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Old 08-13-2023, 04:23 AM   #249
aron
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Natal Transvaal
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Default Re: Open Letter - Dear Saints in the Lord's Recovery - Joann Casteel

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio View Post
[Joanna Casteel's] medical profession DEMANDED that she report abuse. She had no choice. It was demanded by both God (in her conscience) and man (by her medical oaths.). Her husband did his best to support her.
(Disclosure: I'm going to use the royal "we", which may or may not relate to others. And my post is rather long and involved).

A theme touched in this letter was the notion that we only make decisions based on what we already know. We can't make choices in an ether, or reach into a vacuum and make something. We can only use the ingredients we're given to create new things. We receive something, we use it, we build something new. Lacking information, we can neither objectively consider our current situation, nor evaluate options going forward.

Joanna Casteel had been raised in the local churches and was fed a constant stream of one-sided information designed to make her a thoughtless and reflexive consumer and promoter of ministry propaganda. She was repeatedly told that only Watchman Nee and Witness Lee had anything worthwhile to say, and even her own thoughts had to be checked against ministry teachings. She was denied the fundamental tools of self-governance.

But onto that monolithic structure, she got exposed to the concept of ethics at University. She saw that it's unethical to ask people to make decisions while deliberately withholding relevant information. She recognized the deceptive recruiting practices of the Living Stream Ministry operatives for what they were. Their dependent relation on Witness Lee is initially hidden: "We're just Christians; we just love Jesus and are open to all Christians", is the opening gambit, until relationships are set. Then, bit by bit, the LSM gets introduced, and other sources of information are systematically discouraged, and submerged.

That recognition of deceptive practices was the slenderest of threads... Jo had been mentally conditioned, including years of immersive "training" at the FTTA, not to trust her own discernment, yet as a professional she was required to exercise discernment. So, something had to change. And that requirement to observe, to note, to discern, and to report, ultimately forced the Casteel family to exit the local church.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Casteel letter View Post
I mainly read Nee and Lee as Christian authors my entire life. From time to time I would take a peek at other authors, but considered their teachings too low and part of degraded Christianity. Besides, Brother Lee had done all the work for us and I just needed to get into the riches. Also, I didn’t trust myself to be able to discern what others interpreted about God, so the safest way was to just read Nee and Lee. Some authors like Darby were approved by our group, but I never had time for anyone else as I was on multiple reading schedules of Nee and Lee. I also never considered I had a need for anyone else as I already had the best of the best. Brother Lee had received incredible light and revelation from the Lord and had seen the top vision of God’s economy and the High Peak of the Divine Revelation.
Local church members are told not to trust their own ability to discern. Outside information is quickly explained away, or dismissed outright as not from the ministry and therefore irrelevant. My point here has been that the more information we get, and when we exercise our ability to discern what's valid, the more we can find our way, both individually and together, and create mutually satisfying new environments. So, I've been asking for Chinese-language primary source documents and secondary sources to be translated. In the English-speaking world, we gave ourselves over to something that we knew almost nothing about, and that's still largely unknown.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
If someone does not like to fellowship and worship in the Lord's recovery, then they are free to leave.
This breezy "free to leave" comment is contradicted by the testimonies of those who were there. All their lives, they're told about what happened to those who exercised that right to inform oneself, to think, to discern, to choose, and to talk about it. Mistakes and all.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Casteel letter View Post
From the time I was very young I knew the horrific things that would happen to me if I deviated from this way. As a young person I was told that we would become like Belshazzar in Daniel 4:33 if we went against this way. Belshazzar ate grass like an oxen, grew nails like bird claws, and lost his mind. I knew if you left this way you would come to nothing, become a man of death, and as I read recently in a ministry magazine that I “will even become death” (“The Ministry of the Word,” “The Overcomers,” Living Stream Ministry, Anaheim, CA, 2012, p. 69).

I was terribly afraid of becoming leprous, an ugly and horrific disease. I learned about deputy authority from the time I was a child and that going against anyone in a position of authority was going against the acting God on earth regardless of if they were right or wrong. As an adult, when I had questions about some of our practices, I would whisper about it with my husband behind closed doors while worrying that the ground was going to figuratively open up and swallow me up like those of the rebellion of Korah (Numbers 16). I spent my entire lifetime eaten up with crippling anxiety and severe depression over the questions and feelings I had inwardly.
I'd encourage everyone who's contacted by this group, to get as much information as you can about them, before making commitments based on their pressure. And, I'd encourage everyone who's exited the local church, whether a former church kid, or recruited off campus, to get as much information as possible about what we experienced. Otherwise we'll have trouble processing it, and will end up reflexively pushing it away, but it remains a subconscious force. Only when we bring our experiences to light can we move on. Greg and Joanna Casteel had the moral courage to face the once-forbidden unknown and to exercise their innate capacity to think about the formerly unthinkable. It takes a lot. And it costs a lot.

One of the stalwarts of the current LSM regime is seen urging young people (at the 30 minute mark, here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ww7m_5BTs )to access a wide variety of reading sources, and to make the effort and trust their capacity to figure things out for themselves. Information gives us choices, that we didn't realize were there.

Here's another one: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/fe...-remarks-chan/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerald Chan
My first advice to you, graduates, is to enrich your lives with ideas, even big ideas. Read, reflect, and ruminate (the new three Rs). Observe and deduce, postulate and verify, look for connections. Be curious, be open-minded, reframe problems rather than just looking for answers, have the courage to differ from conventional wisdom, do not dismiss your intuition. Discuss, debate and discourse with others. Look into history, watch current affairs; study the sacred texts, observe humanity. These are the mental habits conducive to the spontaneous generation of ideas. A life is rich when it is rich with ideas.
How can someone say this openly and publicly on the one hand, and then go back to their own religious group and tell them not to read from a variety of sources, and not to think about what they read, and not to publicly express their thoughts? "Discuss and debate..." when was that ever allowed in a local church? Yet even the NT record shows this freedom to think and speak. Acts 15:7 After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe..."
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Last edited by aron; 08-13-2023 at 06:32 AM.
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