Quote:
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"All who have saving faith in the Lord Jesus are welcome to all our meetings, especially the Lord’s table, where we testify of the oneness of the Body of Christ. Although we must, for conscience' sake, stand apart from organized religion, we do not stand apart from our brothers and sisters in Christ. In faithfulness to the Lord, we stand on the unique ground of the church for the sake of the Lord’s testimony. But we do not take this stand with a narrow, exclusive, or sectarian spirit. On the contrary, we take our stand on behalf of the whole Body; we receive all believers even as the Lord has received us."
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The environment of the local churches is what I would call a simulated reality. More specifically, rhetoric is what defines reality. What is spoken by leaders is what is believed to be true, no matter how far removed from reality it is. And the issue is not simply that LCers are living in their own world. The real issue is that the beliefs and ideology that LC members think that they are subscribing to are not what is actually practiced. For whatever reasons, LC members can't admit it. I do think that some members are aware of the discrepancy, however, there is the inability to discuss the true reality of the LC environment.
It's ironic that the
Beliefs and Practices booklet was ever published. The audience was outsiders, and the reason that outsiders had become concerned about the LC is that they likely saw what was being practiced. So practice is what defined the LC in they eyes of the public. Beliefs were only known to members or those on the outside who had taken the time to assess Lee's teachings. In other words the false narrative presented was really only fooling members, and if it truly fooled them, that is highly concerning and disturbing.