Did you also have a difficult childhood in the LC?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

... my parents were so into it they weren’t thinking about how to engage or teach me, they were too busy feeding themselves.

Agreed. The whole thing is a crass, manipulative ego feed. Once you see it, it's so obvious.

It's all about you and your subjective Christ. Your experience, your enjoyment. Notice how these subjective ephemera are externally manipulated by people with control issues.

They get you to feed on your ego, while they set you up. I was in a college conference with Ed Marks, and he was talking to some young students from MIT, in front everyone. "You guys from MIT.. man ... you are so smart! You have courses in nuclear reactors! I mean, wow...incredible!" And they were sucked in. He was puffing them up, building up their egos, just to use them. So obvious, in retrospect. It's all about you. Until it's about the Big Boss (or the Body, or the Oneness, or the Ground, or God's Move, or whatever Boss is pushing today as a stand-in)

I was love-bombed at first & it was clear instantly that I was better off than 50% of the church members. Because I was a male, not a flighty female. No sirreee! I was a "serious brother". And of course I bought into it, thinking I was "the best of the best". They slathered my ego with love and I bought it. And I didn't think, Why did they just laud Dora Yu and Peace Wang and Ruth Lee and Margaret Barber, if sisters' public function is so deficient? No, as long as the sisters were down, by extension I was up, so it seemed. That "warm glow" suppressed my critical thinking.

And so on... the repetition, bringing you to an altered, suggestive state. Another red flag, today. Look at any HWMR and one 'special word' or phrase is repeated. In the meetings if you repeated the 'special phrase' you got 'more God'.

Information control. "Oh, we don't talk about that." Etc.

I was a naive college student, though legally an adult, and should have known better. Mea culpa. I feel awful for the 12 year-olds who no choice in the matter.

When they got me as a kid to say I was saved, they immediately assumed I had a deep knowledge of what that meant. I’m not sure how. They never preached out of the word of God or had any programs with people my age where I was at. Their spirituality was like a different language to me. They also never brought up sin and how to deal with it. They would never address sin in a way that they owned it. Sins were hidden if they were their sins. But they had no problem calling out the fact the world is sinful. Bc the lack of talk on sin, and the lack of accountability and transparency on their end, I thought living in sin was acceptable. Why should I repent if I don’t have to to be saved (according to them). Why even say anything is a sin?. My dad had a drinking problem none of those saints knew about. So his sin justified mine, or so I thought. I didn’t know how any of this stuff actually worked. Bc there was no scripture. Those spiritual books they tried to give me made absolutely no sense as a young teen who was truly not saved. They stacked up unread. The material was shallow and deep all the same time. Mystical. Not Biblical. Although I didn’t want the Bible either at that point. It wasn’t really a problem when I was little, but when I got to be in about 8th grade wanting to do stuff, everything was “worldy” and if I ever piped up it was always “be still”. Because I was “saved” was the reason I was not allowed to do anything. So naturally I didn’t want to be saved. If that was saved, then I reject it, let me drown. That was my attitude. And that’s what happened. Being forced into legalism without any actual faith or knowledge even as to why, was a huge turn off. Faith is dead without works and works are dead without faith.

Now I’m a mom and my daughter is 12. I’m saved, legitimately, but I live on this planet. I’m a hair stylist, I wear normal but appropriate clothes, I watch tv, I celebrate holidays, I decorate my house, I wear makeup and care about looking good, and I enjoy my life. I could get all enthralled and throw out my tv, my cell phone, dress in sackcloth and throw dust on my head, but that isn’t what God is impressing on me. I don’t beat people with God’s word or annoy my kid by forcefeeding her heavy things. When I tell my daughter not to do something, I tell her why, and it’s not “bc it’s a sin” without an explanation. She knows about drug/alcohol abuse, lgbtq, sex, crime, mental illness and many things. I keep a level of transparency about these things so that she can have proof that God really exists, and He heals people from their own self harm, as well as from harm others do to us. She’s seen her aunt recover from a crack addiction by the grace of God, her mom delivered from alcoholism, and her cousin delivered from debilitating social anxiety. I let her watch testimonies, interventions and real life stuff so she can have some tools to navigate life. I bring her to a church where she has peers, lots of them, and they actually have fun. I don’t hammer her or ignore her when she talks to me. I go out of my way to make sure she sees things for how they really are. I teach her patience, forgiveness, courtesy, kindness, fairness, and how to stand up for herself. I model those things for her bc God put that on my heart.

