[Cal]

Originally Posted by Olvin

Brother why not fear for all the millions of God's people who are being fleeced everyday by those hawking the gospel.

Who said I didn't? The spell of Leeism is more insidious, however. It's a harder spell to break. And people who are being pushed into buying LSM materials under dire warnings of not being able to overcome are being fleeced too. And that attitude started with Lee.

Besides, one tends to have an interest in things one has been burned by.

Brother the Spirit bears witness with my spirit, what you think, which to me you don't do enough of, especially before you speak, does not mean much too me. You need to learn what it means to have your speech seasoned so that grace might come forth to minister. As for cold water, don't worry, I didn't get wet at all.

Okay, now we're even. If I was offensive, I apologize. I was more irritated by the fact that you are still buying the company line than by you yourself.

Let's move on with the discussion. I'll say it again. Lee distorted God's purpose. There are better definitions of it than he gave. Lee impersonalized it by making it all about a metabolic process. But exactly how the Spirit transforms us is speculative. What's important is that the transformation is based on obedience in a personal relationship with God in the context of being a servant to him and others. It's about God changing your character more than him changing your "nature" (whatever that means.) Whether you nature has been changed, who can say? That's abstract. But people can tell if your character has been changed.

So in my mind, Lee missed the point. He tried to make God's purpose impersonal. His relationships with others were impersonal, and his relationship with God seemed impersonal, too. It was all about processes and flows and natures and life. It wasn't about persons and relating. Which TOTALLY misses the point.

So my point is the idea that Lee stated the mystery of human life better than anyone is, in my opinion, gravely mistaken. And an evidence is the fruits of his ministry--a divisive, exclusive sect.

Here's the thing. What's more important, being a church that has the reality of living in God's purpose, or one that enunciates the definition of God's purpose the "best?" I think it's the former. And if it is, there are lots of places doing it better than the LC, properly expressed "mysteries of human life" notwithstanding. Words are after all, just words.