Let me just say that, if you are using a test to determine a Redemptive Gift, and if you are saying that you have more than one based on test results, and that is your only data source for determining your gift, then you are doing it wrong.
I have some friends who attend a particular church where the Redemptive Gifts are being studied via a particular book and in conjunction with a particular test.
And they are told “circle the three highest numbers and the largest in your primary gift, the second largest is your secondary gift, and so on”.
Gang, this (solely the accrual of data, checking off boxes, numbering 1-5, and tallying scores) is not the way to discover your gifts, nor do you have more than one as your redemptive gift. Each of us has one, and only one Gift of the 7 listed in Romans 12:6-8.
Your spirit knows what Redemptive Gift you are. And so many times we are leaving behind the knowledge of our spirits in order to embrace the data that we can accrue and quantify with our minds.
We think the one has to come at the expense of the other. This is not the way it has to be. Nor does the data from our soul trump the data that should be streaming from our spirit.
I will get into a deeper understanding of the reasoning behind this at a later date, but suffice it for the moment three realities:
1) We have a spirit breathed into us by G-d (and i won’t get into this “you are a spirit and you have a soul” nonsense here because we HAVE both a spirit and we HAVE a soul and we are a living being that IS a combination of the three: spirit, soul, and body).
2) We have a soul, as well, and this soul is just as important in its unique way to our spirit. Neither spirit nor soul is an add-on, and neither spirit nor soul is the sum of who we are.
3) In our spirits are all seven Redemptive Gifts, each packaged with a portion of our spirit. The strongest one, the gift that gives you the biggest ROI (short for Return On Investment) is your Redemptive Gift, and the one that manifests in the expression of your soul (your mind, will, and emotions).
Using a test to ascertain your Redemptive Gift is using information that is not spiritually attained. And yet, we are designed to be spiritual creatures that use more than just information that is naturally attained. The knowledge of our Redemptive Gift, if we don’t see sufficient natural data to confirm our gift, comes through our spirit. Our spirit knows which gets the greatest ROI. And it should be that we get this information primarily through our spirit, and confirmed by the data we get through our souls.
If, however, we are stubborn and bullheaded and think we have more than one RG, then an excellent and likely explanation for that is wounding of the portion of our spirit that carried our presenting Redemptive Gift. In the case of wounding of our the dominant RG portion with greatest ROI, one of the other six portions has picked up the slack left by the void of the wounded portion of our spirit.
That said, let’s jump from and abandon this nonsense that says we have more than one RG. Givers play in non-blacks-and-whites, and Prophets have to bring everything to closure, for example.
But saying you have this gift or these gifts because a test told you so is silly, even if you took the same test and got the same results, especially when we have so much more data available to us, AND if we will listen.
The greatest natural clue we have as to our RG is our design. But it will take some time to unpack.
I know some people that took a test, say they are a Prophet/Servant/Exhorter and have never confronted another soul a day in their life. Servant does not coexist woth Prophet in the same body. Servants have so many marks that are so not Prophet and vice-versa that it makes no sense to conjoin the two.
So, really, let’s get off this kick that says we are two or more things when we really are not. And let’s invest the sweat equity to ascertain our gift.
/rant
Author: theparacleteshammer
The Twisted Seraph
With Gratitude to David Falls for giving me the history of this, and with Gratitude to Arthur Burk for making portable a strategy for handling this critter:
I am not sharing this to get anyone’s attention or to brag about a weird spiritual experience. I am sharing this because it may be another tool that will help some of my peeps get free. One thing I cannot stand is when people use deliverance or their weird spiritual experiences as little more than playthings and curiosities with which to wow people rather than tools to liberate people.
In case you don’t learn anything about me, learn that I am big on the Principle of Freedom. Ruler or no, I love watching people move way past obedience to a place where the negative things that used to hold sway in their lives do not hold sway in their lives.
THE FAMILIAR THINGS
It is comforting when you got to a seminar or conference and you hear something that surprises everyone else and you say to yourself, “yeah, that makes sense already.” I draw a certain comfort knowing someone else independently dealt with something similar to something I or one of my friends have dealt with.
