Quote:
Originally Posted by rayliotta
I have to say, I still don't quite understand why we spend so much time on these forums discussing matters of doctrine, or potential doctrinal errors. A number of the regular posters here have acknowledged that it was/is Recovery practice that has caused so much more heartache for members, than Recovery doctrine. Orthopraxy vs orthodoxy. (We used to have this perennial discussion over on the old Bereans forum, w/Justyn, the moderator there.)
And yet...doctrine so easily becomes the focus of these discussions...sigh...
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The problem with practice is that it is hard to prove. Hard to assess. The original God-Men book found out. You talk to someone who provides their experience and the group goes out and sweet-talks them into coming back and joining the fold. Suddenly your evidence vanishes. We saw it happen live, right here on the Forum when Jane told of an account provided by someone who had lef the LRC some years back, partly due to the political fight over whether Texas/Oklahoma was going to be sending people to help a small group somewhere NE of OKC, or it was going to be Cleveland. A little way into some discussion of he event and suddenly this "new member" comes along, declares himself to be the person who talked to Jane and declared that he had never said those things.
So who is telling the truth? Jane? Or the guy who was wooed back to the fold so that he could be directed to refute what Jane had heard from him years earlier? From the outside it seems obvious. But to an insider (the ones who really need to see), they turn off things that seem so totally "out of character" (based on their shielded view of the "truth" from the LSM). Besides, "that is just that person, not the local churches." And they can't verify either side. They don't know Jane or anyone else that was there. Their only source from the "inside" has said their bit.
But just keep putting something that they can easily verify. Scripture. Speak about it the way that it really is. Not the way that Lee erroneously taught it. Doesn't mater that some of the errors might be considered spiritually benign. One day they might actually look at a verse and suddenly have the thought "it says something different than what I thought — than what I've been told."
Begin to get that foothold and those whose goal is really to follow God will begin to see the doctrinal problems. And with it, they will begin to believe that things they have been told — both spiritual and otherwise — might be suspect. I've seen it happen. What I saw took almost 5 years to begin to surface, and one more after that to really bear fruit.
And our experience of discussing the practices has been poor. I will say something now that will anger a few. But the two main threads that have gone deep into practices went somewhat berserk. We just barely got started and some were effectively ready to tar and feather anyone who was not in lock-step with them. In one case, there were a number of members who left over the fallout. In the other, we learned eventually that the story behind the whole thing was not entirely as published. Made us look pretty foolish.
I do not say that we cannot discuss the non-doctrinal problems. But it can be difficult.
Of course, the doctrinal discussions can be as well because many of us are ready to assert the answer and just run with it rather than take the time to show how it is that there is a problem and what it is that this problem means.
For example, this thread is about these word errors. And some of them are not necessarily that egregious. But there sure are a lot of them. And Lee did seem to go out of his way to take sides with the outliers. While we can somewhat yawn over many of the particular items as standalones, there is a pattern here that has an impact on the minds of the followers (and sometimes still on us). Until we really understand how it has affected them (and us) it is difficult sometimes to get rid of the system.