Lee and LC: Home Runs and Strikeouts

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Drake

Though loving your neighbor as yourself implies that there is already love for oneself, the way to find your soul is not to love yourself but rather as the Lord states above it is to deny the love that issues from the self. This is not only the Lord's straightforward statement but the context also demonstrates the same teaching. The Lord was reacting to Peter's objection to His going to the cross, no doubt out of his love for the Lord, and yet this love had to be denied and put under the cross because it was a thing of man. Loving oneself is also a thing of man. Though it sounds reasonable, it is something to be denied, not embraced. It is something that must be put under the cross, not nurtured in anyway. Only then will the believer find his soul.

Drake

I would think LSM is the last place we should go to learn about loving one another, and denying the self. These folks at LSM have taught their members to hate those men of God who expose sin in their offices, and seek to protect the church of God. They have taught their members to hate ministers like Titus Chu who dared to print his own books. Perhaps "hate" is too strong, but I do remember the vitriol from Lee and Company back in 1990 pumped thru my veins regarding Ingalls, John So, Bill Mallon, etc. They were the "worst" men on earth, or so I was told. They tried to "destroy the ministry, the Recovery, and the very work of God."

Lee and LSM have long exhibited a self-deprecating pattern contrary to the cross of Christ. We were to deny ourselves by having no opinion about wrong teachings. We were to deny ourselves by criticizing other Christians outside TLR. We were to deny ourselves by placing the ministry of Lee above the leadership of local elders. We were to deny ourselves by trusting only Lee, and being suspicious of all others.

If this sort of "self-denial" were the healthy way of "bearing the cross" then the LC's would be so living. They would be full of resurrection power. They would be fruitful. There would be ineffable joy for all to see. Obviously something is wrong here. Very wrong.

[Cal]

Drake doesn't know what he is talking about.

Jesus could have said love your neighbor instead of yourself. But he said love your neighbor as yourself, i.e. love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself. If the love for self he was talking about was the fallen kind, that would have meant he was saying love your neighbor in a fallen way, in the same way you love yourself in a fallen way, i.e. making his every whim your top priority. Clearly this is not how Jesus wanted us to love our neighbor.

So the love he is talking about for the self, which we are supposed to use as a model for how to love our neighbor, must be pure and of God. How does God view us and want us to view ourselves? As precious and good creations of his! Once you see that he wants us to see ourselves that way, we can then go on to view others that way. In some cases, it is the reverse. Sometimes we see how much God loves others and how much he wants us to love them, and then we see we can love ourselves in the same way. This is healthy, holy self love.

God loves himself. We are in the image of God. If we are to be like God we must love ourselves too, not in the fallen selfish, me-first way of the world, but in the pure, holy way God loves himself.

Further, you cannot truly love your neighbor if you don't love yourself. Self-loathing people are crippled when it comes to loving others. A person who likes and loves himself in a holy and healthy way is gracious and giving. He knows he is rich and has much to give.

The self love the Bible condemns is the fallen, me-first kind. That is not holy self love. Holy self love sees oneself as a precious creation of God, and loves oneself the same, neither better nor worse than all the other precious creations of God.

Drake endorses the errant religious model of self-loathing that is actually a form of asceticism. Nee and Lee endorsed this model, in part because they were influenced by people clueless like Drake, but also because it is easier to control Christians who you've trained to hate themselves. People who like themselves don't let presumptuous pontiffs push them around.

[Cal]

Witness Lee Base hit/Foul ball - The Church

This one is tough to cover because no one would deny that the Church is a central and important point of God. And it can be argued that Christians for centuries did not appreciate the Church enough. Nee and Lee brought attention to the grand idea of the Church, and gave much insight into what it is on a high, deep and sometimes very practical spiritual level.

But in doing so they made a grave cardinal error. By placing so much value on the Church, they made the value of this institution much more important than the value of people. Thus, people became to them a means to the end of producing the Church, and thus were made expendable and discardable,

But, you might say, people are the Church. Yes, and this is the fundamental error of Lee's Church view. He saw the Church as something other that just the people. He saw it as a system, an institution, a set of principles, all of which were the value and goal we were to be dedicated to, regardless of what happened to people along the way.

