Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
Anyone who has been around the block knows that the Lord often teaches us through those we would consider unworthy of doing so. This is one way he keeps us humble and honest--grounded so to speak.
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This is a true statement.
But, like the LRC lexicon, there are different ways to take its meaning. I think that I agree with what you meant.
But there is a difference between what the Lord teaches us through any circumstances, including issues with bad teachers, and the teachings that they provide.
When you say "those we would consider unworthy," does that mean unworthy in any way? I'm sure that there are many who think that hearing something from a woman is to hear from someone unworthy. Or hearing from a writer of one of the "down the food chain" groups, like the RCC would be someone we might consider unworthy. In either of these contexts, the problem is not necessarily the writer/teacher, but the heart of the reader/listener. And surely the Lord will teach us through these things, and even the things that they teach.
But when Paul was talking about unworthy teachers, he was not talking about irrelevant issues. He was talking about people who through the evidence of their lives, or even the very things and ways they teach, should be rejected as teachers. And accepting whatever they said up to the point that they are rejected seems to be a rather ham-strung rejection.
Yet the Lord also teaches us through these things. But I would not simply accept that what the Lord has taught us is through those specific things was the thing the rejected one was teaching. At that point, continuing in their teaching is to reject the rejection. Allow the Lord to shine upon whatever is true.
And surely Nee and Lee taught many things just the same as virtually all other Christian teachers. But you don't need a reference to them to support it. You don't need to bring back the writings of the rejected.
And we need to be careful that when we quote the verses that they used we are not automatically overlaying their faulty translation or understanding of the words to support something not actually there. The example of Lee's use of 1 Cor 15:45 is classic. This sits roughly in the middle of a particular discussion that begins in verse 35 and continues to the end of the chapter (v 58). Not once in the entire passage is the Holy Spirit mentioned, yet Lee found this one verse to declare that Jesus became the Holy Spirit.
And some among us who have been out of the LRC for years still use this verse as some kind of evidence against those who call the LRC modalists (mostly back in the Berean forum).
I do not even attempt to state that everything Lee said was false. And God may have done a lot of things for us because of our involvement in the LRC. (He does use everything for good. That doesn't mean that the thing used was simply good or ordained. Just used.)
But we fool ourselves if we think, after varying numbers of years in the LRC, we can discern the good from the bad of its teachings. That God is using it because we still like those parts. Remember. We joined up with the LRC because there was something we liked about it. Those bad teachings predate us all. It may be that the outward actions of Lee changed over time, but the core of his faulty theology was there before he arrived in the US. It has even been suggested that
The Economy of God while transcribed from messages in the late 60s, had already been spoken several years earlier, maybe even back in Taiwan. And the faulty teaching that gave us that special feeling of being "on the ground" and ordained some kind of deputy authority goes back to Nee.
Take this as just another one of OBW's over reactions. But I think that equating any kind of acceptance of Nee's and/or Lee's teachings as being something positive with how God works all things together for us is like knowing that God worked things for the alcoholic as they we mired in their drink, therefore he/she should continue to drink.
Or God worked things together for us while we were under the teachings of the Mormons, therefore we should continue to rely on their teachings. (A little closer to home.)
I don't suggest that simply everyone here who still thinks there is some good in the teachings of Nee/Lee has to abandon it all or they will be polluted and cast aside. No I accept that there are some of us who are capable of making soft gloves out of buffalo hides; plastic out of oil; at finding that rare diamond in a dark and over-worked mine. But for many of us, this is like taking on the job of discernment that I mentioned earlier when I spoke of allowing Biblical scholars to do it for us.
I have a target. It is not simply everyone. Or even everyone who has moved beyond the LRC but likes some of what is left behind. It is those of us (and to some extent, I include myself) who would be better off tossing it all aside and letting the wealth of good teaching in the places that we were poisoned against give us what we need. If there was something of value left behind, it will be found ahead. Remember that most of what was wrong with mainstream Christianity is that we were told it was wrong by the ones that we now reject. When we get past that, then maybe we can begin to once again be normal Christians.