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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Confessing to The Lord surely is out for our fear and love for God and the fact that we need His blood and grace and this only draws us closer to Him.
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I think that our confession to the Lord is as natural as breathing. Our very faith itself is based on the confession that we are sinners, and that God loved us and sent His Son who died on our behalf, carrying away our sins and restoring us to a relation with our loving Father. When we say, "Lord Jesus" that seems implicitly (and often explicitly) understood. Now we may enumerate it a lot, or a little, but as Christians we understand that we're redeemed sinners while God is holy and pure and good, and confessing the name of Jesus is our doorway to a restored life of obedience and fellowship.
And it also is common Christian practice to publicly acknowledge our sins in a general way. I remember WL praying, "Lord, we claim Your blood. Cleanse us..." etc. This didn't appear to be an extra-ordinary prayer, but rather reflecting a view common to Christians. At least in that sense, "Confessing your sins to one another" seems to be fairly widespread. How specific, and how public, we need to be probably depends on the nature of the crime. If we need to be specific, fine, but if we don't (especially if it stumbles others) probably we shouldn't.
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One aspect where the LC seems aberrant is their idea of public shaming, where the speaker from the podium, who's "more blended" than the audience member, calls that one out by name, and mentions something about their church life, or family life, or spiritual walk, and the member acknowledges the defect. I saw WL do this with TC, even in a ritualized way (TC even used the word "ashamed") and I saw the current Blendeds do this with rank-and-file LC members in conferences.
Another aberrant aspect is the non-reciprocality. If there's some sin, Paul said that leaders should not be publicly accused except by multiple witnesses.
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1 Tim 5:19 Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.
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This agrees with Jesus' teaching not to make public the failures of others unless multiple attempts were made by several parties to address the situation.
In the "Deputy God" teaching of the LC, however, this is apparently ignored. It doesn't matter if there are 6 witnesses, everyone must "cover the sins of Noah". To publicly acknowledge leadership failure in the LC is viewed as blatant disrespect and/or rebellion. Members either think that the leadership is so transformed as to be above sin, or that they've got access to a dispensational or positional sanctification not afforded the average person. Neither one of these assumptions is supported by either scripture or common human experience.