Eventually Lee's movement, "the Recovery," rose to equal value to Church. To LCers, "the Recovery" and the Church are pretty much the same thing. "The Recovery" is the Church they control, and no other part of the Church is really important to them. In fact, people outside of the Church are regularly dismissed and even ridiculed by them. But within "the Recovery," the movement itself and its principles are much more important than even the people in it which defend them. This is the some of the bad fruit of their error.

This clearly demonstrates a lack of love for people. It is very interesting, that for all the talk of Nee, Lee and his movement about the Church, Jesus himself really didn't have much to say about it. He had only two isolated things to say about the Church:

1. He said he would build it
2. He said if you have a problem, take it to the Church.

Now, this is quite interesting. The only times Jesus even mentioned the Church were:

1. To show that he would take care of building it, rather than charging us to.
2. To show that one reason the Church exists is to protect the rights of people.

So the emphasis of Nee and Lee is actually quite out of sync with that of the Lord Jesus. He builds the Church, we don't. When the Bible mentions our building it says "build up each other." In other words, we are supposed to focus on the welfare of real people, not abstract institutions. If we focus on loving and caring for people, putting others first, then he will take care of the larger building work.

Second, the only other time Jesus mentioned the Church was to emphasize how it exists in part to defend justice in the lives of wronged individuals. This shows how he cares for people first. He cares about "the least of these" and "the one lost sheep." And they are what the Church exists to care for as well. If we neglect a single "little one" the Lord has commissioned us to care for, in pursuit of grander goals, such as being for a movement, then we have missed it. We are clanging brass, all sizzle no steak, and perhaps even worse. And we are bound to do grave damage along the way, as "the Recovery" has.

God loves people. Jesus died for people. Even the least of these. If we make being like him in that way our top goal, everything else--about the Church, the gospel, how we live and behave, what our emphasases are, what our priorities are--will move into place, and we can't go too far wrong.

All of "the Recovery's" abuses are the fruit of these priorities being out of sync with the Lord's.

[Cal]

I would just like to reiterate this little bit of light I received about the Church.

The only comment the Lord Jesus ever made about the practical Church was THAT IT EXISTS TO ENSURE JUSTICE FOR INDIVIDUALS. (Matt 18:15-17)

That was it. Jesus could have a said a lot of things about the practical Church. But that was the one thing he chose to say about it. I find that quite amazing and revealing.

The LR likes to talk about the practical church. But Jesus chose to emphasize that the practical church was a place where an individual can go to get justice for himself. This means two core values of any church should be (1) justice and (2) every individual. Any church should be highly offended when any person, however small, is denied justice.

Does that sound like the LR? Not to me. To me it sounds like the exact opposite of the LR. The LR is a place where justice for individuals is not even on their radar of roles, even to the point that the church itself can deal unjustly with individuals and discard them.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by Igzy

So the love he is talking about for the self, which we are supposed to use as a model for how to love our neighbor, must be pure and of God. How does God view us and want us to view ourselves? As precious and good creations of his! Once you see that he wants us to see ourselves that way, we can then go on to view others that way. In some cases, it is the reverse. Sometimes we see how much God loves others and how much he wants us to love them, and then we see we can love ourselves in the same way. This is healthy, holy self love.

God loves himself. We are in the image of God. If we are to be like God we must love ourselves too, not in the fallen selfish, me-first way of the world, but in the pure, holy way God loves himself.

Further, you cannot truly love your neighbor if you don't love yourself. Self-loathing people are crippled when it comes to loving others. A person who likes and loves himself in a holy and healthy way is gracious and giving. He knows he is rich and has much to give.

The self love the Bible condemns is the fallen, me-first kind. That is not holy self love. Holy self love sees oneself as a precious creation of God, and loves oneself the same, neither better nor worse than all the other precious creations of God.

There are several errors in this line of thinking. I'll address just three in this post.

First, the Bible does not teach ""Love yourself as your neighbor." The Bible teaches that we should love God, love the brothers, love our neighbor, etc. but it never teaches that we should love ourselves. What Igzy has done in this case is flip the clear teaching of the Bible to fit his private interpretation, philosophy, or opinion. On the contrary, the Bible teaches that we should not love ourselves even unto death (Rev 12:11). The Lord stated even more forcefully this way:

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26

The Lord was not practicing a form of self-loathing or asceticism, rather, He was stating a fact that concerns all those of Adam. This is the second point: It is the same experience Paul observed:

"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not." Romans 7:18

Why? Because....

"Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." v17

Igzy's teaching of our position as God's created beings as its basis fails to recognize and omits to factor in that since the fall of man, we His created beings, are absolutely fallen... to the extent that God has judged the flesh, the self, and crucified the old man (Galatians 2:20). Therefore, his teaching ""Love yourself as your neighbor." is not a biblical one and will not be found in scripture because it isn't there. It lacks the revelation of God's Word. Igzy has assessed that the way to find your soul, the way to glorify God is or begins by loving yourself. We should rather trust God's assessment of our situation. To be perfectly clear, Igzy's teaching about loving the self is a worldly teaching, something one might receive in psychology or therapy sessions. It's not what the Bible teaches.

The last point I will address in this post is about the practice or manifestation of Igzy's teaching. He says "Self-love which conflicts with loving others is not real love. It is fallen self-obsession. ". The Bible says

"We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." I John 3:14

The reader will have to decide if Igzy's teaching has any reality to it by reading his posts, but from my point of view, one who rails against, berates, and slanders brothers in the Lord day in and day out in a public forum as he practices here in this one has not passed out of death into life in reality. His practice even falls short by his own teaching standard "...not loving others is not real love. "

Drake

[Cal]

Yep, that's right. Readers will have to decide whether they prefer the honest guy or the phony guy.

[Cal]

BTW, Drake, I don't really care about your claims of me being a bad Christian.

Save your breath, because it has absolutely no registration with me. And until you start being honest about the real abuses of your favorite sect you have ZERO credibility with me.

Gnats and camels. You defend sexual abusers and other life wreckers and then try to make hay out of my admittedly STRONG approach to you. Gnats and camels. What a joke!

Anyone who can't see through that, I probably can't help anyway. So if they side with you, God help them.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by Igzy

BTW, Drake, I don't really care about your claims of me being a bad Christian. .

I didn't claim you were a bad christian, Igzy.

I said your teachings about loving the self were in error and not based in scripture. I said they therefore appeared as worldly teachings as one might hear in therapy or psychology. I also don't think they are uncommon among many believers but, even if every christian embraced them as you do they are nevertheless in error according to the Bible.

I also said that you omitted in your teaching a most important fact: That God has judged the flesh and crucified the old man on the cross and that sin dwells in our flesh.

I'd welcome a bible-based response on this topic but to do so you'd have to come down off the high horse you rode in on, stop engaging in personal attacks against people you disagree with, and crack open your Bible.

Tell me why my first three observations about your teachings are incorrect. Go for it!

Thanks
Drake

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Drake

Tell me why my first three observations about your teachings are incorrect. Go for it!

Not until you post a video of yourself in a full-body duck costume hopping around and quacking "The Recovery is a hoax! Quack! The Recovery is a hoax!"

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Drake

There are several errors in this line of thinking. I'll address just three in this post.

First, the Bible does not teach ""Love yourself as your neighbor." The Bible teaches that we should love God, love the brothers, love our neighbor, etc. but it never teaches that we should love ourselves. What Igzy has done in this case is flip the clear teaching of the Bible to fit his private interpretation, philosophy, or opinion. On the contrary, the Bible teaches that we should not love ourselves even unto death (Rev 12:11). The Lord stated even more forcefully this way:

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26

The Lord was not practicing a form of self-loathing or asceticism, rather, He was stating a fact that concerns all those of Adam. This is the second point: It is the same experience Paul observed:

"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not." Romans 7:18

Why? Because....

"Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." v17

Igzy's teaching of our position as God's created beings as its basis fails to recognize and omits to factor in that since the fall of man, we His created beings, are absolutely fallen... to the extent that God has judged the flesh, the self, and crucified the old man (Galatians 2:20). Therefore, his teaching ""Love yourself as your neighbor." is not a biblical one and will not be found in scripture because it isn't there. It lacks the revelation of God's Word. Igzy has assessed that the way to find your soul, the way to glorify God is or begins by loving yourself. We should rather trust God's assessment of our situation. To be perfectly clear, Igzy's teaching about loving the self is a worldly teaching, something one might receive in psychology or therapy sessions. It's not what the Bible teaches.

