Lee's Trinity

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by aron

The real question is, how so many otherwise-intelligent folk allowed themselves to be captured by such illogic? Because it appeared "mystical"?

This is what I have grappled with for a long time about the LCs in general. I know the wide range of types of people in the churches, and you can't say it's an intelligence thing. These are college graduates, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, PhD's ....... how are they missing what I'm seeing?

How do they handle the us vs them? How do they reconcile the put downs of "other" Christians? How do they reason away only using Lee's materials? How do they rationalize the differences between what is printed and what is practiced? How do they make Lee's extra-Biblical concepts a died-in-the-wool rule? How are they okay giving up lawful things because Lee said they were sinful? How do they keep going to meetings and conferences and trainings hearing the same 100 buzzwords over and over and over again?

A sister walked up to me recently glowing about how wonderful a conference she had attended was. One of my personal inner beefs is how everyone in the LCs automatically responds with "good! It was good!" when you ask how anything [meeting/conf/training/college conference/anything] was, and then they stop there and say nothing else. Occasionally I like to push people past the "auto-good" to see if there is actually anything behind it. This usually gets them flustered.

Our conversation went like this:

Me: Oh, how was the conference?
Her: Oh it was good, it was SOOO awesome!
Me: Really? That's great! What made it so awesome?
Her: Oh, haha, uh, um, I didn't expect you to ask that.
Me: [smiles]
Her: Uhmm.....well.....like the brother was awesome, the sharing was so so awesome, the hospitality was awesome!
Me: [laughing a little because she hasn't given me any other details] Well that's good.
Her: Like the hospitality fed us such great food! And told us about this great restaurant that we went to after the last meeting! The saints we ate with were really funny and we had a good time! (and she continues talking about the food and the conversations)

My point in relaying this is that every time I have pushed past the auto-good, no one EVER actually shares something from the conference itself. If they do, it is after the pick up the outlines and read directly from the title to tell me what the subject is, and that's it, followed by "it was so good" again. Any explanation of what a good time they had always involves non-conference details - it involves people. I have realized that the conferences are simply what most people endure to have the excuse to be able to see and hang out with people afterward.

But it still confounds me that all these people don't realize that is what they are doing!

I think the existing members have just stopped listening, so they don't see or hear the illogic.

I don't understand how intelligent new people come in though. I guess this is why the LCs focus on freshmen.....they are young kids who haven't had much chance to flex their critical thinking muscles yet. Sigh.

[Weighingin]

With the Trinity, God in His essence, is Spirit. Christ,,as the Son, is in the image and likeness of God, and humanity was created according to this Christ. The Father seems to me to be the overall description or source of God. The Son and the Spirit provide the details.

Regarding the last post, I think it's correct that many of us, while there may be some profit and enjoyment in the speaking, more fondly recall the food, and hospitality and time with the believers.
I went to a conference a while back and I don't recall the messages, yet I can fondly recall the family I stayed with, even certain details.

[OBW]

Originally Posted by Weighingin

With the Trinity, God in His essence, is Spirit.

Are you sure? It might be correct to say that His essence is "spirit." But "Spirit"?

The place where we get "God is spirit" (John 4) does not refer to the identification of either the entirety of the One God, or of the Father in specific, as the person of the Spirit, but as an essence that is spirit. This is the very kind of confusion that Athanasius warned against.

That one of the Three of the Trinity has the name "The Spirit" does not cause it to subsume everything that has the nature as spirit. That is an exercise in equivocation.

[Cal]

It's not unusual for Christians of all stripes to forget the contents of messages, and just remember the pleasant experience of a church service. I recall reading about a pastor who gave a message which included a funny story about his cat falling into the washing machine. When questioned later, most listeners could only remember the story about the cat.

Actually, in a way, it's encouraging that the saints are more interested in their relationships and social experiences than the messages. It shows they are human, and possibly avoiding indoctrination.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Trapped

... it still confounds me that all these people don't realize that is what they are doing!

I think the existing members have just stopped listening, so they don't see or hear the illogic.

I don't understand how intelligent new people come in though. I guess this is why the LCs focus on freshmen.....they are young kids who haven't had much chance to flex their critical thinking muscles yet. Sigh.

The mental conditioning process is pernicious because it is incessant and has several mutually reinforcing lines.

First off, people are allowed fee reign to think in other areas, and can excel in engineering or mathematics or biology, and seem to have critical faculties. (But so can the Mormons.) Thinking is allowed, but not thinking about religion. You can pick your breakfast cereal, but not this morning's HWMR verses, or what they mean for us today. "This means that", and that is that.

Not thinking about their religion is their religion. It is all, "amen, amen, amen..." Being "one with leadership" and "one with the brothers" and "one with the Lord's current speaking" yada yada. Whatever the oracle says today is the religion. Try to read someone a "wrong" verse sometime, and they look at you blankly. It's spooky, actually.

Second, part of the conditioning process is the mantra, "We're not being conditioned! We're enjoying! We are not being conditioned!" A comic from Igzy (not yet published) shows one man leaning forward on the dais, looking out at a sea of upturned faces. He says, "Who among you have I controlled? Who?" The crowd says in unison, "You have controlled no one, MOTA!"

Third, the system injects them with pride, as Ohio says. They are "God's best", in the "central lane of the divine economy", on the "proper ground", with the "top teachings" and "high peak truths". So when leadership starts putting out questionable assertions, nobody questions because that might infer that the teaching isn't so "high peak" after all, and we've already agreed it is. So don't put down the ministry of the age.

Another thing injected into them is fear. Over and over they're told of those who questioned, who spoke out. Ambitious men. Divisive. Negative. Rebellious. You don't want to be negative, do you? Leprous people, people who "got poisoned". Better not go on the internet, you might get poisoned. People who "drew others after themselves." The fact that the LC leader also drew others after himself is irrelevant. If any one else tries - terrible! So all that negative conditioning is tacitly received. And it is constant. The mind gets terrified of being cut off from God, so leadership is abjectly followed.

And then it has 5,000 years of development behind it, of fallen humanity conditioning itself (culture, mores, values, shared expectations) hard at work. Do not ever question Big Boss... as a current Blended put it so well, "He doesn't tell you what he wants, you have to be able to read between the lines". The line in this case is a questionable assertion on the Trinity (Jesus is the Father), and between the lines is, "Don't question". There is a strong cultural component at work behind the scenes: don't ever make group leaders publicly lose face. Even when they're wrong, they're right. The existence of the Hive depends on it.

At it's core, that's what you get in the LC: Jesus is the Father. God's oracle has spoken. End of discussion. Look for ways to prop it up and ignore all the ways it's nonsensical.