Quote:
Originally Posted by Mysteria
It's funny; about once every year or two, I will go looking for information about the local churches to see what people are saying. What usually happens is what is happening right now: I feel sick. Eventually it makes me let it go, as I realize it is not good for me to dwell on it and risk bringing on depression through reliving psychological trauma.
Behind closed doors, they will say...who knows what. They're people just like me...complex. But as a group, in public, they will always tow the line. They will hide conflicts. For women, a lot of times this just meant silence. You have two choices: Speak up and be persecuted and become the new Jezebel story, which will be told live to hundreds of people, and taped on video at a conference somewhere, even with you sitting in the room listening, never being able to say anything back, or just bear it silently, alone. Or else.
My issues with the local churches are all human issues. (Is there really another kind?) My problem is that their living, their behavior, their actual impact and culture versus what they BELIEVE or want to believe is their impact and culture, are completely dichotomous and do not match at all. There is so much dissonance it almost doesn't make any sense. I heard literal contradictions of what they believed to be fundamental truths regularly, that seemed to depend on the situation.
(The most common one is to blame anything uncomfortable on "the enemy." "The enemy is attacking." That phrase could mean many different things depending on the context, but generally I have recognized it as, "There's something wrong happening here and I can feel it.")
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Every year or two when my family and I visit my parents I'll go to an LC meeting in the locality I was raised in from the age of 12. Usually that one meeting is enough to last a year or two. The negative attitude towards non-LSM meeting Christians is too much to bear.
What is said behind closed doors? Very true. I've been in a home meeting and heard brothers whispering to each other about Daystar. Been more than 40 years, but apparently still a topic of conversation in LC circles. Hard to know who's towing the line, but due to Facebook I see otherwise through my LC facebook friends.
Similarly, my issues are more in the combination of teachings versus practices. There's a hypocrisy of what's taught versus what's practiced.
Orthopraxy doesn't measure up to the Orthodoxy.