as sin). Things like "division", denominations, failing to adhere to their locality doctrine, publishing books, having your own ministry, "rebelliousness", etc, etc, etc. I could make a big list of the kinds of things they judge. To go with the theme of this thread, Lee used the judging of the perceived division in different groups to justify division to form his own group. It was all hypocrisy.
LCM history indicates how adherence to the ground of locality was often a means by which Lee judged others (Nee too?). It leads to the mindset of "that group doesn't adhere to our doctrine, so they are in division and should not be tolerated." Employing the locality doctrine was a form of judging of others, and it did not result in oneness. Nee's poem "He (not locality)", seems to indicate that maybe Nee had begun to see the err of his ways, or at least that it didn't produce the intended result. It's hard to say for sure.