Quote:
Originally Posted by HERn
I was in a locality for a while where there was care for the widows and down and out, but none of the elders had been to the full-time training.
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There were indeed localities where elders heeded Jesus' dictum and encouraged care for those unable to repay in this age, but those elders were going "against the tide", to re-phrase Angus Kinnear.
The tide in the LC was a tide of convention, convenience, and culture. In other words, expedience: everything for the "building up" was entirely of and for this age, fully human in motive and expression. But in its insistence that it was fully divine, and not like the "fallen" and "twisted" and "corrupted" expressions of dreaded "Christianity", it became the worst of all, and the least like heaven.
"As in heaven, so on earth" - not a chance. Where's the love? Where's the respect, attention, care, intrinsic to every creature, especially those made in God's image? No, it became all about "good building material" and uplifting "the ministry".
Look at James: "...if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, "You sit here in a good place," and you say to the poor man, "You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?…"
Probably not coincidental that Lee despised so much of James' epistle. It exposed the human element as seen in distinction-making aspects of his church-building scheme.