Quote:
Originally Posted by rayliotta
I grew up believing that gophers are a biblical metaphor for ambition. I believed this because Witness Lee taught it.
If I'm wrong, or if I'm missing something, someone please correct me. Because as far as I can tell, the teaching concerning "the gopher of ambition," that I learned from the ministry of Witness Lee, is not based on the Bible. Because gophers aren't in the Bible.
Should I be surprised? Does this even matter?
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It does matter! Not whether metaphors are employed or gophers or used to make a point. Every minister has the liberty to do this.
But
why did Lee do this. Was there some subtlety hidden from us? Was it all just wise advice from an elderly minister? Or was Lee actually "priming us" for the time when his little gopher story would be really needed to deflect the bright light from his own unrighteous doings. Lee was seasoned and well equipped to handle the storms created by his own undoing.
Thus Lee used
ambition as one of the "seven deadly sins" in the recovery. Any brother who speaks his conscience, standing up for righteousness, and is anointed by God as a prophet to the Recovery, could be easily branded as "ambitious" by Lee and his cronies. Every brother was thus labeled "ambitious" before he was to be quarantined. How convenient!
How very expedient for Lee to judge a brother's heart for ambition! How could the brother defend himself? How could he say, "I never did that, I never said that," when he was being accused of some obscure "rottenness" in his heart. How could a brother prove what was in or not in his heart? But now the whole Recovery is looking at him with suspicious judging eyes -- "
Brother so-n-so is ambitious! We could never have seen it, but Brother Lee can
'see things we cannot.'" Thus Lee was now our "god," since only he could know what's in man's heart and pronounce judgment.
To be a normal man,
or a normal brother, is to be ambitious. Should we all be un-opinionated, robotic, couch potatoes, I mean "
yellow-chair-potatoes." Obviously Lee excelled in ambition. So only he was entitled to such a virtue? Paul praised those who were ambitious to please the Lord, or to have oversight in the church of God. But Lee used this gopher to "
shoot the messengers." Attack the accuser so that he is silenced, and the "
light shining in a dark place" is now extinguished.