The way that the LC uses the phrase
God's economy highlights a lot of what is wrong with the LC. The word
economy, as it is found in the RcV, is used in place of words like
stewardship or
administration which are found in other versions. The meaning is the word is the same, but LCers think that this word
economy that they (through the help of Lee) have supposedly stumbled across was some great secret in the Bible.
Go and ask any Christian if God has an administration/stewardship and you should get a resounding ‘yes’. Ask an LC member if Christians outside the LC know about God’s economy and you will probably get ‘no’ as an answer, along with a lecture about how ‘degraded’ other Christians are.
In other words,
economy represents a common and perhaps unspoken understanding about how God operates, but what the LC has done is to turn it into a buzzword. You will hear phrases like “
remaining in God’s economy…” or “
the central lane of God’s economy” and it leaves you wondering just what the really mean when they use it. Of course, lots of members know only how to throw around these words and phrases, but as it turns out, it is an attempt on the part of LC leaders to refocus everyone on something other than God, that being the ministry of WL.
In the LC, the construct of
God's economy is what they believe everything to revolve around. They even believe it to be a basis by which to reject certain of the Psalms or even whole books of the Bible like James. As
aron mentioned,
God’s economy is thought to result in the eventual deification of the believer. So when you take a step back and look at what is going on, the LC has taken a relatively simple understanding of how God operatates, and told members that they must submit themselves to that understand/paradigm rather than God himself. As Christians, we know that God is a manager, that He is arranging things on our behalf, but we don’t fully know what He’s doing or how He’s doing it, so there’s really no such thing as “seeing” or “leaving” God’s economy. That’s not our decision to make.
