[OBW]

Despite my general desire to leave, reading through Myer's new chapter did sound a lot like what's been going through my mind lately.

For a long time now, key Movement terms have become threadbare through overuse (i.e., the subject of the book of Judges is the divine dispensing, as well as Ruth, 1 Chronicles, Ephesians, etc.). When this approach to preaching begins to prevail, a predictable desensitization occurs in listeners and words begin to mean nothing. Jargon always seems to take on elastic properties, meaning everything and yet nothing. As the old joke goes—“What runs up and down trees and eats acorns? Well, it sounds like a squirrel, but I know it has to be God’s economy!”

Yes. "God's economy" is trumpeted all over scripture in a meaningless way and used to marginalize the truths contained there.

A while back I conducted a study on the book of Job that required reading a number of commentaries. The absolute worst was written by a famous inner life writer who had trouble putting two coherent thoughts together. The basis for her interpretation was not language or context, but experience. As a result, she was occupied with a desire for inward applications, which caused her writing, in my opinion, to hopelessly bog down in subjectivity. According to her handling of it, Job ceased to have a theme or a flow or even a point. Every phrase was a sermon calling us into various experiences.

I know. This one wasn't Nee or Lee. But it was another of those "inner life" people that ignore the obedience of the practical. And one of the people who put Nee and Lee on this path.

I recall a small local church that considered adding children’s service to its Sunday meeting. One of the leaders sternly counseled “Just give the children Christ.” For those in the room wanting answers, this advice was completely cryptic. What did it mean? Pray-reading? No Veggie-Tales? The one who gave the great sounding advice had some package of concepts in mind, but probably no idea how to spell any of it out. And if he had, it might have become evident that what he had in mind was not really Christ after all.

Sounds a lot like the "only care for Christ" declaration that is so hard to speak against but so totally meaningless in most cases.

Frustration is sure to occur when listeners are treated to a steady regimen of exhortations to “life” and “experience” and “enjoyment” without being told what any of it means. And yet this is not the worst possible effect. Inner life oversimplifications can lead to an erroneous approach to the entire Christian life. Consider this unfortunate passage from The Resumption of Watchman Nee’s Ministry, where Witness Lee explains the superiority of “life” over scripture:

"'How do you feel when you beat your wife?' [spoken to a hypothetical wife-beater]. He may say, 'After I beat my wife, I feel terrible inside for a week.' I will then tell him, 'If you feel that you will feel comfortable inside by beating your wife, you can go ahead and beat her some more.' I will not tell him not to beat his wife. Instead, I will ask him how he feels inside. If this brother is touched by God, he will feel deep within that he has offended God.

You can teach others from the Bible, and you can exhort others with your theology. But if you do this, you are not the disciple of Christ; you are the disciple of Confucius instead. By so doing, you will never convey God's life to people. This is a pitiful work." (Nee & Lee, Vol. 1, p. 130).

This passage demonstrates a thoroughgoing commitment to subjective feelings that could lead anywhere, and it has...court actions, divisions, lies, and cover-ups. No doubt Lee's followers will say that this quote was taken out of context, yet it is difficult to imagine it being defensible in any context.

The Apostle John was perhaps the most spiritually mature of all the apostles but he never said if “life” is okay with beating your brother, then do it. He said if you hate your brother you walk in darkness. No amount of haggling over what life has to say about it would have changed his assertion.

When inner life groups pit experience against healthy doctrine, it is a false dichotomy. True spiritual life always takes us into the living application of scripture. It never encourages us to set aside God’s Word, much less to contradict it.

This is the kind of nonsense that has been simplified in more recent decades into something like "don't care for right or wrong; only care for the spirit." And I'm pretty sure that it is the "little s" spirit that is being talked about. That is the only spirit that would tolerate such nonsense.

And it makes it evident that "turning to your spirit" is about the most useless thing a person could every do.

And now, out of order, here is another one for the LRC lexicon discussion.

Sometimes an etymology of LC terms results in dead ends. For instance the “Seven-fold Intensified Spirit” is a term that is rooted in Witness Lee’s personal interpretation of a thought in the book of Revelation. When it first appeared (presumably in the 1969 Erie conference?), it sprang fully into being with little or no explanation. Up until the past few years, no one seriously took Witness Lee to task over it. Was the Holy Spirit really intensified? If so, does that imply He was not prepared for the challenges of church history and thus had to “rev” Himself up? Do the verses under consideration really show a “dim” Spirit that had to be brightened like a seven-way lamp? Yet because “intensification” has been repeated hundreds of times without serious challenge in the LC’s, it has today achieved “truth” status.

Like so many other mantras, what does this one really mean? Apparently not really much as far as scripture is really concerned.