[OBW]

I like the way Jane put it. I drafted the following to attack one of Lee's clear errors that had nothing to do with one of the debacles, but did play into almost all of his subsequent errors.

I think that we are too often impressed with the over-the-top bad that comes in the midst of the crisis when it comes to Lee’s teachings. But we don’t really look at how pervasive the roots of those things have been in the whole of the history of the LRC. These roots are evidence of the constantly active “bad Lee.”

I do not recall which forum is was several years ago that Steve began to reveal the teachings of Lee that he truly liked and held to. In it, we looked at James, and most notably Lee’s relegating it to something of a “black-ground” example to avoid. Then to a portion of Colossians (I believe) in which Lee almost immediately directed that the plain meaning of the passage did not really mean that, but something else. There were one or two more before the thread fell to the wayside. But I began to ask early on how it was that an epistle was to be dismissed, and words written set aside for alternates. The response was that “God’s economy” demanded that James was not truly authoritative speaking concerning the Christian life and that the passage in Colossians must mean something other than what the words said. Those were not his precise words, but the content of them.

For me, this brought back into the discussion of the book, The Economy of God. The discussion that I had been involved in was a resurrection of a much older discussion. This “current” discussion was in 2007. Someone was quoting from chapter 12 of the book and we were discussing the merits of the claims Lee was making in that passage. It caused me to take some time to look back into the beginning of the book.

The Economy of God. It was based upon messages given by Witness Lee from August 4 through September 2, 1964. I’m not sure of the publication date, but the original preface is dated January 11, 1968. It was revised and republished in 2005 as part of the Collected Works of Witness Lee.

In the preface, Lee says

The word economy used in the title of this book may sound somewhat strange to the reader. “God’s economy” is a quotation from 1 Timothy 1:4. Economy is the Anglicized form of the Greek word oikonomia, which denotes primarily a household management, a household administration, arrangement, distribution, or dispensation (of wealth, property, affairs, etc.). It is used with the intention of stressing the focal point of God’s divine enterprise, which is to distribute, or dispense, Himself into man.

The first chapter is an exercise in how not to read scripture. It dutifully begins with a reading of 1 Timothy 1:3-7. But it quickly turns the very structure of the verses on their heads. It is immediately declared that the two “very important” words here are economy and misaimed. Then come two paragraphs talking about Judaism and Gnosticism. Finally, we get to it. The definition of God’s economy.

But Paul was not defining God's economy. He never did it. He was concerned about keeping the teachings good so that the result would be God's economy. And God's economy is almost clearly the whole of the Christian life, both separately and together. But let's see Lee's definition.

THE DEFINITION OF GOD’S ECONOMY

What is God’s economy? The Scriptures, composed of sixty-six books, contain many different teachings, but if we would make a thorough and careful study of the Scriptures with spiritual insight, we would realize that God’s economy is simply His plan to dispense Himself into humanity. God’s economy is God’s dispensation, which means nothing other than God dispensing Himself into the human race.

A logical device to overwhelm the audience with an insurmountable task of a “thorough and careful study of the Scriptures.” God’s economy is” nothing other than . . . .”

No verses. No support. Just a statement claiming thoroughness.

And this is the underpinning for dismissing James. Rejecting the obvious meaning in Colossians. It is the core of “don’t care for right and wrong, just the spirit” because that one is closely tied to “don’t try to be righteous, just wait until you have the necessary dispensing.” (I put it in quotes because not because there is a place that uses those exact words, but because that is the crux of the teaching, not just something I am saying.)

This is essentially core to dismissing and dissing Christianity. They don’t teach Lee’s version of “God’s economy” so they are to be rejected. It is never given as the reason for righteous action, but the restraint from righteous action. It taught us to refrain from “trying” to do anything good (tree of knowledge) instead of just coming to get more dispensing.

The chapter eventually does provide a few more verses. But none of those verses actually say anything about God’s economy. Yet Lee builds his “what it is” based on conjecture and analogy (even to the business world). He speaks of the “process” that the Son went through in incarnation through ascension and declares that this is part of the dispensing.

What Lee totally ignores is that 1 Timothy 1:3-4 never even suggest is that God’s economy is something identifiable to be attained in itself. Those verses very clearly state that bad teachings result in certain problems while good teachings will produce God’s economy. Good teachings will produce the kind of dispensing that Lee is talking about? If that is true, then “all scripture” that is “profitable for teaching,” etc., should flood us with God’s economy. So if that is the case, how can God’s economy be an overlay that dismisses some of that “all scripture”? How can it be used to dismiss its clear statements and replace them with others. (I reject your reality and replace it with my own.)

For me, this rejects Lee. Not because he was unsaved (I seriously doubt any such thing). Not because he mixed business with the church. Not because he lied about true teachers of the Word to hide the sins of his retched son. Because he is proving himself unqualified to handle words — any words — in a proper manner. I will not impugn his motives. I assume he really believed what he was teaching. But in terms of “rightly dividing the word of truth,” I believe that he didn’t have a clue. He had something else. He may never have seen the source of his error — culture, philosophy, whatever. But he was not bringing the Word of God to us. Instead, he had to claim to speak for God in saying something different so that his contrary words would be accepted in opposition to what was already written. He may have honestly believed that he really did speak for God.

And I think that Nee did as well. He essentially said so in his preface to The Spiritual Man.

So, in terms of being a minister of the New Testament, I believe that Lee is rejected. As a teacher, he is, in terms of good and bad, simply bad. Not because everything is “bad.” But his whole premise was to find hidden meaning with his decoder rings. The most prominent ring from his personal ministry (post Nee) was “God’s economy.” It was a device for the rewriting of scripture. You may find many “fortune cookies” of sound words. But once those little strips of paper are placed back in their context, there is almost always a rewrite, a redefinition, or a dismissal of existing scripture associated with it.

I’m sure that some will complain that this kind of inquiry is too intellectual. But so much of Lee’s underpinnings were faux intellectualism and part of setting the record straight includes showing the lack of true intellect that we were expected to follow anyway.