The Asian Mind/The Western Mind

[aron]

I'm not sure where to post these thoughts, so I'll put them here. Admin can move them if needed. This largely is in response to amrkelly's point about Asian subterfuge (relating to Dana Roberts going to the PRC to investigate WN), how the Chinese will nod and smile and feed you a load of baloney.

So I wanted to relate an experience that I had that gave me some insight to the Asian culture. I trained in martial arts for years, and once I was doing tai chi in a small room with a bunch of Chinese. We all were moving together through the forms, and if you made a bad move you would bump into the other person. You would violate their space.

If you can imagine a flock of birds flying together, and each bird has to watch out for the one in front and on the side. Each bird instinctively processes all that to keep in the space allotted, even though that space is changing, because the flock is moving. Or think of a school of fish swimming together; you get my point, I hope. At that time I really saw something of the Asian preference for "order". If everybody is free to move about in an unconstrained way, then they will bump into each other.

This is completely different from my upbringing. I grew up in the Western U.S. where there are wide open spaces and everybody has to be independent. You have to figure it out, and do it. You are not flying in a flock, but solo. The rugged individual is sort of the cultural model.

So Nee's model, and Lee's model, is a kind of Asian-leaning model, "that we would all have the same mind, and speak the same thing." The proper, orderly, harmonized church life is the conceptual vehicle that guides everything. So "Witness Lee is always right, even when he's wrong" is not so much a self-aggrandizement (though he bought into it, to some degree) but rather a central organizing principle for an orderly functioning religious body. The Big Boss speaks and we all say "Amen". So if WL says that Solomon with all his foreign wives is a type of Christ and his bride, we say "Amen". Then, if in the next breath WL says that David is not a type of Christ because he was a sinner (he numbered Israel in his pride, he dallied with Bathsheba, had Uriah the Hittite killed, he -"gasp"- threw a stone at Goliath instead of forgiving him!) we still say "Amen". Because good order in the church requires us to say "Amen" whenever WL speaks. So all of this is perfectly reasonable, even essential, in the Asian-created mind. So the "truth", or reality, of "good order in the church" is greater than the requirement for consistency when interpreting the Bible, for example.

But in my rugged individualistic "cowboy" mind, I see the verse that says, "As the wind blows where it will, and you hear the sound of it, but nobody knows where it comes from and where it goes, so is it with everyone who's born of the Spirit." So I see the "freedom of the Spirit" calling me. I don't want to wait for Headquarters to tell me how to function. In fact, I get a resentment when HQ shows up and tells me who are my "vital group" members. And I want to be free to see what I see when I read the Bible. I want to use my reason, and function in my inspired spirit.

I read the Bible and see Philip going down the south road out of Jerusalem, and running up to a chariot. Then afterward the newly saved Ethiopian went down to his home country, and Philip never told him to report to HQ for vital group assignment or full-time training. And 2,000 years later Ethiopia is still a christian nation! Who told Philip to go down to the south road? An angel! Who told him to run up to the chariot? The Holy Spirit! Deal with it. That is how God moves.

Actually, the "rugged individual" and the "harmonious coordination" aren't necessarily contradictions. They are just cultural predispositions. And I have to get over mine, and try to understand the other. Which is what I am doing here, typing this.

My point is that perhaps WL wasn't necessarily a snake oil salesman, as much as he was trying to fulfill his "church" mandate. The Living Stream Ministry, the full-time training, all of that came out of the requirements for the collective. WL's cultural predisposition wasn't the individual looking for the Spirit to guide him home. Instead his primary "vision" was the collective, and so he worked for the collective, and was willing to lie, to cover-up, to manipulate people, and to lift himself above the flock. Because he felt that was what the collective needed to go forward. All this was required for "good order in the church." So that was where the Deputy God teaching came from, and the idea of unquestioning obedience to the one in front of you.

To me this is the Hive Mind, and it has produced a lot of crazy stuff over the years, not limited to the Local Churches of Lee. I remember reading one testimony of a "rebellion", where the LSM representative angrily told the questioning Local Church elder, "We do what we are told." To some degree this is effective, but eventually it totally quenches the Spirit.

But on the other hand my cultural mindset can fixate on "freedom" and end up being wild, uncoordinated, and not caring for anyone else. Then I'm useless to God. So I'm not saying that my cultural metaphor is superior, just trying to understand how others think. Does anyone else have any insight to the "Asian mind", as I've tried to relate to it?