[aron]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I was born into the LC in the Cleveland area. Now 22 years old, none of my family members are involved anymore. But we were pretty heavy into it until about six years ago..

Thanks for your comments, and welcome. Most people who get into the LC are "pretty heavy into it", or not into it at all. It's an absolutist thing; some do survive on the fringes, as "associate members" for whatever issues, personality clashes or whatnot. But most, it's either all-in or all-out. Either 'sold out' or out.

Given that you were in the Cleveland area, with the schism vis-à-vis the Blendeds of Anaheim, I imagine there's a lot of collateral damage. Your family was involved in the great Titus Chu Rebellion? Many got discouraged and dropped out entirely.

And for you to have been born into it all, that's another story entirely. Many came in as teens or young adults, looking for belonging and a place where everything's all figured out. Just follow the Deputy God, etc. . . to have been born there, and spend your formative years with no freedom of choice - wow. We had another poster here recently, lost_at_sea, who was alienated, confused, frustrated, angry and ashamed by being 12 years old, going "door knocking" and testifying of some God she didn't even know. And today, years later, she still feels the psychological effect.

And then the damaged ones get called the failures! No, it's the programme that failed. Not letting them find their way, but jamming rudimentary doctrines on them, shaming them if they didn't get it. Conform to the Hive. And then, compounding that by blaming the victim, and not taking responsibility for the many who were hurt, and expelled into the cold and dark void.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

My parents met in the church and are now divorced, not even speaking to each other. I didn't speak to my father for about a year. I'd hate to think that the church played any part of my family issues but it's hard not to. I stumbled across this discussion board while researching whether or not the Lord's Recovery would be considered a cult- a question I had nearly my entire life but was too afraid to ask. . .

Not sure I'd call it a cult, like the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons, both of which are textbook pseudo-Christian cults. Certainly the LSM spawned some serious cults in mainland China. You can look them up; there are even some threads on this forum. Very scary stuff - violent, secretive; repulsive to humanity itself, much less to represent a religion of peace and love and forgiveness. It is not "recovery" but serious regression.

But the LCs affiliated with the LSM are arguably a narrow, pinched, elitist, snobby, know-it-all, divisive ("nobody has the truth but us") fringe sect of Christianity; a Chinese-flavored Christian personality cult. Whatever the Ascended Master said was God's oracle, immutable. The AM could question everybody, criticize everyone, but nobody could question the AM because that was "rebellion", the most heinous crime against the throne in heaven. Never, ever question or challenge the Deputy God.

But I digress.

Now, what next? You're 22 years old, a world probably full of troubles surrounding you. Headlines every day telling of attacks in the U.S. and abroad, climate change, melting glaciers and tornadoes ravaging Oklahoma. And so on, the Democrats and Republicans have both shown their hands, and they are empty. They are void of ideas, just blame and antagonism. The Divided States of America.

So you have either philosophy to console you, or maybe hobbies, like sports or painting, or trying to make money and have comforts in a world gone rapidly mad, or you can seek the abyss, oblivion, of chemical substances and addictions. Obsessions to escape, for a moment. Video games. Fantasy football. Or maybe a romance, which will take your mind off things for a while.

But still, the question remains, why am I here? The Lee programme, that you were a God-shaped glove to hold the divine, was in retrospect pretty lame stuff. As if a third grader watched a Western and was asked, what was it about, and they say, "Well there were men with hats on, riding horses". And sure enough, the whole movie was full of men with hats on, riding horses. But that wasn't the point of the movie. Lee's "God's economy" reminds one of that. And his "local ground" idea, from Nee, even worse: they took ignorant readings of a dozen or fifteen verses, and built a hermeneutical system that pretty much made a mockery of scripture.

But I digress.

So, what's the meaning of it all? I'd say this: you have to find your purpose. The biggest mistake your parents made is they took Lee's purpose as their own. They became, probably through Titus Chu, LeeBots. They subsumed their God-given human will to satisfy the unmet human needs of another fallen sinner. And it never works. Never. The leech cries, Give, give, but it's never enough. The Nee/Lee/Chu/Dong systems just suck every bit of life out of you, promising a special status in the divine, but eventually you're where? In someone's system. Feeding someone else's ego.

So, find your own reality. I left 20 years ago, eventually got tired of religion entirely, over the course of years found other things (job, family, hobbies, education) and then eventually about 12 or 15 years ago I found God again. And I began to find God on His terms, not Witness Lee's terms. As Robert Frost wrote, "And that's made all the difference". Good luck with your journey and God bless.

p.s. I don't believe in the Divided States of America rhetoric, btw. I pray often for the leaders of the US (and UK, Germany, Spain, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Ethiopia &c). But I was echoing, above, current discussion in popular media [newspapers, radio, tv, internet] of the state of things. But God's in charge: We are not divided, we're one, and Jesus is King, and Savior of the world. Amen.