Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
Protestantism. . . is 'me' centered. "So subjective is my Christ to me/Real in me and rich and sweet" wrote Witness Lee. Subjective faith was the focus. But that was the expense of Jesus. ... Our focus was 'our' faith, not the faith of Christ. We were seduced.
|
What I meant was that we're easily seduced by the experiences of self. The institutional church, with all the writings of the Fathers, is a bulwark against that. With the Reformation, every visionary could draw others along as they chased their subjective response to their own personal interpretation. So we got innumerable splinter cells. "Sola Scriptora" became Me and My scripture and My interpretation and My group who I've convinced (seduced) to think like Me. The Church of Me.
The ironic proof of this is that among the many Post-Protestant splinter groups, we see numerous "One True Church" sects, each with their own Apostle of the Age; dozens even, I'd warrant. The LC is not an isolated incident - in fact it's spawned a half-dozen One True Church variants of its own, if you count the Mainland Chinese as I do.
My solution is Jesus Christ. Instead of focusing on OUR experience of Christ (as we imagine Him, usually [NOT trustworthy!!]) we can instead see Him in Scripture, and HIS experiences of the Father ("I come to do Thy will, O God; behold in the roll of the book it is written concerning Me") as the NT writers did (see the many OT quotes in the NT text), as the Fathers did in turn, and so forth through the ages. Jesus Christ alone is trustworthy, He alone is called the True and Faithful Witness. Every other witness is suspect at best.
As we focus on Jesus Christ, plainly and repeatedly revealed in Scripture, three things will happen. First is that we get the Father. Christ leads us to the Father. Always. Second is that we get the Spirit. The Spirit reveals the Son to us. Always. Third is we get fellowship - if we're on earth, seeing the Son, He'll bring fellowship. Always. Our vision is not for ourselves, it's to share, to feed, to heal, to build, to encourage, to comfort. And the church (ekklesia/fellowship/oversight) will prune our vision, and keep us from being seduced by our subjective fancies and wandering off the plantation.
Again, the danger of the Protestant Reformation, though it was good, and necessary even, is that thereafter, every person is in danger of following his or her own "revealed truth", away from the flock, and drawing others along after them. We'll indeed see visions, and dream dreams; the acid test is: will these visions and dreams and voices pull us all together, or lead us apart?
I think the verdict of history is in on the Nee/Lee vision. It's had 100 years to play itself out. Storm after turmoil after quarantine after division. Because we were distracted, and took our eyes off of Jesus; and placed them on the subjective Little Flock/LC "Christ-and-the-church" Christ. It is truly "sinking sand": like Peter on the water, we began to look around, and we sank. And I was there, and did it too, but hopefully I'll learn from bitter failure. Peter failed, repeatedly, but eventually he learned.