[Freedom]

Col 1:10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God

Eph 4:1 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called

To me, a big part of being a Christian is acting and behaving like one. Those in the LC might take issue with me stating that behavior is something relevant, but that itself is not really my point. I’m not advocating that need to be "model citizens" or anything like that. All I’m saying is that if we profess faith in Jesus, then we should follow his teachings as evidenced in the way that we live. This is why James said "Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." It's not that anyone here is claiming that we are somehow justified by works instead of faith, no, not at all. LCers reading this might purposely try to misunderstand what I’m saying, but that is their problem, not mine.

I strongly feel we each have a person responsibility in regards to following Christ. Humility should be a virtue found in Christians. Likewise, Christians should be willing to repent as well as forgive. We all fall short, but this does not eliminate us from responsibility and accountability. Jesus gave us certain principles to live by. I don’t think he would have given us a standard that is impossible to follow. This is not to say that God doesn’t have a hand in things, but unfortunately in the LC, there is the notion that we are somehow alleviated of all responsibility and accountability because of our sinful nature. Too long have I been trapped in the mindset that because we are all just sinners that we should throw in the towel and “give up”, to not attempt to act like Christians, to not try to live a life that glorifies God.

Perhaps this is why the LC remains so suspect and elusive in the public eye. They are not after bringing glory to God. They are a movement primarily concerned with glorying themselves, thinking that they are God’s remnant and ‘recovery’. This self-glorification blinds them to who they really are. They go so far as to call themselves "divine persons", but there is a lack in some of the basics.

As I see it, the tragedy of the LC is the fact that a group that claims to be something so great and special could actually be the antithesis of that. The LC has fallen short in the smallest of things. Basic Christian virtues are often absent. Some of the works of the flesh that Paul mentions in Gal 5 are sadly found in the LC. Mind you, this is a group that commonly mocks mantras in Christianity such as ‘WWJD’. This is exactly why it is so precarious for a group to dismiss the basics.