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Originally Posted by GraceAlone
2. Most silly example: In one locality where we met, there was a little-publicized rule that no brother with facial hair could usher or give the opening word. Why? When pushed to explain, an elder provided a Life-Study excerpt from Leviticus in which Witness Lee pronounced beards to be a sign of “self-dignity.” Therefore bad. Therefore unworthy of a public servant of the Lord. OK, this? Is actually so eye-poppingly, mind-numbingly ridiculous that it made me laugh out loud many times before banging my head against the nearest wall. Talk about unbiblical and illogical! Not only does the New Testament say nothing about a church leader’s appearance, only about his character and spiritual maturity, but also, by this logic THE LORD JESUS HIMSELF, an observant Jew who in all likelihood sported a beard, would be unqualified to give the opening word in the meetings of this church! No doubt his twelve apostles as well. Moreover, you could have a brother who spends hours in prayer and reading God’s word ineligible to give a ten-minute intro because of his goatee, while someone who spends hours watching sports, being shabby to their family, or even, hypothetically, being addicted to porn, qualified because they look the part and can talk the talk. This is one of those moments where I struggled to understand how intelligent adults are accepting these conclusions without question. And wondered what was wrong with me that I found it so ludicrous. Then finally understood that if I wanted to love the Lord my God with my whole being, including my mind, I had to stop ignoring all these red flags and accept that they meant something worth heeding.
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This was a great example! Sometimes it's the silly ones that help us see how silly some things are!
I noticed "the beard rule" too, and the strange unspoken understanding in the church life that if a brother walked in with a beard, he must be "going through something" and once the beard was gone, he must be "right with the Lord again".
We literally believed this, and thought beards were biblical disqualifiers from service. I mean.....condemned. I mean, you were spoken to about it.
Except no one batted an eye when we belted out with gusto that ointment ran down "....the beard, even Aaaaaaaaaron's beard!"
Whoops, guess beards are okay, except for our baseless rule they weren't!
Ridiculously enough, this was something I had to "get over" when visiting other churches. The pastor, on stage, in jeans, with a beard!
And no one cared. And it didn't affect the truth of his speaking. And he clearly wasn't "going through something".
GraceAlone, as crazy as this is, the local church actually uses discrete tactics of mind control. Once you start reading up on mind control......there's just no denying it's present in the local church. Mind control isn't some freaky thing; it's just tricks people use to influence the thoughts and behaviors and reactions of other people. And in the local church it's subtle, it's hidden, it's cloaked in spiritual language and spiritual-sounding reasoning, it's never stated outright.....but boy is it there. (And boy does it start to fall apart if you hack away at it with simple logic.......logic that the God who created us gave to us to use to "test all things"!). That's how intelligent adults accept so many things without conclusion. All kinds of people along the broad range of intelligence spectrum can get deceived, because they are unduly influenced, usually in fearful or condemnatory ways.
The two type of brothers you described (beard on the outside but genuine on the inside versus clean shaven on the outside but full of dirt on the inside) is exactly the type of difference Jesus pointed out about the Pharisees, who cared for the outward appearance while neglecting the important things. Reading the pure word, unadulterated by Witness Lee's every interpretation, and seeing what kind of things we should care about really does shine light on the dark places in the LC. No wonder they have an article on shepherdingwords.com that calls reading the pure word "a dangerous and unbiblical notion"!! Because doing so exposes them!
If you or anyone have any more examples of the cognitive dissonance, feel free to share. I think it's those kind of concrete, real examples of things that everyone actually does register inside but can never bring up that really help arrest people and give them the chance to confront the discrepancy.
Trapped