Curious!

[Curious]

Originally Posted by Ohio

Let's discuss the practice of Intimidation in the Recovery. Lots has been written about the LC method of rebuking, public shaming, humiliating others ... supposedly done in order to "perfect" other brothers.

According to the history of the "Recovery" given to us by Lee himself, this practice of strong rebukes had its origin with a missionary sister named Margaret Barber in China. She used this "recovered" practice to perfect W. Nee, who alone could endure her extremely harsh rebukes. Thus W. Nee was matured for Christian ministry. I'm not making any of this up, I heard this from Lee on numerous occasions....

...Where do we find these Intimidation techniques in the scriptures? Can anyone find a verse showing us how to "perfect" the brothers by rebuking and humiliating them? How can this be "recovered" if it has no record in the scriptures? Where can we find this pattern among other men of God in church history? Surely Schaff's History ... would have recorded this?....

...Note also that his own son Philip, though an unregenerate profligate, also used these same techniques as he took over LSM. Unfortunately he even treated the sisters worse than the brothers.

Well indeed, it seems we’ve come full circle on the need for psychiatric intervention in the LC, starting with its founder, Watchman Nee!

On the one hand, disempowering young women and imposing himself on them sexually for his own gratification, using his status to prevail upon them in this way. Intimidation again!

Then ‘paying’ for his sins…allaying his guilt….by subjecting himself to the harsh recriminations of an older woman. Flagellation in the manner of the catholic church before Luther’s time, at a guess?

Instead of being able to unravel this toxic and intense disturbance in his relationship to the opposite sex, he embedded these practises into his ministry. The shameful side of it hidden, the other side promoted as noble. I suggest them to be two sides one problem. (I know he then brought this practise into general use, but this is the dynamic wherein WN learned it, at the feet of a harsh, punitive woman…it seems even a bit sadomasochistic to me, though I don't like to feel I should say that.

Maybe his final 20 years of life away from females altogether (in prison) was God’s saving grace to him?

To be fair, he lived in a culture where you did not show your weakness and in a time when there was no help of the counselling kind. (That it is available today is evidence of Cal’s suggestion that things are getting better in some ways on this earth, not worse!!)

Furthermore though, it reveals the danger of being in a position of authority for anyone with unresolved personal /psychological problems. It also underlines the theological errors in the LC on several levels.

[Curious]

In my post no.23 I listed some books and online resources that I have used myself to look into areas that need help when a person is recovering from an abusive system.

To clarify, I know that secular help can address all these topics as just as well, and be better available. The benefit of including Christian based ones is they help to give a theological, scriptural back-up where a Christian can embrace the concept that God approves too! It’s His will for you to embrace these changes. And that really helps to unravel the mental conditioning that pre-exists in the person’s psyche.

The ‘boundaries’ book sub-title: ‘when to say yes, when to say no, to take control of your life’ this may sound like taking control that should be God’s not ours. The key is: We can’t give control to God that which we don’t own in the first place. If the control of our ‘yes’ and ‘no’ belongs to that guy over there, or that group over here, then we don’t have the choice to give it to God. It actually belongs to ‘them’ not us. We have to know the freedom to own it ourselves first, know it as our possession TO be able to submit it to Him. Also, having our yes and no misused by others can make it harder to trust God with it and further set us back from being able to really give it to Him.

On the matter of forgiveness I have a comment. The understanding and expectation the LC leadership promote to its followers is the Chinese religious model not the biblical one.

The Chinese goddess of mercy is named Guan yin. Personified as a woman usually looking rather floaty and serene. Guan yin deals with ‘sin’ by EXCUSING it. that’s how it works in the eastern religious system. This cultural mindset is contrary to Christianity and the harm it can do is well documented elsewhere on this forum. It is why all situations of accountability mentioned in the bible, especially form the prophets etc are ignored by the LC leadership and their twistings of the Noah story etc are cited. They have been used to back the practise and thinking of another religious system.

Biblical forgiveness actually exposes and names sin. It identifies and confronts it and is already willing to reconcile, bestow its blessing. However it requires acknowledgement from the offender in order to be received. The offender can only benefit from it and submit to some consequences as a result, if they hear, receive, and repent. Like the city of Ninevah is a good example. That is the pattern God has provided for the provision of forgiveness. Not excusing sin. Not His idea or plan. That is just giving licence to a system that is actually in rebellion to God.

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Curious

On the matter of forgiveness I have a comment. The understanding and expectation the LC leadership promote to its followers is the Chinese religious model not the biblical one.

The Chinese goddess of mercy is named Guan yin. Personified as a woman usually looking rather floaty and serene. Guan yin deals with ‘sin’ by EXCUSING it. that’s how it works in the eastern religious system. This cultural mindset is contrary to Christianity and the harm it can do is well documented elsewhere on this forum. It is why all situations of accountability mentioned in the bible, especially form the prophets etc are ignored by the LC leadership and their twistings of the Noah story etc are cited. They have been used to back the practise and thinking of another religious system.

