Quote:
Originally Posted by Drake
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
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Drake,
Thanks for your response.
The first thing to note is that, for my part, my post was really intended to exist within the confines of the fear-based "don't leave the LC or else" side topic that popped up, rather than within the larger topic of Outer Darkness in this thread. So your note that "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" is true, and I never meant to represent it as such. My bad if it came across that way.
As a fellow human I certainly understand your point about wanting assurance that the fate that befalls someone else won't also befall us. I do this myself constantly when I hear the news....if someone gets murdered, I comfort myself with the fact that it was done on the street at 2am, which is somewhere I will never be. If someone dies in a house fire, I reassure myself that that won't happen to me because they didn't have a fire extinguisher and I do, etc, etc. I assume many people do this, possibly often without thinking, as a coping mechanism to get through each day when there are so many terrible things going on around us. That's fine, but most of us are also not on the podium representing themselves as God's speaking on this earth and the only ones who have the high truths. When ones in that position ascribe to God's punishment events in people's lives that have nothing to do with God's punishment, an unhealthy and warped view of God and what He wants will inevitably result.
I'm struggling a little with the connection you made with your comment about a man being blind from his birth so that the works of God may be made manifest. To me that describes suffering that befalls a human, explicitly stated
not as the consequence of an act of sin, that the Lord uses to glorify Himself, with the result (at least in John 9:1-12 that you alluded to) being positive for that person in their human life and a glory to God. On the other hand, the situations I mentioned were passed off as suffering/death as a direct consequence of an act of "sin" (leaving the LC) that was represented as the Lord's punishment upon that person. These are two very different things, but I may be missing something you intended to convey.
God's teaching is not used to control and subjugate members of the Body, as you said. Agreed! But the teaching of men within the LC was. And it was very effective and very damaging.
Trapped