The Asian Mind/The Western Mind

[aron]

Originally Posted by Eph

I will never forget once in a brother Lee's meeting I prayed to God that let me be like brother Lee so that all my problems will be gone. It is my eastern mind telling me that, not brother Lee nor others. I don't believe brother Lee intentionally teaches that everyone should be like him..

In my meetings, we were told to be "Brother Lee tape machines" and repeat what we heard. And the trainings, even the Local Churches, were called "Witness Lee duplication centers". I don't know how much these ideas and phrases originated with him, but I suppose that they came from his inner ring of "cheerleaders" and he heard this kind of talk.

Originally Posted by Eph

"The Eastern Mind" might explain the prosperity of the local church in Taiwan and China, but not in America (other than Chinese Americans). Did you weep over one of American presidents' death? I bet not. Did I and the majority of Chinese and Taiwanese weep over Mao's and Chiang's death? I bet we did. Why so stupid? Don't know. I somehow wept when I heard brother Lee passed away in 1997, so did many of Chinese believers in the local church.

In America, we took the "Normal Christian Church" idea of Nee as from God, not as a product of the "Eastern Mind". So even though "Submission" seemed strange to our culture, we tried to copy it because we thought it was from heaven.

But I noticed certain warning signs that Nee's "Normal Church" life was merely human culture.

1. The exaltation of one person. I was at the Anaheim meeting hall and saw Chinese visitors posing next to Witness Lee's leather chair. Like it was a shrine.

2. Despising the poor. Of course the poor are despised everywhere but at least we in the West pretend to care. Jesus certainly cared. The Local Church way was, "Too bad for you." This, to me, is very Asian.

3. The Group triumphs fully over the Individual. Again, this has inroads everywhere but in the West we have the idea of individual human rights, even though we can't always follow it.

4. Order over freedom. Very similar to number 3, except this is in behavior. In the Lord's Recovery, you have complete freedom, as long as everything that you do is for the building up of the Group. And the Maximum Brother has told us what is for the building up of the Group.

5. Constant fighting, with "us" versus "them". This is a basic principle of much social organization. Without a "them" there is no "us". And the two are usually antagonistic. This is clearly fallen, and not exclusive to Asian culture, but in the Lord's Recovery it was filtered through Asian social expression.

Originally Posted by Eph

Chinese were oppressed by Western powers and Taiwanese were colonized by Western powers and Japan in the past. You might see that long term effects on the people. Then, the Lord came to rescue us and deliver us. The gospel was good and the church life was sweet, then, some things went south.

I understand the idea of foreign oppression, and tried to address this in my posts. Western colonialism and imperialism gave fertile ground for the "native" church movement of the early 20th century. But once Watchman Nee got a flock of thousands, he tried to control it. Nee went from being the "oppressed" to the "oppressor"... now his "vision" was no longer "local" but "the Jerusalem principle", the consolidation of power. So Nee showed that he was merely a human being. Likewise the Asian culture is not a stranger to imperialism, political, economic, or cultural. Asian culture knows how to be both "dominant" and "submissive"; in the 19th century the West dominated, and in the early- to mid- 20th century the pendulum of power began to swing back. The rise of the Little Flock, and its export to the U.S. in the Lord's Recovery, is an example of that.

My main point of starting the thread was that a lot of what we thought was a biblically- and scripturally-based "Normal Church Life" was really filtered through a human culture. But we didn't see it, so we took it as if it came from heaven. Yet all of the "storms" and "turmoils" and "rebellions" show us otherwise. "By its fruit a tree is fully manifested."

For example, the idea of "losing face" was clearly and repeatedly manifested. When Max Rappoport found Philip Lee misbehaving, Witness Lee couldn't be allowed to lose face. That would undermine the whole social order. Likewise Titus Chu could not lose face to Benson Philips. So yet another "storm" would break out. So a "natural" force is really controlling what we are told is the "divine order".