Negative Speaking

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I have a struggle with this issue of calling people who spoke out the immoral behaviors and abuses of leadership as being negative. Just this morning, I read a post from a LC with a quote from Witness Lee.

"Positive listening will rescue us from negative listening. If we listen to God's word from morning to evening, we will not have an ear to listen to any negative speaking. Negative talk prevails in the church life because certain ones turn their ears from God to something else. These ones do not speak Christ, the word of God, grace, or the gospel. Instead they listen to negative things, and they work and move according to the negative things they hear. The result is the spreading of death. If we turn our ears from other things back to God Himself, there will not be any problems, and only life will be spreading, not death." (Life-study of Leviticus, Msg. 30)

Hi Unregistered,

This teaching is one of the ones that lets us know the local churches are an abusive church. This is literally in the books about spiritual abuse: "if you talk about a problem, then YOU are the problem, it's not the problem that's the problem."

It's the chef whose got his food stored in a dark, filthy back room. You walk back there and you flip the light switch to turn on the lights and you catch a glimpse of all the rats and roaches before they scatter......and rather than get horrified that he has rats and roaches, the chef instead gets mad at you for shining the light on the rats and roaches.

We can all see the issues with that scenario, and what's going on in the local churches in that regard is no less gross and disgusting.

Much of the epistles contain the apostles doing this very thing (talking about the problems) - calling out immoral behaviors and abuses of leadership, or in the church in general. Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:19-20 speaks to this directly: "You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or puts on airs or slaps you in the face." Do Lee or the co-workers want to call the apostle Paul "negative" for speaking about the abusive behavior of the false apostles toward the Corinthians? I don't think so.

Much of what Jesus said to the religious hypocrites was also doing this very thing (talking about problems) - calling out abuses of leadership. Condemning the Pharisees for tying up burdens on men's shoulders, etc.

Abusive churches don't like it when their members follow this pattern of Paul and Jesus.

I mean, read Lee's words: "if we turn our ears from other things....there will not be any problems..."

For reals? You mean, if you stick your fingers in your ears and say "lalalalala" then what your parents are saying to you doesn't really exist? This is child's thinking. All that it means is you are ignoring the problem. Healthy churches want to know the problems so they can address them because it matters to them that people don't get hurt, harmed, and damaged. Abusive churches blame the people who bring up the problems, because it matters to them that they constantly have a shiny, polished, whitewashed, pure, spotless image to anyone wasting their time looking at them. It's the ultimate narcissism.

This "death" or "death element" that the co-workers love to threaten the saints about also perfectly fits the characteristic of an abusive church. It's threats, fear, intimidation, condemnation. Is this the atmosphere intended within the church Jesus bought? Not at all. And they are using "death" in an unscriptural way. The Bible tells us in no uncertain terms that "the wages of sin is death". Death is our wages for our sin. Who paid us these wages?

God!

God is the one who gave us the death penalty for our sins. He is so holy, so righteous, so morally perfect, that any sins condemns us to the death penalty. Yes, as the Bible says, Satan has the power of death because he can deceive people and thus keep them from accepting everlasting life as a free gift from God, but death doesn't come from Satan. It's our wages, what we earned, from God. Death is not something you can "spread" like is threatened in the excerpt you quoted. It's the perfect intangible, undefined threat......classic for abusive churches.

Yes, yes, "life and death are in the power of the tongue" says Proverbs. Yes, we need to watch what we say because it has an effect on people. But neither of those concepts are talking about squashing people who speak up about sins, abuses, immorality, or harm in what is supposed to be a safe place.

Your struggle in this area shows you are seeing with clear eyes and are using your God-given mind to discern.