The Asian Mind/The Western Mind

[Gubei]

Originally Posted by aron

This reminds me of what I noticed in the LC in the U. S. - the Caucasians would abandon their non-believing family - "The church is my family now" - whilst the Chinese 'saints' would keep unbelieving family members close by. Also your point about Asians not kissing one another is an example of why I started this thread. Culture determines how we interpret the Bible, and arrange our collective expressions. "Greet one another with a holy kiss" would be ignored in Asia, but would be literally enacted elsewhere.

Aron,

I have been classifing the Biblical teachings into two categories - first, cluture-agnostic teachings that we should follow regardless of specific time/space context, and second, cluture-influenced teachings like "greeting with a holy kiss" or "playing piano or not during church service" etc.
In the past, I regareded "one locality-one church doctrine" as being a culture-agnostic teaching, but thesedays, I think this is a kind of cluture-influenced theaching, becuase unlike ancient times when a "city" was well defined by physical stone wall and churches were in the embryonic stage with so small number of believers meaning naturally there is only one church in one city, moderen times have seen a lot of churches mushrooming with so many Christians. It is a bit impossible to stick to the one locality-one church doctrine as a culture-agnostic teaching. Admittely, WN really wanted to see churches are under good order without division, so he elaborated on his teaching on one locality-one church, but even we have long had this teaching, in reality, have we achieved real oneness among Christians? My answer is NO. Even among LCs, my observation is seeminly they always claim so, but I doubt our God really recognizes them being so, because the ground of oneness is not one locality-one city doctrine itself, but the sprit of oneness which LCs seems not to want to apply to other Christians out of LC members.