Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
To love your family is better than to hate your family. But unless you have Christ, to love or to hate is Christ-less, and of no avail. This is what Witness Lee means. Nothing wrong with natural, as in human, but natural things apart from Christ are bad. That is, if we love our family without Christ's love, it is just our own love, and is vain, superficial, natural, even selfish.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is hogwash. The Bible never teaches this. There is nothing in the Bible that says natural love is bad, in fact it says that not having natural affection for one's blood kin is a sign of corruption (2 Tim 3:3).
The Bible says we are to love. If we are loving incorrectly, the God will correct us. But it's flat out a false teaching to say we need to go around constantly checking whether we are loving with "Christ's love" (as defined by Lee) or not. We are to walk in the Spirit, we are to love. Don't complicate it with Lee's nonsense. Lee wanted to alienate people from their families and friends. That's why he trashed "natural" love. He just sought to redefine love in a way that best suited his purpose. Don't fall for it.
Okay, that's the annoyed summary. Here's more. If only "Christ" is valid, then it doesn't matter if a worldly person is a humanitarian or a serial killer if he doesn't have Christ. Now I agree he needs to accept Christ as his Savior. But the idea that God doesn't look at the latter type as more offensive to Him than the former is simply crazy. The Bible is full of commands on how to behave. We are to obey those commands, and a person who's life is more in line with those is bound to be more pleasing to God than someone who is evil incarnate.
Lee's teaching is an extreme and warped one which, like many of his teachings, was intended to invalidate everything but what he approved. Thus common in the LCM are the chidings of "Brother, that's not Christ," about whatever behavior the speaker wants to slap down. It's manipulative hogwash.