[Freedom]

To add to what I wrote yesterday, a lot of the issue for us in the LC with leaving is that everyone there thinks it's so great and never appears to have any doubts or questions about it. I would attribute that mostly to groupthink. The problem it creates is that it makes those who have doubts or question feel singled out before even thinking about raising any questions. Thus it's easier to just go on for year after year in the LC without leaving. At a very basic level if everyone sees things one way and I feel differently, it's all too easy to dismiss what I think, because how could everyone else be wrong? When I realize that it's just groupthink at work, then it makes it a whole lot easier to feel that it's okay to leave.

Another issue at hand is that for someone in the LC like me is that the doctrines seem so great. I know I felt this way for a long time. I always felt proud that supposedly we saw so much more than other Christians. I could never understand why others left the LC. Apparently it seemed like they would be missing out on so much. The doctrine of the ground of the locality also sounds good. It seems to make sense. However, the longer I've been in the LC, I realized all these things were not as they seemed. For example, when the situation of the quarantines in the Midwest occurred a few years back I came to realize that if the ground of locality was a sound doctrine then why was it that those churches that didn't use primarily LSM materials suddenly get sacked? My point is that for me at least, a lot of things in the LC seem okay and good at face value, but when I began to look at them objectively, I realized that maybe it was time to start thinking about leaving and my future in the LC.