Fixing the Problems Helps Everyone Concerned, even LC Leadership

[Curious]

This forum is made up of ex LC persons in the main. (except me!). The point of view therefore expressed here, is of the deficits of the organisation towards its followers and the harm caused, and its need to change. Absolutely all valid, however, perhaps not the whole picture….

I want to use the following bible story to look at how I think the dysfunction in the LC harms the people at the top too. Maybe a horribly presumptuous move, or maybe an interesting different perspective...

I’m going to review the account delivered in the book of Esther, considered from looking at her husband, King Xerxes, (or Ahaseurus, depending on your translation).

Now I am not reinterpreting to re-write the story as most often studied from Esther’s perspective. The normal focus of commentary is not in conflict with my offering here. It is with specialised interest in the pitfalls of lack of accountability and responsibility in those in authority that I evaluate what can also be found in this book of the bible, in my opinion, that is.

The points I want to draw out starts here: King Xerxes is entertaining at his palace. Many officials, princes and governors are in attendance, and the emphasis is on impressing them. Being drunk, he decided to show off his beautiful queen to the assembly. As it was against Persian custom for a woman to appear before a public gathering of men, this put his queen, Vashti, in a no-win situation. She either disobeys her husband or the custom, both for which she could face retribution. Drunk people do unthought-through, spontaneous dumb stuff like that. (I know from experience).

Possibly in voting for the long-term outcome, she opts to obey the custom, which in turn puts the king in an awkward situation of loosing face amongst his guests. Having no experience of the restriction of rules applying to himself, the king fails to understand the predicament he had placed his queen in. And in this quandary, he receives bad advice. This is because he’s the King, and as ruler, it is believed he should never be in the submissive situation of mopping up after his cock-up!

First move is to banish queen Vashti permanently. (This is done to endorse a pattern of male dominance for his kingdom). And second, when he missed her, and regretted what he’d done, the advice he got was to go out and fill the gap in his heart by culling off a number of the most eligible young women of his kingdom and taking them for himself. Rather than allowing them to be wives for his loyal young men! (Yes I’m suggesting this was also greedy and selfish as well as ill advised. He's using his position to serve himself, not the interests of his people).

however, this is how he comes to have Esther, a beautiful and wise young Jewish woman among the other young women that are taken for him to become his concubines.

Then the more well told parts of the story. Haman is the Kings number two, a descendent of the King Agag, who had survived the command God had given to the Israelites, to destroy. They compromised God’s instruction in disobedience. Haman both hated the Jews for this, and likely had aspirations to become King, as his ancestor had been.

He manipulates the king to enact his own agenda towards all the Jews living in exile in Persia. To destroy them all. How did he gain such an influence? My theory to come.

This situation of the imminent slaughter of all Jews, forces Esther to enact a plan requiring great courage.

This is where I am making comment about lack of accountability in leadership as relates to LC and king Xerxes. Queen Esther must risk her life to approach the King. Why so? If he had not summoned her, and he’s in a bad mood that day, or just doesn’t feel like seeing her, he can have her put to death for approaching him. (That’s the same but worse than being ‘perfected’ or publicly ‘rebuked’ in the LC). So this is the situation. He is so dominant, and his people so submissive, that you may only have an audience with him at his invite. Anything else is great audacity and can be punished as such. Is that an abusive level of authority and submission or what?

However, If one treats human beings in such a way, there is a response. (As well, it’s likely his banishment of Vashti in an unjust way also contributed to this): When people are in such subjection and are basically not safe around you, they will behave in a certain way. They will agree with everything you say, appease you enthusiastically at every opportunity, do whatever you ask of them, but never engage with you honestly or openly, and they’ll scuttle themselves out of your presence as quickly as possible in case you take offence with them about something outside of their control, and have their heads chopped off!

Now the King has been successful, there is no possibility that anyone will ever make him uncomfortable by expressing an opinion counter to his own, or even worse, cast doubt or even reject anything he has to say. But he’s removed all reality from his relationships. Where does that actually leave him? I’ll tell you where. Lonely and isolated. Rejected. Bored as a carrot.

(Is that the real reason why WL became critical of his own followers towards the end perhaps?)

Esther was terrified at the idea of initiating counsel with her King, so you can guess no-one else was approaching him, except Haman. However, the King was delighted with her for doing so. Otherwise, why offer half his kingdom to her twice? I think the drain of being isolated had really gotten to him. So much so, that the enjoyment of the evening she had invited him to, and the short break it had provided from his unhappy predicament, that he couldn’t sleep that night. He determined to seek a way to engage in relationship with people as he realized how desperate his need had become. So, he had the court records read to him, late at night, looking for something where he could make a connection with someone.

