[John]

Originally Posted by Drake

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Its a good thing that a man who impulsively controlled his wife and kept her in her place with cutting and manipulative words had a change of heart and realized the error of his ways, repented to her and the family, and set things right between them.

I personally have not met many Christian husbands who acted that way in or outside of the Lords Recovery. But for those who are like John once was they would do well to follow his lead even at the risk of being accused of being henpecked. In repentance, over compensation is not a bad thing.

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Drake

The poster seems to admit that he has met husbands in the Local Church who verbally mistreated their wives, but he makes it sound as if it is a rare thing. If he thinks so, then he hasn’t read The Thread of Gold, has forgotten what is in it, or has some other reason or reasons. For the benefit of those who don’t know of this kind of thing, the rest of this post focuses on the attitudes and behaviors of those who were, or are, in the Local Church of Witness Lee. (In other words, this post of mine is not criticizing the poster or his post; I am simply providing real experiences of real people who have had bad experiences in the Local Church, so that he can add them to the ones that he has met.)

Check the fruit

To start off with an example from just a couple of years ago, a married woman I know, one who was actually born into the Local Church and grew up there, when asked about her Bible reading, replied that she didn’t need to read the Bible because her husband was going to tell her what it meant anyway. This wrong thinking is the fruit that was produced by inadequate or lopsided teaching. It is this kind of thinking that has robbed the Lord of His due. This woman is very capable. Who knows what else she might have done for our Lord if she hadn’t been under a doctrine that enabled her to escape and lay the responsibility off on her husband. This portrays, in part, why “the woman topic” is so important.

To go a step further, let’s look at the fruit of the next generation: This woman’s daughter, after learning what the Bible said about female submission and seeing how it was practiced in her family, said that she was planning never to get married. She wanted to follow the Lord, enjoyed sharing Him, and participated in Christian events, but she stated that she did not want to be under the control of a man. For her, to avoid disobeying the Bible, this was the only solution. This is sad. What if the Lord would want her to marry in order to best exercise her gifts for Him?

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. (Matt. 7:15–17, KJV)

We are to judge a tree by its fruit; and, one way to judge a teaching is by its outcome. What kind of outcomes do we see in this family? We see that the mother was not fellowshipping with the Lord in His Word and that the daughter had decided never to get married because of what she had experienced of male domination in her home. Do these fruits line up with God’s will? I will say that the fruit is not good; therefore, the teaching that brings it about should, at least, be suspect and reconsidered.

Biographies are dangerous?

As I started thinking about the influence of the Local Church, I was reminded of something that Jane told me years ago. She asked me if I remembered one of the first things she did that got her crosswise with the elders. I did not remember. She told me that it was because she was reading biographies and sharing them with others! Here is the way that she recounted it in The Thread of Gold:

Sandra Brown and a few other sisters, including me, loved to read Christian biographies and autobiographies. They found some that they had not read at libraries and bookstores, acquired them, and began passing them around. With more time on my hands while in the Harvest House, I started reading such books. I loved them. I read about Hudson Taylor, George Mueller, John and Charles Wesley, David Brainerd, George Whitefield, John Bunyan, John Newton, Charles Spurgeon, Amy Carmichael, Mimosa, and others. In all of these books, I saw people of faith in love with Jesus. The One I knew and loved, my dear Jesus, was on display in their life stories.

Biography reading was not a practice sanctioned by the church. The church bookroom sold only books by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. In earlier years, the bookroom carried a few other books, mainly on “deeper life” teachings, but this stopped not long after we moved to Houston.

After we started reading biographies, the leading brothers began to mention things in church meetings to discourage us from reading such books. Why? We were told that they were too old and too religious, and hindered us from staying in Brother Lee’s present-day light. I kept reading them anyway in my Harvest House hideaway. (Thread of Gold, 137–138)

This is just one of a few excerpts from Jane’s book that I noticed and that appeared to be relevant to the topic of males and females in the church. Imagine being in a “regular” church and the male leaders warning the women not to read Christian biographies! To those who weren’t in the Local Church in the so-called early days, how do you think that the environment became one of Witness Lee only?

Who runs things at your house?