Biblical forgiveness actually exposes and names sin. It identifies and confronts it and is already willing to reconcile, bestow its blessing. However it requires acknowledgement from the offender in order to be received. The offender can only benefit from it and submit to some consequences as a result, if they hear, receive, and repent. Like the city of Ninevah is a good example. That is the pattern God has provided for the provision of forgiveness. Not excusing sin. Not His idea or plan. That is just giving licence to a system that is actually in rebellion to God.

Do you have a source or some more information on Guan Yin dealing with sin by excusing it? I Googled a little and didn't come up with anything immediately, but also didn't have much time to spend on it.

The LC leadership has absolutely no idea how to deal with sin and 100% just wants to excuse it, so what you wrote is fascinating to me.

[Curious]

[QUOTE=Trapped;90250]Do you have a source or some more information on Guan Yin dealing with sin by excusing it? I Googled a little and didn't come up with anything immediately, but also didn't have much time to spend on it.[QUOTE]


Dear Trapped,

To find information on guan yin that analyses the eastern interpretation of mercy in contrast to the biblical one, requires some level of investigation into ‘eastern pantheistic monism’ as a whole.

There is a thought process that ties eastern spirituality together and within that ‘kindness’ is not linked to ‘accountability’ as it is with the God of the bible. However, It’s not a clear and debated spiritual principle that is presented in the intellectual way we process these concepts in the western mind. So I don’t think you’ll easily find a categorical statement about it on the internet.

I practised a level of eastern religion myself before I became solidly a Christian so my awareness of this topic comes from some direct experience and exposure. As part of my reforming my thinking to a Judeo-Christian world view, I read in the book ‘the Universe Next Door, a basic world view catalogue’ by James W Sire, and published by Inter Varsity Press. I recommend this book as one chapter is devoted to eastern pantheistic monism and sums it up quite well. Other Christian books that explain buddhism would also be likely to comment on mercy as understood in the east and how it is different from the west. Guan yin really just personifies and reflects the thinking, is not per se, the source of the ideas on mercy.

IVP publishes other books that compare and contrast religious and philosophical systems of thought, if interesting to readers of this forum. They always gently and respectfully, (and intellectually!) back God’s Truth and the biblical account of truth as far as I know.

Personally, I see more than just the concept of mercy being adapted from eastern spirituality, in the LC frame. WL borrowed on communism, facism and Christianity especially from the Keswick convention and other individuals. Additionally, he borrowed from an eastern religious point of view too…..in my opinionated opinion!!

One point that I noted as I was evaluating what I was learning of the teachings, was this idea of God being processed into man, to become God again, and man, in the process, becoming God. This might be a good time for me to run my theory on this idea past y’all on this forum:

In eastern mystical thinking, the idea of reincarnation exists. Humans live multiple lives in sequence where they begin as something small like a bug, and after death, repeatedly return as increasingly complex beings, then as humans, learning ‘lessons’ along the way until eventually they reach ‘nirvana’ where they exist in some heavenly state for a long time and then rebegin the process all over again. Being of a high ‘caste’ in India, (their class system), is called a ‘Brahman’, which means you’re up there at the ‘God’ level. ‘Atman is Brahman’ means ‘self is God’, we only have to actualise it by recognising it, and practising mantra’s and transcendental meditation enables one to enter into this ‘reality’.

In short, you could say, Man is processing himself into God through reincarnation.

What a clever thing WL did…he turned it around! God is ‘processing’ himself into man through his ‘reincarnating’ of himself downwards towards man instead of man ‘processing’ himself upwards towards God.…..and achieves the same end result of man becoming God! It’s like WL just flipped it over and has God doing all the work instead of us!! Like reincarnation but better (for us that is, not God). Being incarnated as Jesus was one step, becoming the Holy Spirit was another, entering the person through regeneration is the next one then the whole new Jerusalem thing is the last one, it seems.

I don’t know what others will think of that, but I suspect WL may have borrowed from his own pre-Christian heritage, consciously or unconsciously, for his own questionable reasons….And in the process, he messed with what he didn’t really comprehend the significance of, creating damage through such carelessness. Personally, I give him top marks for ingenuity tho.

(Someone is going to need to rap me over the knuckles soon, for all the outrageous things I’m likely to say once I get going!!)

I hope that sort-of answers your question, Trapped. Being in a meditative state and not in your mind is very eastern, another link from WL to eastern thought. Simultaneously it explains why you won’t easily find definitive statements about eastern concepts like mercy, etc. (Maybe also it explains how the BB’s use words where the meaning is unclear too, as that is another feature with them).