At the time Mordecai had saved his life, the King had taken little or no notice of who he was and what he had done. There was much more going on his life at that time that he didn’t pay attention to this. (incidentally, another reason for the controls over people approaching him may have been the attempt on his life by the two men Mordecai had discovered, i.e. fear). However, humbled by his loneliness and boredom, at the reminder of this account, he wanted to express gratitude on a grand scale. Isn’t that how one makes a friend when you are the King? To me this theory makes sense of his actions.

Now Haman comes to visit him late at night. Haman is not worried that the King may behead him for approaching. Haman had a special connection with the King, special freedoms and rights. Yet Haman was someone we would probably call a narcissist today. When your only friend is a narcissist, life is extra lonely. You have this empty and confused feeling that you should feel happy, as your ego is being plumped up regularly, but the real feeling is you are being robbed and exploited in ways you can’t figure out. Like the snake, a clever narcissist is well ‘camouflaged’, hard to identify. Haman had begun to meet his own agendas through King Xerxes. He wanted the Jews killed. He hated them. He manipulated the King to destroy them though the King had no problem with them. This is another vulnerability of being elevated and isolated from others. You become overly dependant on one or a very few people and they can take control of you, and work out their own agendas, you become their puppet.

So, Esther’s approach to the King was rescuing him from his own unhappy circumstances. She was much safer to do so than she realised, God had prepared the kings heart to be more than happy to see her! Haman was the enemy of the King in reality, and therefore the King’s biggest problem too, but on a more personal level. This truth became evident to King Xerxes in the unfolding of this story, as he realised that in destroying all the Jews, Haman was trying to rid the King of the only two people that had shown true care and interest in the King. So, he had no problem supporting the Jewish people in their desire to be rid of Haman.

King Xerxes was exploited in a sense by his own position and the set-up that elevated him also isolated him, harming him.

The message of this story? If you disallow the people around you to have opinions, to hold you to account, to disagree with you, to have their own thoughts and feelings about things, then you isolate yourself from their hearts. (Think of the demands of being 'perfected' in the LC system, losing your identity, opinions etc.) In that isolation there is great loneliness and pain, in the long run. We were not designed to endure that, as human beings. This is true in a marriage where there is heavy male domination, just as it is true in an abusive organisation with a heavy focus on controlling and bullying its members...it’s the same exact thing on a much bigger scale.

I think this is a true message about all positions of authority without accountability. WL maybe didn’t have his own ‘worm tongue’ (manipulative right-hand man), but being elevated and out of kilter with God’s rules for living is as harmful to the person elevated as it is to those under them.

That’s my long, drawn-out point. The main thrust of this forum, if respected by the LC, will be to bring healing and restoration to the leadership of the LC as much as to its followers. The solution is equally important for everyone involved.

That’s my theory and comment anyway. if it is relevant, then I'm hoping some in LC leadership read this.

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by Curious

The message of this story? If you disallow the people around you to have opinions, to hold you to account, to disagree with you, to have their own thoughts and feelings about things, then you isolate yourself from their hearts. (Think of the demands of being 'perfected' in the LC system, losing your identity, opinions etc.) In that isolation there is great loneliness and pain, in the long run. We were not designed to endure that, as human beings. This is true in a marriage where there is heavy male domination, just as it is true in an abusive organisation with a heavy focus on controlling and bullying its members...it’s the same exact thing on a much bigger scale.

I think this is a true message about all positions of authority without accountability. WL maybe didn’t have his own ‘worm tongue’ (manipulative right-hand man), but being elevated and out of kilter with God’s rules for living is as harmful to the person elevated as it is to those under them.

That’s my long, drawn-out point. The main thrust of this forum, if respected by the LC, will be to bring healing and restoration to the leadership of the LC as much as to its followers. The solution is equally important for everyone involved.

That’s my theory and comment anyway. if it is relevant, then I'm hoping some in LC leadership read this.

When I look at the LC and what is happening within it currently, I don't see anything that makes me particularly optimistic about it. Of course, it's never too late for reform to happen, however, at this point I think that even if there were ever anything significant to happen in that regard, very few would want back in.

Sometimes when I reflect on my own LC experience, one of the things that I keep coming back to is the realization that I spent far too long in the LC waiting for things to get better. Another thing is the realization that it took me far too long to realize how much was wrong. And for me at least, now that I have that realization, I don't want to waste a second more of my time with things that might never change.