The last point I will address in this post is about the practice or manifestation of Igzy's teaching. He says "Self-love which conflicts with loving others is not real love. It is fallen self-obsession. ". The Bible says

"We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." I John 3:14

The reader will have to decide if Igzy's teaching has any reality to it by reading his posts, but from my point of view, one who rails against, berates, and slanders brothers in the Lord day in and day out in a public forum as he practices here in this one has not passed out of death into life in reality. His practice even falls short by his own teaching standard "...not loving others is not real love. "

Drake

I know you're being obtuse but I'm writing this response for myself (OH NO not my SELF!?!?! Yes...... myself), not to seriously engage you.

The commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. If we are to hate ourselves, but love our neighbor as ourself, this translates into hating your neighbor. Whoops. I guess we do need to love ourselves so that loving our neighbor as ourself translates into actual love.

If I am the neighbor that my neighbor loves, then why should I not love that which God has commanded others to love?

You called attention to the hating your own life in Luke 14:26. Obviously part and parcel of this verse is the hating of your father and mother, but..........if we are commanded to honor our father and mother, how can we hate them? Obviously there is a little more subtlety going on here, and hating yourself isn't totally literal. Whoops.

God loves me. Should I hate what God loves? I am part of the church, His Body, which He loves. Should I not love what God loves, both in part and in sum?

Romans 12:3 says not to esteem yourself more highly than you OUGHT. This means there is an "ought" to which you should esteem yourself.

As far as Revelation 12:11 teaching that we should not love ourselves even unto death......I'm glad to be corrected here but that verse is referring specifically to believers during the tribulation, is it not? It is also not a "should" verse, as Lee and minions love to twist everything into, it is a statement. It is simply stating that those believers at that time will be willing to be martyrs. I'm not saying that we shouldn't ourselves, but I don't see that that particular verse is "should-ing" us into it.

Lee touted the "highest standard of morality" while failing miserably himself. If you want to try to discount the measure of the veracity of anyone's assertions by pointing at their actions which have nothing to do with the truth behind their posts, the only one qualified to post on here is Jesus.

Thanks for your post. They always help clarify things for me.

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Trapped

The commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. If we are to hate ourselves, but love our neighbor as ourself, this translates into hating your neighbor. Whoops. I guess we do need to love ourselves so that loving our neighbor as ourself translates into actual love.

If God loves me. Should I hate what God loves? I am part of the church, His Body, which He loves. Should I not love what God loves, both in part and in sum?

Romans 12:3 says not to esteem yourself more highly than you OUGHT. This means there is an "ought" to which you should esteem yourself.

Yep. Yep. Yep.

As I said, Drake's teaching is designed to keep you down so that others (like him) can control you.

Proper humility? Yes! Self-loathing? A doctrine of demons!

[Drake]

Originally Posted by Trapped

I know you're being obtuse but I'm writing this response for myself (OH NO not my SELF!?!?! Yes...... myself), not to seriously engage you....

Okay. Sure. You had some interesting points. Maybe some other time.

Thanks
Drake

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Trapped

I know you're being obtuse but I'm writing this response for myself (OH NO not my SELF!?!?! Yes...... myself), not to seriously engage you.

The commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. If we are to hate ourselves, but love our neighbor as ourself, this translates into hating your neighbor. Whoops. I guess we do need to love ourselves so that loving our neighbor as ourself translates into actual love.

If I am the neighbor that my neighbor loves, then why should I not love that which God has commanded others to love?

You called attention to the hating your own life in Luke 14:26. Obviously part and parcel of this verse is the hating of your father and mother, but..........if we are commanded to honor our father and mother, how can we hate them? Obviously there is a little more subtlety going on here, and hating yourself isn't totally literal. Whoops.

God loves me. Should I hate what God loves? I am part of the church, His Body, which He loves. Should I not love what God loves, both in part and in sum?

Romans 12:3 says not to esteem yourself more highly than you OUGHT. This means there is an "ought" to which you should esteem yourself.

