Curious!

[aron]

Originally Posted by Curious

I have made a whole list of dysfunctional behaviours I observed in LC people, as I became more and more tuned in to what was going on around me. As listed on another post, they are: Judgementalism, relationship breakdowns, dramas, blame shifting, pretence, and I will add, anger to that list, both suppressed and explosive. I want to say, this behaviour sets in when people are in an environment that is emotionally unsafe. Everyone is protecting themselves, running for cover, passing the buck. No-one wants to be the fall-guy. Those who are cleverest at these tactics become the most successful within the social strata, but through means of deception and manipulation. When people are trapped within such a closed system, that’s all the reality a person knows..

There's a lot in the rest of this post as well, but I wanted to comment on this part especially.

My impression is that the chief error being taught in modern (Protestant and post-Protestant) Christianity by its current shepherds is that it's about you. How you are feeling, how you are doing. In the LC the jargon was "making it", i.e. being an overcomer. And the way to measure that was "enjoyment" in the LC "church life", i.e. active participation in meetings focused on Living Stream Ministry materials.

The problem is, it's not about you - it's about him. He is the one who "made it". Until you get this at a cellular level, until your whole being strains toward him, then you'll forever get waylaid by Christian teachers who get you to focus on you, as a prelude to your focus on them. Once your eyes are off Jesus, you are ripe for manipulation, which inevitably leads to some sort of abuse as referenced above.

And as noted at the end of the previous post (#34), any of us can fall into this, at any level. I can focus on "what's wrong in the LC", as if there were nothing wrong with me. I can become loveless, bitter, judgmental. Conversely, I can puff up other forum members and become political, instead of obsessively fixating my consciousness on Jesus alone. Anyone can get distracted, and then distract (stumble) others.

Jesus taught, "These things were written concerning me". He's truly the only one who can safely be self-focused, because his self was completely dictated by the Father's will expressed in scripture. None else can claim this. He's the Second Adam, and there's no third. He's the Deputy God. He is Today's Moses, the sole law-giver ("Obey me, as I obey the Father's commands"). There is no Today's Paul - that is a ruse to pull you under another's influence. There is one mediator between God and man - the man Christ Jesus. Scripture is unequivocal.

He said, "I always do the Father's will." None else can say this.

And I want to echo what was said in the next-to-last sentence quoted above. In systems like the LC, one gets ahead by receiving the displaced anxiety and shame of the leader, and successfully channeling it "down" to one below you. One rises in the group social strata by surreptitiously displacing the leader's unease and disquiet. And who suffers the most? Those at the bottom. The most powerful testimonies are the people like Jo Casteel and Jane Anderson, who had to "take it" but couldn't "give it". They became receptacles of someone else's displaced shame. Their witness shows a system that is wrong at its core.