The reading of biographies wasn’t the only thing about Jane and me that got the elders looking askance at us. What they began to realize is that the Andersons were not always following their “fellowship.” With regard to the male/female topic, it is easy to see the manipulation and peer-pressure brought to bear on Jane in the following account that she wrote:

I was embarrassed one Saturday morning at breakfast with a number of other service group leaders and the four Houston elders. At one point, one of the elders introduced a topic that the four of them had been discussing in private—some of us needed to move to another city to start another Local Church….

One of the four elders looked at me and said, “How about you and John?” Knowing that I wasn’t considering such a move for even a minute, I responded, “You’ll have to ask John about that.” He retorted, “Oh really? I thought you ran things at your house.” Everyone laughed. I was humiliated and furious with him. How cruel and how unnecessary his comment was! He didn’t live in my shoes. Who did he think he was? Granted, I wasn’t a naturally submissive or quiet or meek sister, but I was trying to be. The rest of the day, I considered various things I could do or say to show him he was wrong. Then the Lord spoke, “Would you rather show him your self-made submission now or let him see Me living in you when I have finished My work in you?” After pondering that awhile, I decided to give up the self-improving, self-justifying route and hand myself over to the Lord to let Him do His work in me, in His time. (Thread of Gold, 114–115)

This, of course, is an example of a male putting down a female just because she is a female. A man can easily do this sort of thing. His intended subtext, no doubt, is that Jane (and any other females listening), are supposed to be submissive and follow the established order as it’s traditionally understood from the Bible and the ministry of Witness Lee. He made a joke out of it, so that no one could accuse him of stepping out of line, but he did it in front of the other elders and influential leaders in the church so that everyone knows that she had a black mark against her.

I hope that male readers can realize the kind of effect they can have on females with their words, spoken from a position of being the ones approved by God (or so they think) to be in control. You can see the effect of his words and attitude on Jane. Is this the kind of behavior that is acceptable? Or, to put it another way, “Is this what Jesus would have done?”

Can a book talk?

If the previous kinds of manipulative techniques didn’t produce the desired results, at least one of the elders was prepared to go further:

One time, a young woman who had been to three or four of our meetings, was taken aside by Sam Jones, one of the Houston elders, into one of the church offices for a talk or “fellowship.” He stopped me as I was passing by and asked me to sit in on the talk. Sam asked her if she was dating someone. She said, “Yes.” He started talking about the importance of purity in following the Lord. She was looking at him somewhat blankly. This wasn’t the response he wanted. Suddenly, he picked up a book and slammed it loudly on the desk. I was so startled that I literally jumped in my seat and had to regain my composure. He raised his voice and began ranting at her about the sin of fornication and its danger to her Christian walk. I was appalled. The young woman never returned to another one of our meetings. Sam’s behavior made me feel sick inside; I knew there was something very wrong with it. (Thread of Gold, 132–133)

When I now read these accounts, I can hardly believe that I was there. What’s really amazing is that Jane and I remained there for so long after being very poorly treated. We were in it for twenty years, and we have now been out for thirty. The first ten years were pretty good; the second ten were horrific! Imagine staying in something that was so crushing simply because you had been indoctrinated to think that it was the Lord’s church and the only place that you could be for Him.

We finally moved from Houston to preserve our sanity, but Jane had to endure an evening of questioning by the elders in the Church in Oklahoma City before we were allowed to attend the meetings. Yes, the elders rule the saints, and I don’t mean in a good way. If you doubt it, just try to do something that is not in step with The Ministry. And, this might go double for the women.

Marriage and the Local Church

There is another aspect to the whole marriage thing in the Local Church that can get overlooked: the church can easily come between a husband and wife. I’m not saying that elders do this intentionally, but I know of one elder who probably did. For example, just think about the previous comment that an elder made about who runs our house.

For another example, when things were getting dicey between the elders and us because Jane and I were trying to follow the Lord and they were preaching that all should follow the ministry of Brother Lee without question, they made an obvious play to get me on their side and away from my wife’s influence. (It was actually said in one meeting not to wait on the Lord but to step out and do what the ministry told us to do.) It had become customary for a few saints to go to conferences and then “bring back” the conference by relating Witness Lee’s messages in our Local Church meetings. One day, an elder called me and wanted me to go to a conference at the church’s expense and bring back some of the messages. This was not according to my giftedness, and I had never been asked to do such a thing before. He tried his best to convince me to do it, but I refused. (I think that if I had gone on that trip that they would have tried to get me on their side against my wife.)