As far as Revelation 12:11 teaching that we should not love ourselves even unto death......I'm glad to be corrected here but that verse is referring specifically to believers during the tribulation, is it not? It is also not a "should" verse, as Lee and minions love to twist everything into, it is a statement. It is simply stating that those believers at that time will be willing to be martyrs. I'm not saying that we shouldn't ourselves, but I don't see that that particular verse is "should-ing" us into it.

Lee touted the "highest standard of morality" while failing miserably himself. If you want to try to discount the measure of the veracity of anyone's assertions by pointing at their actions which have nothing to do with the truth behind their posts, the only one qualified to post on here is Jesus.

Thanks for your post. They always help clarify things for me.

Brother Trapped, you really need to change your name!

This is one of the clearest rebuttals I have read. If your mind is this free, then you are no longer "trapped," but the Lord's "Freedman." (I Cor. 7.22)

In regard to Luke 14.26, if LC teachers can so quickly exhort their members to "hate father and mother ...," what does that say about our relationship with some book publisher in Anaheim? What about, "If you cannot hate LSM, you cannot be My disciple?" Concerning these Blendeds, and their sycophants, never forget Paul's exhortation, "You were bought with a price, never become slaves of men." (I Cor 7.23)

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Ohio

Brother Trapped, you really need to change your name!

This is one of the clearest rebuttals I have read. If your mind is this free, then you are no longer "trapped," but the Lord's "Freedman." (I Cor. 7.22)

In regard to Luke 14.26, if LC teachers can so quickly exhort their members to "hate father and mother ...," what does that say about our relationship with some book publisher in Anaheim? What about, "If you cannot hate LSM, you cannot be My disciple?" Concerning these Blendeds, and their sycophants, never forget Paul's exhortation, "You were bought with a price, never become slaves of men." (I Cor 7.23)

Hahaha.....thanks. Oftentimes Drake's posts so succinctly bring together the being-crushing lies that were passed off as truths to so many people that it is a delight to post a response to force me to get my own thoughts in order about a particular false neutron-star-heavy jet-black tar baby that has been clinging onto me for so long.

I wish I had found this forum earlier so I could have had the tools and utterance to help another adult church kid I encountered years ago. They were struggling with self-esteem issues (possibly typical human ones unrelated to the LC, possibly LC-based, I don't know) and going to LC meetings was an almost impossible demand on them since being told that the Lord can barely tolerate us because of how horrible we are made them feel 20000 times worse than they felt in just a typical day of life. To feel that God is repulsed by you left them absolutely nowhere good to go, in every way, and they used all kinds of destructive things to try to run from their torment.

Strangely enough, and maybe more tragically enough, in my own life I still operate according to the opposite belief of much of what I wrote......so "Trapped" will have to remain, in order to be truthful. In other words, I'm still newly and continually coming across things, concepts, and thoughts I didn't know I had and I didn't know were trapping me. So while I can put together a post I am happy with, there is still the time - weeks, months, maybe more - needed to wash off of the dirt of those lies that just doesn't disappear with the snap of a finger. Maybe "my chains fell off" is some people's experience, but for me it's like I've been given bolt cutters and I'm having to snip each link off one by one. But Freedman is a great idea for what I have a little hope is coming down the road at some point.

The other point I just thought of now is that in 1 Corinthians 12, talking about giving more abundant honor to the uncomely members...... Well, one thing I noticed is that there is no definition of comely or uncomely in those verses, so how do we know who is comely or not? If I'm sitting in a meeting I sure know who I think is uncomely.....but my own opinion certainly isn't the standard for determining that. This is my own interpretation, but I think it's because each of us is comely to some people and uncomely to others. And this way, all of us, being uncomely to at least someone, can be recipients of more abundant honor in the Body. While this doesn't speak to loving ourselves directly, it speaks to the value each one of us has and the care we are worth receiving. (Again, worth just according to the "ought" level.....not elevated worth).

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Trapped

Strangely enough, and maybe more tragically enough, in my own life I still operate according to the opposite belief of much of what I wrote......so "Trapped" will have to remain, in order to be truthful. In other words, I'm still newly and continually coming across things, concepts, and thoughts I didn't know I had and I didn't know were trapping me.

"As a man thinks of himself, so he is ..." -- Proverbs 23.7

Something to think about.