Tips on Making Leaving the LC Easier

[Cal]

My desire for posting on this forum has always been simply to help people over the hump of being able to deal psychologically with leaving the LC. Mostly I have done this by arguing that many LC teachings and beliefs are unbiblical, illogical and untenable.

I hope that has been helpful, but I’d like to start a thread to provide some advice for people who are considering leaving or have left and are still having trouble moving on.

Here are some things which I had to learn the hard way. I think they will help you make the transition more easily:

1. Pray. Pray a lot. The fact is most LCers don’t know how to pray for themselves or their family in a detailed and focused way. This has to be learned if you are going to move on. Get practical and specific with your prayers. Ask God to show you what is real and what is false. Ask him to protect you from spiritual attack. Ask him to fill you with peace and joy. Ask him about specific LC teachings which are holding you back. Ask him about the local ground, spiritual authority and any other teachings you have taken for granted. You’ll be amazed how he opens your eyes.
   
   There is one mediator between man and God--and it is not Witness Lee, the BBs, Titus Chu, or your former elders or small group leader. It’s Jesus. We have direct access to God. 1 John says we don’t need anyone to teach us. That means God himself will lead us. Call in this promise on your life. Pray about everything. God will answer.
   
   
2. Get to know God. The LC mindset is not truly conducive to getting to know God. God is not a substance to be dispensed into your being. Throw that teaching in the trash. It’s keeping you from knowing God personally. God is a person we can get to know. Eternal life is knowing God. That means getting to know his thoughts, feelings and tendencies. He will communicate these to you if you stop thinking about him all the time as water, bread or a “dose.” Sure in a sense he is all these things. But they are all metaphors for what he is to us personally. First and foremost he is a person. Talk to him and think of him as a person as real and approachable as your wife or best friend. Because he is actually more so that than anyone.
   
   
3. Read the Bible and throw away the footnotes. Read a lot of different Christian authors. Read carefully, but with an open, uncritical mind. Give God a chance to say something to you that you don't expect. Notice how all writers and teachers are a little different and are just expressing their points of view. Then realize that's all Witness Lee was doing, whether or not he thought so himself.
   
   
4. Focus on the first and second commandments. Love God and love people. We all know we are supposed to love God. But LCers have a strange way of loving people. You can’t love people if you treat and think of them as aliens from another planet. I think the best thing for any LCer would be to have a gay couple move in next door and to hear God telling them to love and be good neighbors to that couple (this actually happened to me), to learn to see them as people just like you, because the fact is that’s how God sees them. God loves everyone. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Learn to look at everyone the way God sees them. Love the bum on the street. Love the guy with the bandana, tattoos and piercings. Stop calling them “the unbelievers.” Love Christians of all stripes. Stop calling them "those in Christianity." That’s just elitism and snobbery, and it is not Jesus.
   
   
5. Banish fear and stay positive. Faith and fear have something in common. They both ask us to believe something in the future that we cannot see. Fear is the enemy's tactic. Faith is God's way. When you begin to notice fear creeping around, banish it, and stand in faith that God wants to set you free.
   
   Tell yourself that you are God’s child and he loves you and has a purpose for you. Don’t give in to negative self-talk or condemnation. Read positive Christian writers like Norman Vincent Peale, Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen (yes, Joel Osteen!).
   
   
6. Start at home. If you don’t love your spouse, your kids, your family, friends and neighbors, and serve them like Christ would, then forget about the church. God is practical. Our mission field starts with the person who sleeps with us, then moves to our kids, and so forth. Start there. Be a good spouse and parent. If you can’t do that the rest is just an act anyway. The good news is starting at home is life-sized. Anyone can do it.
   
   
7. Find some new Christian friends and just love them in a simple way. You probably think you are a superior class of Christian and more transformed and so much clearer than all those poor, clueless non-LC Christians, don’t you? Boy, are you in for a shock. You are not near as transformed as you think. In fact, you probably aren’t much transformed at all. I don’t think I experienced any real transformation until recently in my life. Get humble and get some new friends and companions. Let God teach you through them. You might be surprised and probably will be.
   
   
8. Forget about spirituality and high-sounding doctrines, and just live a life of love and service. The fact is the LC is all about being spiritual, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. For example, when the LC thinks of sacrifice they talk about “taking the cross” and the emphasis is all about crushing the self so you can even be more of a spiritual giant than you already think you are. But sacrifice is actually all about doing something for someone else’s sake, for their benefit. In other words, it’s about love. That’s what you should focus on.
   
   High-sounding doctrines can also make you think you are very spiritual, because you can see… The Vision. Don’t kid yourself. The general parameters of the LC vision are more or less correct. Yes, God is perfecting a people for his glory. But all the hoo-hah about The New Jerusalem is mostly just overkill and bling. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And when you really start caring about people you begin to lose interest in detailed studies of The New Jerusalem and that kind of thing because they are often a kind of spiritual masturbation. (Did he really say that?! Yes, I did.)
   
   
9. Forgive and move on. Don’t hold grudges and don’t let past LC offenses steal your joy. Shake the dust off your feet. There is too much to live for to be bound to the past. Pray for your old friends in the LC.
   
   
10. Pray. See step one. Keeping praying. Pray all the time. Pray about everything. You will be amazed to find out how much God truly cares about you and is on your side.

Stay positive and full of faith. I hope and pray you will find peace, joy and purpose in your post-LC life like you never dreamed of. With God's help I know you will.

"I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears." Psalm 34:4