Quote:
Originally Posted by ACuriousFellow
This was a sobering realization I had when I left. A sister openly challenged their "Overcomers" doctrines and one of the elders' wives said that she had to be removed from our group chat because several people had "nightmares" after listening to her. I was initially excited because someone finally wanted to have open and frank discussion about testing Lee's doctrines, but then I was disheartened to see that so many people were scared. Outright scared. I responded by sharing 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and talking about the importance of proper teaching, correction, rebuke, and instruction in righteousness, and then people started looking to me and crying "death." One college-ish aged sister in her paranoia said that she suspected that the woman who was kicked out had gotten a hold of my phone and that all my texts were just full of "death." I had not even met the woman by that point but rather only interacted with her in that group chat. It was so surreal.
When I saw how scared everyone was to talk about even the CONCEPT of teaching, correction, rebuke, and instruction in righteousness, I realized that what you say is exactly what is happening: Many in The Lord's Recovery have their spiritual growth stunted, so much so that they are scared, terrified even, of real discussion and discourse. They use the Lord's Name as a pacifier to avoid these things and would only ever want to sing and "Pray-Read" and chant his Name rather than truly wrestle with the Scriptures and grow as children of God. The Lord's Recovery, as far as I saw, was no different than going clubbing. People didn't meet to really mature and grow. They met to have a good time.
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ACuriousFellow, I had to laugh and cry with your post. Lots of this is, I suppose, just human nature. Ironically I did not see this during my tenure in the Midwest region of the Recovery. Perhaps that's why we were expelled, I mean "quarantined," almost 20 years ago.
I did, however, just see this scenario play out recently in two other settings. First, in a Baptist church where several "teachers" basically freaked out when I questioned their dogmatic stance on "
Pre-Trib Rapture For All." I was simply looking for Berean style Bible inquiry and discussion. Not on this topic! Was this then, as you say, just a feel-good early Sunday morning social "clubbing" with coffee and deserts?