To relate another instance, I’ll have to set it up: I was asked by the elders to move into a house by the University of Houston campus in which several single brothers who were students lived. I brought up the matter to Jane, and we discussed it. She was caring for a baby who was only a few months old and was not at all excited by the prospect of becoming slave labor for some single brothers. Later, she told me that, as a compromise, she was willing to have a sisters’ house by the campus and that there were a couple of Local Church sisters who were students and needed a place to live. I was happy about her willingness to have a sisters’ house. She and I agreed to do it, but the elders didn’t really like it, still trying to persuade me that the brothers’ house was better and available. Going against their “suggestion,” I found another house by the campus and rented it. We moved in, and Jane got two sisters to move in with us.

Jane and I were reasonably happy, and so were the sisters who lived with us. After a year, however, the elders began working on me to move back to the main meeting hall area. Their reason was that we had only brought in one person to the Local Church from the campus, and bringing people in was, in their minds, the only legitimate reason for living by the campus. I put them off about it and was told that we could have three more months. Jane, not wanting to leave, prayed desperately; and, soon, the Lord began adding students. Jane and I were thankful for the Lord’s blessing, which He gave us in spite of the elders’ plans for us and directions to us.

Getting in-between

In the foregoing vignettes, you should be able to see how the elders can insinuate themselves into a marriage. It is too easy for a Christian who is trying to do the Lord’s will to take the request of an elder as being the Lord’s will, especially when the Christian has been indoctrinated that the Local Church is everything, and its authorities are to be obeyed without question. This kind of thing, when it is administered as it was in our Local Church, is very intimidating. It is all too easy to push your wife into something that she doesn’t want or feel led to do by playing the God, Church, or submission card with her. Because of this, the marriage suffers. In my case, by working with Jane, the Lord blessed our endeavors, which resulted in Him giving spiritual life to a number of college students.

While considering this, think about the young women who were born-again because a woman of chayil wasn’t willing to be manipulated by church men. Also, think about the marriages that suffer because a brother is willing to sacrifice his spouse for the cause. Jane and I have seen brothers and sisters, both, who have looked to Local Church elders to solve marriage problems. In one situation that I recall, a sister went to an elder for help because she was afraid her husband was slipping away from the “church life” and becoming worldly. He was also becoming more abusive towards her. The elder got involved and, instead of helping the brother as the wife requested, he ended up convincing the brother that his wife was unstable. The brother began to treat his wife worse, and she separated from him for a little while. When she sought to reconcile, the brother did not want to do so, and the elder supported him. Eventually, the brother divorced his wife and married someone else in the Local Church. In another situation, a wife was always looking to the elders for guidance and discounting the guidance of her husband, who had left the Local Church. This marriage relationship was saved when the woman became ill and was literally on her death bed. She was convicted by the Lord that she had put the elders before her husband for several years. She repented to her husband in writing, since she could hardly speak any longer, and passed into the next life.

A woman’s view

Why doesn’t the Local Church want to talk about their practices? It’s because it will get into the effects of their practices? As the stories above indicate, the practices have produced fruit that is bad; and, there are many more such stories. To those of us who left it, think about what we learned there and accepted as normal. Here is how Jane saw it in 2005:

A number of years after we had left the church, I said to John once, “You know, the Local Church was like a men’s club!” He laughed. I responded, “No, I am serious. Think about it. Everything there was for men. Men didn’t have to help with household responsibilities. They didn’t have to spend time with their children. They had wives who didn’t go shopping and didn’t spend their money on clothes or make-up or jewelry. They didn’t have to celebrate holidays or purchase gifts. They didn’t have to put up with home décor issues because only the basics were acceptable. Keeping secrets about church matters from their wives was expected. They met with each other all the time to take care of church business matters. The wives had to prepare good meals every day, work at home to keep a well-run house, and take care of children. This exactly fits most men’s natural tendencies and desires. What was there that fit a woman’s natural tendencies and desires in the Local Church? Nothing.” I don’t think John really understood my viewpoint or assessment of the situation, but then, he saw it through male eyes. (Thread of Gold, 240)

To be fair-minded, men, doesn’t the foregoing quotation illustrate a situation that is, at least, just a little lop-sided? Is this really God’s ordination? Does the Bible fully support this kind of churching, with absolutely no possibility of another way that might be better? Try to see it through a woman’s eyes.