Quote:
Originally Posted by HERn
The reason I ask is that my brother in law who is absolute for LSM as an elder is coming to visit. I believe he is deceived because of his “ands”. Christ and the church, the Bible and LSM publications, Christ and the seven-fold intensified spirit, the apostle Paul and Witness Lee. Should I confront him about his being deceived or just find things we can agree about?
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Like NaturalLog touched a bit on in post #25, I think it ends up coming down to the specific "absolute brother" as well as their specific relationship with whoever they are talking to.
I know AB's who, when with co-workers, would put their head down and say what they knew they needed to say to remain in good standing. And that same AB, when given enough time to trust another person, would admit inconvenient truths about things he saw that he would never ever let a co-worker know about.
I know AB's who you would never guess were anything but AB's, once they got behind closed doors with someone they trusted, would turn around and call the very other AB's he had just mindlessly shouted "Lord Jesus!" and pumped his fists with....."Lee-bots".
Also, I have found that the tone and....for lack of a better word....."naive genuineness" present in questions or discussions makes a difference too. If you present concerns or discuss problems combatively or angrily you may get a different response than if you come scratching your head acting confused at things that just don't match up and you make it seem like you are sure you are missing something......even if you really know you aren't. I say that because I did that one time unintentionally and much to my surprise I got the genuine answer needed that allowed me to start questioning everything.
That example is more of someone still in the LC talking to a higher up about their concern. HERn's question is from a different angle - someone outside the LC speaking about their concerns and experience to someone inside. My comment about the specific brother and the specific relationship still holds. I don't know how to describe this over a textual forum, but the best I can describe it is that sometimes taking a "defeated" tone is a good way to disarm the other person. Not disarm in a manipulative way, but disarm for the purpose of genuine discussion rather than contentious one. By defeated I mean like, "I didn't know what else to do"....."I had read the Bible and I had read the ministry and try as I might I just couldn't square them up and struggled for some time about it". Kind of a guarded dropping of your guard, if you will. Let them in on your emotional struggle so you are just two human beings talking about fumbling your way through life's journey.
Anyway, I say that having almost zero insight into the people involved, so take my feeble input for whatever it's worth.
Trapped