In other words by the time I realized the determinate effects associated with the lack of accountability, it was too late. The damage was done, and even if things had changed for the better, I probably still would have left.

[Sons to Glory!]

"Oh foolish [Local Churchers] . . . after starting in the Spirit, are you now finishing in the flesh?" Galatians 3:1-3

While there was a lot of emphasis on the indwelling Spirit in the LC - which was in itself a needed adjustment from the outward focus of much of Christendom - eventually things became just a set of fleshly norms to follow. Following norms is devoid of Christ and love, just making a bunch of noise (tinkling brass).

And, of course, leadership sets the norms.

[Ohio]

Great insight Curious, into interpersonal relationships.

As I stepped away from LSM after Lee passed, I needed to understand him amidst the many ironies and paradoxes, which in my mind were not understandable. I was stuck in a binary mindset, which all too often captures people, and limits them from really understanding the subject at hand.

On the one hand, some would say how grandfatherly Lee was. How kind, how caring, how holy, how generous, how self-effacing, how sympathetic, etc. On the other hand, reports would surface about Lee being brutal and abusive, shaming others without reason, dress downs uncalled for, regular humiliations called elders' trainings, etc. Which was true? It seemed like all the "commoners" saw the benevolent side, and all the LC leaders saw the abusive side. Being in the Midwest region, I surely could relate these descriptions to TC, our regional leader.

Apparent John Darby and W. Nee were similar -- very gifted, immensely talented, natural leaders, etc., each with a growing fan base. What happened to them? Power corrupted them! Against all the warnings given to us by our ultimate leader Himself and His chosen Apostles, the bait of power captured them. The same rotten bait which caught every other rotten Gentile or Jewish King in history. Fruitful, yes. Narcissist, yes. Enriching minister, yes. Megalomaniac, yes.

Unfortunately, these contradictions were not supposed to exist in the body of Christ.

[Curious]

This comment reminds me of what my own father would say. He was a lawyer, and dealt with wills and civil cases for much of his career. Which means, he dealt with the interface between people's outward personas alongside the real things that drove them.

He used to caution us to beware of charming, charismatic people. They are the most to be wary of, the most likely to be not what they appear, (in fact he said it much stronger than that). At the time I thought, that's just because he lacks charm himself, in any capacity and does not understand it! (Which was true too!) However, with the benefit of my own life experience, I now believe they were very wise words, something he learned very well in his professional experience and he knew what he was talking about!

I'm sure that not every appealing person is a narcissist or sociopath. But I suspect every narcissist and sociopath does develop the skills that give them influence over others. It's necessary for their purposes to be accomplished.

If this life is an exercise in learning then maybe this is a useful takeaway from the experience of the LC. And Proverbs does not underestimate the value of wisdom gained, above the cost to us personally to gain it. Perhaps Proverbs is a good place to find comfort that He has a good purpose for the costly lessons of this life. We each have to decide before God if we accept the treasure of wisdom gained, or bemoan the cost. I'm getting preachy here so I'll stop.

I've got another direction to go with this which I hope to add soon.

[Curious]

Addressing the post from 'Freedom'.

I'm glad you are out of the LC and will never return even if there is reform. and glad too, for everyone else who left. Being filled with the Holy Spirit, I agree with STG, was and still is, a necessary adjustment to the Christianity which sill rejects this. And as Cal says, we don't need to put up with the negatives in order to benefit from the positives that were or are still part of what the LC delivers.

I am hoping to speak into the organisation of the LC to help the whole thing, those still in and stuck there, and those stuck in leadership there. Both positions are not easy to change, except at great personal risk and cost. And all people matter to God. He had a plan to humble and help King Xerxes, who also learned from his experience and maybe bowed his own knee to the God of the universe as a result. I know we don't know that, but he's moving in the right direction, at least, and I think it plausible to consider it a good possibility. In spite of his earlier abuse and exploitation of his position, and of his people.

Anyone with ideas about how leadership in the LC could begin a process of addressing the problems within will be welcome to begin such a discussion here. as I want to outline soon, there would be major difficulties in doing so, and I think it only fair to adopt a helpful attitude towards thinking through how those could be, (or for the sake of truth, have to be), navigated.

Alongside telling the LC leadership what to do, I'm suggesting we think about How it could be done. If leadership reject that too, well that would be up to them, we will have done our best for them.