Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
In my experience I would say it is way more than a correlation but maybe not quite as far as a practice.....but it gets close.
I can second (or fourth?) this by adding that I grew up hearing these kinds of things many times also:
"So and so left the church and now they have a child born with disabilities."
"So and so left and their plane crashed and they died."
"So and so left/was negative and they now have throat cancer."
Those are all statements I have heard in the LC said about real people. Note that these are not statements expressing that the person left and their life went downhill because of something they themselves did. The negative outcome is always something outside of any human's control indicating that it was God's punishment.
This is a very real atmosphere of fear cultivated in the church. Even when I was younger and knew I wasn't on the best of terms with the Lord, most times when I would drive home from saints' houses I would essentially expect for a car to t-bone me as I drove through an intersection because that is what God does if you are not 100% for Him or the church....."waiting for the other shoe to drop on backslidden ones" as it were. Those kind of thoughts and fears (that still pervade my mind today) are only created through repetition and reinforcement.
I can surmise that some localities exist where these kind of things were not said, which explains Drake's experience, but I not only heard these statements within a locality, I also heard them in the live trainings spoken by the co-workers. I know some people can hear things spoken and disregard them as "bones not for consumption", and I wish I was that way, but some people, like me, have a more sensitive trusting disposition and grow up taking things to heart because we weren't raised to discern and question, just to accept and trust blindly. Then when we get to a point where we realize we can discern, we have decades of misrepresentations about God to surgically extract from our very cells!
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Trapped,
Thanks for your thoughtful post.
Perhaps in seeking an explanation for tragic events one gravitates towards those that include purpose because the purely random or incidental seems otherwise senseless. I don’t know, but maybe we as humans want assurance that a similar random event of fate won’t also befall us so a reason or a cause is needed. The scripture that comes to mind is the man blind from his birth.. the people thought that maybe he or his parents sinned... but the Lord said it was so the works of God might be manifest.
My point is this, the Lord may act severely toward those who oppose His interests as with Pharoah, Herod, and yet sometimes He chastises His own harshly, or as StG prefers, firmly. Those that died in the wilderness probably consider it a 10 on the harsh scale. Moses was excluded from entering the good land after all that transpired because of one incident.... where he misrepresented God before the people. However, I do not believe that God is walking around with a stick to whack us.... rather, He wants us to enter the kingdom richly and has made all provision for us to do so. Yet, servants then are cast into outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. That is a future matter, yet in this life God sends rain to the just and the unjust. I believe your testimony and the affect it had on you..... but it is not a teaching in the genre of warnings as is the teaching on outer darkness which is a warning for that future judgement day. Your experience, and that of others like it seems to issue primarily from the category of the man who was blind from birth. God may intervene as He pleases and we have to allow for that... but it is not a teaching used to subjugate and control the members of His Body.
His ruling us is primarily by feeding us.
Drake