My experience as a church kid: Why I want out

[Melo]

Originally Posted by Trapped

Let me amend this one point by saying this, since I don't want to be guilty of making the same type of sweeping statements about one Christian group that the local churches make about other Christian groups: In the spiritual realm, I believe the local church is one with other Christians on the basis of the shared life in Christ, and some individual saints can and do live this out in certain ways in their daily life (since I've seen it). The shared life in Christ, the one Lord, is the basis of the oneness that should be among all Christians and I can't discount the existence of that in the individual believers in the local church.

However, in practice, the local churches as an organization (uh-oh....another church-life buzzword) are not and simply cannot be one with the rest of the Body of Christ given the permeating spoken and printed disdain for non local church believers (those who are not "saints"). Even new college students learn very early on that others "don't see what we see", and in years past I've heard things like that come out of their mouths. Whether the local churches do experience or enter into certain things that other congregations don't is irrelevant at that point because the "us vs. them" chasm has ruined the oneness.

Thank you for your response, it's re-assuring to hear someone else talk about their struggle with this, and validate my resistance to attend the FTTA.

And I completely agree with your above point! I can only speak of the church life perception of other denominations, but I've always felt as if this idea of oneness rarely extends into practice. If all denominations were truly considered of equal value, there would be no reason for these divisions in the first place. I've always felt like in the church life there was always 'two' salvations that needed to occur. (1) Believing in the Lord Jesus, and (2) Believing into the church life.

I also have a dumb question that is more directed towards your previous comment concerning God's economy. Is God's economy a concept that is mentioned in other denominations and translations of the Bible aside from Lee's writings? A simple Google search for God's economy sent me to literature all stemming from LSM, but I just wanted to make sure. While I'm not here to debate the validity of the term 'God's economy', to me that illustration has helped clarify God's dispensing and doesn't seem overtly offensive to me. Any clarification would be appreciated!