“Local Church ‘Cult’ Label has stuck”—says LSM Star turned Academic

[TLFisher]

Originally Posted by aron

Two points: first that I tried to make some of this explicit in the thread "The Asian Mind and the Western Mind", and elsewhere. It would be fun if someone like Zimmerman-Liu would come on this forum and mix it up with the hoi palloi, but it would probably be a bad career move, if she is trying to be seen as a serious scholar and an academic.

Talking about the Asian mind, an interesting subject of debate to discuss using Asian culture utilized with a Biblical spin (covering Noah).

[aron]

Originally Posted by Terry

Talking about the Asian mind, an interesting subject of debate to discuss using Asian culture utilized with a Biblical spin (covering Noah).

Exactly. Guanxi, with a Bible verse or two, becomes "covering Noah". We cannot let the Oracle lose face. Right?

From Wikipedia: "Reciprocal favors are the key factor to maintaining one’s guanxi web, failure to reciprocate is considered an unforgivable offense." I don't think it's too much to wonder, if the blood of Christ can even overcome cultural dictates, here. These social expectations are deeply ingrained and not questioned. They are implicit in the system itself.

How much of the lens of culture dictated what was 'normal' in Watchman Nee's supposedly normal Christian Church life? None? Was he really that good? Even that he was so good a scholar as to produce a scheme without flaw is a culturally derived notion.

And so on. The idea that engineering, or ordering society to further the harmonious operation of the whole didn't take off in the bourgeois German or French societies but with the Russians and Chinese. And when the Russian variant imploded (and with it the Czech, [East] German, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, etc etc) the Chinese model still soldiered on. Why? Perhaps partly because the harmonious function of the Mother Ship was as intrinsic as breathing in the Eastern mind, as necessary as "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the Western one.

So Nee & Lee took Paul's idea of setting things in order in the church into the Asian mind, and then exported it as the new universal norm. When Nee said, "Line up with the person in front of you" and when Lee said, "All local churches should be exactly identical" this was culture speaking through religion. Occasionally, when they can't find a Bible verse, they just give you the maxim: "The age of Spiritual Giants is over. It is now the age of the Small Potatoes." Why - because the harmonious functioning of the Mother Ship dictates that it be so.

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

Occasionally, when they can't find a Bible verse, they just give you the maxim: "The age of Spiritual Giants is over. It is now the age of the Small Potatoes." Why - because the harmonious functioning of the Mother Ship dictates that it be so.

But how does this look in the USA? When the True Believer Caucasians like BP, RG, MP, KR, RK, and EM pursue the building of the Mothership and dismiss things like basic human rights, respect, due process, and objective truth, it looks cultic.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by aron

But how does this look in the USA? When the True Believer Caucasians like BP, RG, MP, KR, RK, and EM pursue the building of the Mothership and dismiss things like basic human rights, respect, due process, and objective truth, it looks cultic.

I understand Witness Lee and his 'collectivism-groupthink" but for the life of me don't understand that of BP, RG, MP, KR, and RK.

[TLFisher]

Originally Posted by awareness

I understand Witness Lee and his 'collectivism-groupthink" but for the life of me don't understand that of BP, RG, MP, KR, and RK.

Being brothers, I cannot understand their blatant disregard. Aside from being brothers I can only identify the fleshly nature of personal ambition and financial support LSM provides.