[Curious]

Originally Posted by aron

I knew I was gonna get myself in trouble, I just knew it...

Okay, what does that have to do with MC being filled with WL's spirit? MC was building his own guanxi nest within WL's guanxi nest. MC promoted WL to the uttermost, even with words of heresy(!), yet this was merely his positioning within the larger network, just as WL before him.
mugs.

Thankyou aron, for getting yourself into trouble! It resulted in a very good and relevant post that is helpful to all reading this thread and identifies the dynamic at work behind the surface.

To sum up your post, it is a deeper level insight into how traditional, pagan Chinese culture operated. I can also see from it how ancestor worship and guanxi networking, work together. No better qualification for being on the inside track than to claim the endorsement/ accolades from those departed senior authorities in the ‘family’ group.

No doubt the rejection and villainization of the enemy, identified as 'outer' Christianity, must play its part in the schema too. It will be a necessary component of holding this structure of operating in place.

MC is posturing himself…a new term out there is ‘virtue signaling’ …. which seems to fit well with this effort of his as he carefully claims he is ‘hiding in the body’ so that he looks suitably humble, while at the same time, hinting of his greatness and suitability for promotion! Predictably, double-speak in operation.

I want to further comment on the audacity of mixing taoism with Christianity in such a blatant way.

How can such an ‘intelligent man’ be so sloppy, undisciplined and careless in his ‘speaking’, indulging his own practice, words and attitudes with such an opening to pagan religious ideas? In this there is a useful lesson for us all to notice.

Criticizing others as a way of excusing or denying one’s own faults comes with a great side-effect. It is elevating self at the cost of the targeted fall guy. Like a teeter-totter, push one side down and it automatically causes the other side to go up!! Pushing the other down, elevates self. Then with this false assurance, and focus on the other as the ‘bad guy’, a person spends that reflective thinking on someone he’s not responsible to God for, and misses spending that energy on contemplating that who he/she is responsible before God, (their self). The tempering and humbling exercise of self-discovery is side-stepped. The person has a false sense of his own perfection, continually beefed up as he forms the habit of increasing his perception of the faults of the ‘other’. Developing a need to keep criticizing to feed and sustain the identity of their self.

Without the tempering, reflective, responsibility taking, adjusting and humbling components, they are left with whatever feels right is what they go with. The flesh, generational religious and social baggage, all presented unredeemed and careless. Fine within their system as all correction and critical thinking has been successfully squashed.
Not OK with God, or the reality that exists outside of their artificially sustained internal world.

It's far and away off the track, and I believe that to be the dynamic behind it. according to writings here, and my own experience with LCers, it appears that all correction in the LC seems to be directed towards the ‘little potatoes’ and comes with the side-dish of deliberate humiliation, designed to make humility and confession a terrifying experience and one to be avoided. This spreads the need to persecute wrong outside of self, as there is no dignity in humility from within this system. Those up in the system displacing their own shame onto others more vulnerable than themselves. please correct me if I'm wrong. I hope I am but don't see the evidence. I shudder to think of the further reaching consequences of this type of system, on people. Frankly it makes normal denominations seem comparatively heavenly!!