[aron]

Originally Posted by Curious

The understanding and expectation the LC leadership promote to its followers is the Chinese religious model not the biblical one.

The Chinese goddess of mercy is named Guan yin. Personified as a woman usually looking rather floaty and serene. Guan yin deals with ‘sin’ by EXCUSING it. that’s how it works in the eastern religious system. This cultural mindset is contrary to Christianity and the harm it can do is well documented elsewhere on this forum. It is why all situations of accountability mentioned in the bible, especially form the prophets etc are ignored by the LC leadership and their twistings of the Noah story etc are cited. They have been used to back the practise and thinking of another religious system.

Biblical forgiveness actually exposes and names sin. It identifies and confronts it and is already willing to reconcile, bestow its blessing. However it requires acknowledgement from the offender in order to be received. The offender can only benefit from it and submit to some consequences as a result, if they hear, receive, and repent. Like the city of Ninevah is a good example. That is the pattern God has provided for the provision of forgiveness. Not excusing sin. Not His idea or plan. That is just giving licence to a system that is actually in rebellion to God.

The system as pushed by LC leaders took great pains to appear strictly adherent to the Bible, both in letter and spirit, often using coded terms like 'proper' and 'genuine' and 'normal', but under stress they'd abandon this while church members pretended not to notice. But it's just been too obvious.

I'm thinking specifically of Lee's own hand-picked cadre of senior co-workers (Mallon, So, Ingalls, Rapoport et al) who used Matthew 18 principles to confront him with concerns about his son. People were being damaged. But repentance (i.e. acknowledgement of vulnerability, error and willingness to change) for Witness Lee was impossible. His cultural model demanded a different approach, alluded to by Curious above.

When challenged, all that rhetoric about propriety according to scripture went right out the window, and the LC system showed itself to be just as 'deformed' and 'fallen' as any in Christianity that it so often derided. Conversely, LC members who violated its unspoken tenets, even if raising concerns using Matthew 18 principles, were called 'rebels' and summarily ejected.

The lone sign of repentance was at the end, in a vague statement about failure in "receiving others", as if leaders needed more charity toward fellow Christians, even as 'deformed', 'fallen', 'satanic' and 'Christ-less' as they were held to be. Evidently Lee felt that they could have been more magnanimous towards others. But any facing of internal flaws - no. The system was predicated on avoiding this.

[Curious]

Originally Posted by aron

The system as pushed by LC leaders took great pains to appear strictly adherent to the Bible, both in letter and spirit, often using coded terms like 'proper' and 'genuine' and 'normal', but under stress they'd abandon this while church members pretended not to notice. But it's just been too obvious.

Very well said, aron. You have summarised so much here, so well. WL got himself into a pickle that was not possible for him to get out of. Words like ‘proper’, ‘genuine’ and ‘normal’…I remember those being used too. And they are so very subjective words.

The things we can all take-away through coming to an understanding of this……appearances can be deceiving, never trust in them alone. Feelings of identification and familiarity can also be snares, (but not always).

Above all…take care, lest we may fall into the same trap. Wanting the glory for ourselves, to set ourselves up on the throne that belongs to God alone. Its more tempting than we realise if we’ve never come close to tasting it personally. To be aware of how vulnerable we can all be to being corrupted in this way, if the opportunity is real. It truly is harder to resist than one might think. A leader or historical figure who has demonstrated themselves to be immune to the corruption of power has not happened often in the history of the world, although is has happened.

Also, at the every-day level, keep up on our own spiritual housework, as recommended by Nell in the 12th post on this thread. Be ever open to acknowledge our own ‘vulnerability, error’, and be ‘willing to change’, trusting God with the outcomes is where faith replaces self-reliance. Self-reliance that rejects facing our flaws, builds up a system of self-defence within us. Trust in God is the faith then that gets attributed to us as our righteousness. Like it did for Abraham. Like it equally did for Rahab. Righteous servant of God, or Canaanite prostitute, makes no difference: their ability to trust God and take risk based on that trust is at the heart of true faith. Self-reliance is based in fear and doubting God and leads to sin. Repenting of sin is in itself a step of faith in God’s reality and stepping away from our own reality. I had better stop, I’m getting carried away sermonising where I hadn’t meant to.

In short, WL hadn’t taken some essential steps of faith, (as far as I understand true faith to be). (He built up a system where he did not need to rely on God as he was managing his own security on the side!) He needed more opportunity to figure the fundamental things out, yet rose to leadership roles without such a foundation. Einstein said ‘premature responsibility breeds superficiality’ and some have said that pearl of wisdom is more significant than E=mc2.

To benefit in a positive way from being aware of WL’s error, it helps remind me of mistakes I could also make, especially if I’m over focused on being bothered about him more than being mindful of the principles of repentance, faith and humility, and applying them to myself. that's my lesson. and I think it is a valuable lesson to hold onto, one to be thankful of.