Individualism

[zeek]

If you have genuinely experienced the Body of Christ you will be conscious of something wrong whenever you begin to show your individualism, and obviously you dare not take any action. Or else, when you or several others should make a wrong move, this Body consciousness will cause you to be aware of being disconnected from the other children of God, thus preventing you from proceeding further. There is something in you which restrains, speaks, reproves, warns, or hinders. This consciousness of life can deliver all of us from any taint of division.

(Lesson Book, Level 5: The Church—The Vision and Building Up of the Church, Chapter 21, Section 2)

A crowd is indeed made up of single individuals; it must therefore be in everyone's power to become what he is, a single individual; no one is prevented from being a single individual, no one, unless he prevents himself by becoming many. To become a crowd, to gather a crowd around oneself, is on the contrary to distinguish life from life; even the most well-meaning one who talks about that, can easily offend a single individual. But it is the crowd which has power, influence, reputation, and domination - this is the distinction of life from life, which tyrannically overlooks the single individual as the weak and powerless one, in a temporal-worldly way overlooks the eternal truth: the single individual.

Kierkegaard, Soren (2013-12-28). The Crowd Is Untruth (Kindle Locations 109-110). Vanessa Myers. Kindle Edition.

Witness Lee was a merciless critic of individualism. I don't remember him ever saying a good thing about it. I think many of us will agree that in this he went too far. But, where do you draw the line? How much individualism is too much. Who makes the call and on what basis? It seems that it always the individual who decides. Is there ever a valid reason to give up that choice?