Quote:
Originally Posted by GraceAlone
It’s wanting to be the person God created us to be, and to honor Him by bringing the giftings, experience, skills, and callings He has given us to invest in the Master’s service. And one of the things the Lord is having to heal in me is the impulse to apologize for all that — in fact, for taking up any more than a tiny bit of space! I long to become confident and secure enough in Him that I can be the example I was looking for as a younger woman in the LC.
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I had the good fortune of being in a privileged class: white, male, educated. Being white, I was by default accorded access to levers of societal power. Male, meant that I wasn't a female, who could be too emotionally expressive - uncomfortably so, really - also unstable, not able to "bear weight before the Lord" if you know what I mean, wink, nod. Educated meant that I could play with words to my personal benefit.
I bought into it because it automatically gave me a special status. As I said before, WL's caste system clouded my mind, and my heart lost any incipient love for my fellow human. We despised the poor - well, too bad for them to be poor. The LSM repeatedly made it explicit what was "good building material" - American college educated white males...hey ma, look - that's me!! (There was even a college caste system - Community college, State college, Private college, Ivy league). We found reasons to dismiss the spiritual gifts of our female counterparts, because they weren't stable or solid like us, and could be too easily swayed and led off the path.
But my point is, who were we to push this agenda? We were (and LSM still is) selling books by Mary McDonough, like "God's plan of Redemption". We were citing Madame Guyon as authoritatively expressing the divine will. We lauded the 'female pioneers' of the 'early recovery' like Ruth Lee and Dora Yu, the 'senior co-workers' who stood shoulder to shoulder with WN and WL. We acknowledged WN's utter and slavish dependence on Jessie Penn-Lewis, yet denied J P-L categorically. Our position was completely self-contradictory, but we didn't examine it, or ourselves for pushing it, being too busy congratulating ourselves for having arrived simply by being born males.
The larger issue of women finding their service before God on earth transcends the Living Stream Ministry. But in LSM local churches there was no discussion because there wasn't discussion about anything. We accepted as fiat from God a position that was logically untenable, morally indefensible, and inconsistent with the Bible, but we had no other option. It was convenient to "the ministry" and the MOTA's narrative, and so be it. Get out of your mind, don't think, don't question, shout repetitively. Congratulate yourselves on being "God's best".
The first word of John the Baptist coming up out of the desert was, "Repent." Not coincidentally it was how Jesus also began his ministry. Not coincidentally it was what the Spirit was speaking to the churches through John on Patmos, as the New Testament era ended. It's still a good and a necessary word. I repent of being sucked into someone else's ego-drive, ignoring my conscience and my divinely appointed common sense, poorly developed though it may be. I repent for lacking love, merely concerned for my own things. Lord have mercy on me, and on us all.