Thanks to God, my marriage is really healthy and so am I, and I can pass that along to my kids in a productive way instead of a destructive one. I forgive my parents 100%. My love for them is not gone. Their theology is a little off and they may have dropped the ball on some things, but they were just trying to raise me right based on their experience. But they could not make that experience my own. I can’t even say that the LC background serves no purpose in my life today. I’m not angry. I just wish I had a way to bring them into truth when they’ve been so heavily indoctrinated, and a way to reach out to those who are jaded from LC. I guess this is me starting. I had to come here to find out more so I can be prepared when the time comes.

[HERn]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

When they got me as a kid to say I was saved, they immediately assumed I had a deep knowledge of what that meant. I’m not sure how. They never preached out of the word of God or had any programs with people my age where I was at. Their spirituality was like a different language to me. They also never brought up sin and how to deal with it. They would never address sin in a way that they owned it. Sins were hidden if they were their sins. But they had no problem calling out the fact the world is sinful. Bc the lack of talk on sin, and the lack of accountability and transparency on their end, I thought living in sin was acceptable. Why should I repent if I don’t have to to be saved (according to them). Why even say anything is a sin?. My dad had a drinking problem none of those saints knew about. So his sin justified mine, or so I thought. I didn’t know how any of this stuff actually worked. Bc there was no scripture. Those spiritual books they tried to give me made absolutely no sense as a young teen who was truly not saved. They stacked up unread. The material was shallow and deep all the same time. Mystical. Not Biblical. Although I didn’t want the Bible either at that point. It wasn’t really a problem when I was little, but when I got to be in about 8th grade wanting to do stuff, everything was “worldy” and if I ever piped up it was always “be still”. Because I was “saved” was the reason I was not allowed to do anything. So naturally I didn’t want to be saved. If that was saved, then I reject it, let me drown. That was my attitude. And that’s what happened. Being forced into legalism without any actual faith or knowledge even as to why, was a huge turn off. Faith is dead without works and works are dead without faith.

Now I’m a mom and my daughter is 12. I’m saved, legitimately, but I live on this planet. I’m a hair stylist, I wear normal but appropriate clothes, I watch tv, I celebrate holidays, I decorate my house, I wear makeup and care about looking good, and I enjoy my life. I could get all enthralled and throw out my tv, my cell phone, dress in sackcloth and throw dust on my head, but that isn’t what God is impressing on me. I don’t beat people with God’s word or annoy my kid by forcefeeding her heavy things. When I tell my daughter not to do something, I tell her why, and it’s not “bc it’s a sin” without an explanation. She knows about drug/alcohol abuse, lgbtq, sex, crime, mental illness and many things. I keep a level of transparency about these things so that she can have proof that God really exists, and He heals people from their own self harm, as well as from harm others do to us. She’s seen her aunt recover from a crack addiction by the grace of God, her mom delivered from alcoholism, and her cousin delivered from debilitating social anxiety. I let her watch testimonies, interventions and real life stuff so she can have some tools to navigate life. I bring her to a church where she has peers, lots of them, and they actually have fun. I don’t hammer her or ignore her when she talks to me. I go out of my way to make sure she sees things for how they really are. I teach her patience, forgiveness, courtesy, kindness, fairness, and how to stand up for herself. I model those things for her bc God put that on my heart.

Thanks to God, my marriage is really healthy and so am I, and I can pass that along to my kids in a productive way instead of a destructive one. I forgive my parents 100%. My love for them is not gone. Their theology is a little off and they may have dropped the ball on some things, but they were just trying to raise me right based on their experience. But they could not make that experience my own. I can’t even say that the LC background serves no purpose in my life today. I’m not angry. I just wish I had a way to bring them into truth when they’ve been so heavily indoctrinated, and a way to reach out to those who are jaded from LC. I guess this is me starting. I had to come here to find out more so I can be prepared when the time comes.

You are an awesome mom and a testimony to other young moms still caught in the local church movement!! Keep on being a great mom.

[JJ]

IseeCrazyPeople,

It is heartbreaking to hear your and so many other people's stories who grew up in "the local church" in such a restrictive environment where "the world" and "worldly" aren't really the Bible's definition.

I was recruited off a campus into "the local church" when I was 18 and had a similar restrictive experience initially but was freed from it by help from a brother and his wife who shared with me the things that were really a concern to God (sin, as defined by the Bible) and the things that weren't (really everything else, and that is a lot). I always wondered why the saints continued to be so uptight about things that weren't sinful and eventually realized this was coming from Witness Lee himself. He was really quite an uptight guy, and had been trained that way by Watchman Nee, who was trained by a woman who was really quite uptight..... who was trained by some brothers who were really quite uptight, who were trained by....

Well you get it. When people stop using the bible's definition for things, things and people's lives get really messed up. Not your fault, it's theirs.