Honor From My Perspective…It Is a Little Abstract, So You Will Have To Bear With Me

Okay, gang.

Given we may be stepping into a conversation about honor, my post on honoring parents may need to come with a supplementary explanation on what I think honor actually looks like.

For a frame of reference, I did not read anything by Danny Silk, and I have no plans to, given Bethel’s model is still coming from an old Ruler Season mindset that I do not find useful, so if you cannot handle that, then I cannot help you.

And I do not devolve into triteisms about honor and love. So, with that out of the way, if you are still game for a different take on the subject, read on.

Textual Considerations

I may be able to provide some Scriptural basis, such as the pieces from the Golden Image in Daniel 3, or how Jesus honored Simon’s place while calling his crap out in Matthew 16.

Why Not Use Material That Has Already Been Written On The Topic?

Honor has zero to do with a lot of what we have been taught, and, in my most recent context in the wider Charismatic Segment of the church, where honor gets folded into poisonous teachings like covering; the apostolic and fivefold; and discussions on topics like authority and submission, we start moving into conversations that lead people to follow antichrist spirits. This sort of material which I am hard passing is precisely why I am approaching this from a clean slate.

Granted, this slate that may come across to some as uninformed. And I am okay with appearing on the surface to be uninformed, for the following reason.

Most of the teaching out there is tainted with a lot of what I classify as Ruler Season (a time period of church history predominately characterized by concerns with authority, structures of authority, protocol, and systems of submission and covering, have been en vogue since at least 1900 till around the deaths of Bill Bright and Billy Graham).

Many times, these organizations say things like, “Fivefold [or insert your denomination’s/network’s/church’s method of church government] is the only biblical way of handling church government or church leadership”, and I simply will not stoop through the morass of Welfare Christianity horse feces to make dependent mindsets feel more at ease.

I cannot and will not help out the mindset that expects me to have been well-read on a topic, especially since my earned authority in this area is significant, and most of the teaching on this topic is compromised by a faulty perception of the fivefold ministry.

The fivefold ministry is a sacred cow in the Charismatic church. And “sacred cows make the best hamburger” (Arthur Burk).

Still interested after that verbal shellacking? Read on.

And some of this is going to get really abstract because I don’t have better more-concretized ways of stating it.

My Definition of Honor

Pulling from my previous post on honoring one’s parents and what it really means…

Honor has everything to do with our capacity to parse between what is really happening in our current everyday life (one plane or realm of reality) and what should be happening according to the L-rd’s design (the root of all reality and the “ground of all being”, to quote Paul Tillich).

It further has zero to do with doing whatever the heck our authorities are telling us to do, based on their passing whim, or anything that is in ignorance or violation of our design.

If we can separate reality as we naturally apprehend it from what we recognize G-d wanted to happen, and that comes through becoming studied experts of His design for us….

Then honor becomes a matter of doing that which we were designed to do, regardless of whether or not someone is commanding us to do otherwise.

And celebrating that goal and journey in the lives of others as they hopefully pursue it, and this who shift changes how we as followers of Messiah, both Jew and non-Jew, approach the practical execution of what we believe in the arena of who we are and what we do.

A faith that doesn’t work in reality but only on a couple days of the week while you destroy yourself without the King ‘s solutions the rest of the week is no faith.

You were placed into an office, or series of offices, and that office or those offices are given by appointment from G-d (If you really want to know about the underlying principles of Romans 13:2, you will bump into the four types of authority:

1) Positional authority that comes from who we are in Christ

2) authority of offices into which the L-rd places us (not merely fivefold, but also office of boy/girl, son/daughter, husband/wife, patriarch/matriarch, businessman, lawyer, tribal chief, elder, and these offices G-d recognizes and vests with certain authority.

3) the authority of special annointings: for example, over weather, aspects of nature, time, birds, fish, land animals, etc.

4) and the earned authority that we accrue by walking in certain paths for a prolonged period of time.

Some authorities are earned.

For those who did not hear that, I will say it again.

Some authorities do not come to us just because we are in Christ. While we get a portion of authority from following Him, that’s not all He has for us and He doesn’t give that authority all at once to babies.

So, when you encounter someone not in an office who feels like they have authority in an issue, it may be because they have spent time in the gym. They have earned that authority. This is another application of Romans 13).

For example, I have authority to deal with those classes of people that the Bible calls widows and widowers. Not just those whose spouses have died, but also (and more specifically those whose spouses have cheated on them). I have earned authority in that.

Also, victims of SRA, CRA, those who are DID, and those with PTSD.

One other area I have earned authority is to teach the text of Scripture.

And, conversely, when you come across someone who speaks truth but it feels thin coming from their mouths, they likely haven’t earned sufficient authority to speak to those things.

With those offices come honor. “Honor is for what you do and dignity is for who you are” (Arthur Burk).

Honor is designed to accrue. Honor was made to grow, as does money in an interest-bearing account.

And honor can accrue where authority is earned. Honor can grow where authority is given or earned. I am really trying, though, to stretch your thinking beyond what you have been given, to the potential given in what you earn on one level.

Park that thought, and let’s bring another thought.

Honor of parents, is following the counsel that our parents would have given in a situation if they were aware of, knew, understood, and agreed with and celebrated our design.

Honor of authorities follows much of the same principle. If they were aware of and celebrated what you were made by G-d to do, you follow the counsel they might even-handedly and level-headedly give in a particular situation.

Curious about what an authority WOULD say?

Discern.

Consult the L-rd, who is 100% all the time your father and has never taken a break from that job, and has never not occupied that position. Father has never not been a Father, especially that Jesus was eternally begotten of G-d.

“Sure, David, where is your Scripture for this?”

Well, let’s tease apart Daniel 3.

Nebuchadnezzar, had he been following the L-rd, would have told Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah to not bow to the image. This is why they in part did not bow. That is honoring G-d-given authorities.

If Hilter had been godly, he would have told the people to resist a dictator. That would have been an leader who governs for the betterment of his people and culture and those under his charge, who watches over them.

Our job has always been to look at what we should do, given our idea of the best authority.

Many of our parents do not celebrate our design, and how G-d made us.

Honor and dishonor have nothing to do with obedience and disobedience.

When we honor, we say like Daniel to Darius “O king live forever”

When we disobey, we say, “we will not do this action.”

Honor/dishonor is one spectrum.

Obedience/disobedience is another one.

Can we say both, “O king live forever” together with “I will never bow”?

And yes, we are dishonoring our authorities in the United States when we are dishonoring We the People, and calling them coarse names and by abusive words.

So, the TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) is this. Act as if they celebrated your design and how G-d made you, regardless of how they would respond in natural reality now. And keep a guard over your tongue. Do these things, and you will excel.

This is why it was called CIVIL disobedience. Not douche-rocket disobedience.

We do not verbally abuse others, but we do what they would tell us to do had they been in sync with G-d’s purposes for us.