[Freedom]

Originally Posted by aron

So why the LC over-reaction to "the Works" of Jim Moran, as their cease-and-desist legal brief put it? Why buy it up, bury it, and pretend that it had never existed?

Perhaps their perception of Moran's work as a threat to their version of good order in LC church life shows something about the weakness of their own position. If a Jim Moran can put them to such a state of agitation, then how solid is their standing? Not very.

I completely agree that the LC reaction to Jim Moran was an over-reaction. I also agree that he was not much of a "threat" to them in comparison to others who have tasked themselves with critiquing the LC. Maybe at the time of Jim Moran's passing, they still thought that they could "control" what was out there on the internet. Time has proven that to not be the case. These days the most they can do is to speak out against why they don't like, they might talk of "lawless users of the internet". Needless to say it's not a good long-term strategy for them.

Originally Posted by aron

I think that the "raising up" of the ministry of Watchman Nee, and subsequently the Little Flock, with its more ardent and virulent offspring like the LC, were predicated upon a critique of Christianity as it stood and stands today, so unequivocal as to be de facto rejection. Therefore, we within the LC "ministry" heard a never-ending stream of negative comments about how things stood outside of the our flock. Never mind that WL hadn't met with the Baptists or any others for 30 or 40 years; he could tell us what "most Christians" knew, or didn't know, or were up to, or weren't up to, at any given moment.

But the problem with a programme established upon a foundation of critique and rejection of others, either implicit or explicit, is that it must itself remain free from any reciprocity. Because it owes its very existence to the inadequacy and failure of the "other" (Christianity, which is the Great Whore Babylon, in this case), if the critic found lacking as well, what then? The vulnerability of the LC position was activated when the lens of Moran's examination, however weak, was turned back on them, as theirs was on others. The very "ground of the church" might be exposed as shifty sand, and thus the resulting nuclear strike against a mere mosquito.

The need of the LC to critique others is one of their defining attributes. It's really the basis upon which they meet - they are the ones who have been "recovered" and everyone else is "fallen". It makes sense why they would be so sensitive then to critique. For a group founded upon elitism to be found to be lacking, or worse that those they critique, indicates that they've amounted to nothing.