Mingling and Soul-Slaying

Please read my introduction to mingling here: "Who are the Liites?" (II).

There are three main problems to Li's idea of mingling, which is the idea that man's nature is literally replaced with all that God is.

(1) That the infinite God is literally placed within the confines of finite men;
(2) That men can literally become not just like God, but become God;
(3) That for this to happen, the old man — the self, the soul, the "I" — must be totally destroyed without redemption.

The last point is repeatedly drilled into active members. And it should be obvious that for you literally to become God, you cannot remain yourself.

When Scripture says to deny the self, Li takes it not only literally, but completely.

Galatians 2:20 ("No longer I, but Christ lives in me") is frequently quoted and taken literally and absolutely; your soul is literally crucified; you are absolutely dead; infinite God is literally inside finite man. Now there are six instances in the gospels where Christ tells us that he who would save his life shall lose it. The Liites rightfully note that this can also be translated "soul;" but in practice they ignore the second half of the verses that show that Christ wanted to save your soul.

To the Christian, it is not only impossible to contain God literally, but as God saves us, we become more dependant on him while becoming what he created us to be. But to the Liite, "saving the soul" means replacing it with God (literally). But if you are replaced, you are not there. There is nothing to save.

Becoming more of yourself is impossible to the Liite since the soul, along with all creation, is totally evil. It is totally evil not in the Calvinist sense, where evil and corruption is everywhere, but it is evil through and through.

Li taught that God's perfect nature is incompatible with man's fallen nature, evil through and through. Evil must be destroyed. As finite man absorbs the infinite God, God, as Li said "crosses out," "annihilates," "replaces" the human nature with himself. Man does not become like God, he becomes God. Already, that this is the soul extinction of nirvana should be clear.

I remember one testimony made by one elder that typifies the thousands of like testimonies. He went shopping for a doorbell. He spent some time picking one out at a hardware store, when suddenly he realized he was not following proper teaching. By picking out the doorbell, he was expressing his self. He was expressing his human nature. He was expressing his soul, his personality. But the self, human nature, the soul, the personality is sinful, meaning it is evil through and through.

You will note that although he said his soul was sinful, nowhere in this elder's testimony was an indication of a sin. He needed a doorbell and he was buying one. That was evil. You see, Li taught that man does not commit sins; he literally IS sin. So Christ's coming to destroy sin does not mean he just wanted to make you stop sinning, he wanted to stop you from existing.

Remember, the Christian believes that man was created in the image of God, but fell. Christ's salvific work returns man to the image of God and thereby redeems him from sin. If I say that "man becomes God," I mean a metaphor, because obviously finite man cannot become infinite God. In another metaphor, Christ said that we are his "sheep" and he is the "gate." But I do not bleat, and Christ is not made of cast iron. These are figures that beautifully explain spiritual concepts. Were Li to be consistent and interpret all metaphors literally, we would not only lose the beauty in the Bible, it would no longer make sense.