Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
What's funny about it? I must have missed the joke. If this situation had occurred in the time of the early church, in Corinth for example, I'm sure Paul would have given them instructions about it, just as he gave them instructions about the problems they were facing like wearing head coverings etc.
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When you wrote your post (#50) I thought you were being facetious. If you were serious, then you completely missed the point of the thread, and I suspect deliberately. The issue here is not the Chinese-ness (for lack of a better term) of the newer members, but the Chinese-mess of the founders Nee and Lee, and how this is writ large over the LC, and the effect it has on both human relations and one's walk with God.
I understand, not all autocrats are Chinese. But these men built a Chinese-coloured system in which there was no mutuality or recoprocality. At one point you wrote, "You don't critique Jesus." But Watchman Nee was not Jesus.
When the leading brothers gathered and expressed real and deep shared concerns about the situation in the LC, during the Philip Lee drama, Witness Lee complained to them that they were "pouring ice water" on him. But he got to pour ice water on everyone else. He could not have built such a large organisation around such flawed(and non-biblical, I might add) premises without tacit agreement of shared cultural influences.
For example, when members said to one another about Lee, "Even when he's wrong he's right", they were unwittingly inculcating themselves with eastern values.
And you keep using Paul as a kind of spiritual sop, or cover. Paul did not have absolute authority in the church. John alone refutes this: John was there before Paul, and was there after, and was continually ministering, and nowhere do we see any indication of the slavish submission that the Nee/Lee model demanded.
This thread is a spin- off of an earlier discussion about attending the FTT; my response was, "Who would want to be trained (re-programmed) in such a system?"
I agree that the system of western denominations in China, circa 1925, was deeply flawed. One might even argue, hopelessly flawed. But Nee's solution as exported by Lee was worse. At least in the "denominations" (for lack of a better term) there were some safeguards against abuse. In the LC there were, and are, effectively none. Who'd want to give themselves to this kind of system? It invites abuse. We have here story after story, testimony after testimony.