I had one of those familiar experiences in Seattle.
During the Seminar on Tough Spots in Inner Healing.
Arthur was talking to us in the afternoon session about deliverance and we got onto the topic of something that happened to a woman he had been working with in terms of the break between her and her intimacy with G-d.
He mentioned that what had been blocking her was the Black Kerub or the Dark Kerub. This is an entity that blocks us from receiving intimacy so we can experience G-d in an emotional connection.
He mentioned the words “Dark Kerub” and I was transported back to 2001.
I was in college as a Senior, and my best friend at the time, who led a prayer/warfare/deliverance ministry. We met several times a week to work on our own issues and junk, and to proceed to gather and mobilize a group to handle all of the darkness on our college’s campus. It was a total blast, and those first days, I learned what spiritual warfare and deliverance were, and I learned what it was like to free a place. I….love…seeing places and pieces of land freed.
One evening, as I was catching up on homework, I got stirred in my spirit and decided to walk over to Wendy’s house (Wendy owned the house on our campus where our group met) to see what was going on. David and Wendy along with a couple of other people had just gotten done doing some deliverance of a place on campus that was known for empowering a strong religious spirit.
And they told me the story of how they had encountered an spirit that resembled a seraph, but it was flipped.
THE TWISTED SERAPH
Back in the present, Seattle, and the Dark Kerub made me call David a few weeks after to ask him what he remembered, because the details from 17 years ago were a bit sketchy.
- What he remembered the most was what it looked like and how it moved. The Twisted Seraph (TS), like any other seraph, was in a state of constant motion. It was incapable of sitting still.
- The TS was first encountered over the Office of the Chaplain, and empowered a strong religious spirit over our campus.
- It hated true worship.
- It stood in the way of unity among the believers on campus.
- It was bothered by those who were expressive in their worship.
- By “true worship”, I mean that the TS especially hated those who had a honest desire to worship G-d as an end in itself because they genuinely loved him, rather than to gain something.
- It was sensitive to worship in a way that other evil beings were not.
- In David’s words, “I have never seen anything THAT powerful be THAT reactive to genuine worship.”
- The possible reason for this? When you go to a point of real worship, it reminds the TS of what they had when they were in the Throne Room. It was not just a painful memory, but part of their hardwiring to declare, bask in, and speak to and about the Glory, Majesty, and Holiness of G-d, in ADDITION to peering into ALL of the depths of His Nature.
- In the case of the demonic, they just believe their own hype.
- When you hit the demonic with real revealed truth that is relevant to where they are, they cannot tolerate it.
- For example, Spirits of Fear live in fear. Spirits of Anger, possess and are consumed by genuine anger.
- We, on the other hand, have the free will to resist anger, even though we understand it to a degree.
- In the case of seraphs, “they came from a place of crazy levels of revelation of the holiness of G-d, and they departed that to embrace a lie. The devil is a liar and the father of lies. So, when you hit a TS with three seconds of genuine worship, the lie is ripped away, and suddenly they are forced to acknowledge who He is.”
- From David: Rick Joyner has said that “one of the greatest deceptions is lukewarmness”. Our G-d is a consuming fire. You have to be crazy to be lukewarm. You have to rationalize lukewarmness.
- All someone has to do is hum three bars of a song, and everyone, including the lukewarm, is immediately confronted with who G-d is.
- The seraphs have imprinted in them a knowledge of the nature of G-d.
- When we in the prayer group were asking about the nature of TS’s, there was this sense that its like, the angels don’t often talk about the fallen seraphs. Somehow, their falling is a greater evil than some of the other classes falling. There is a depth of grief. Something about, for them, ‘oh how the mighty have fallen’. It’s bad that the angels fell, but there is less than no excuse for the seraphs to fall.
- “TS, more than any other demonic type I have seen, they seriously move. This thing, never stopped moving. Forever they were flapping their wings, and moving. Like a kid that could not sit still. Every part of this thing’s existence could not sit still. Think Agent Smith from the Matrix dodging bullets or a hummingbird.” Part of the seraph’s design and calling is motion.
- When we saw the TS, it still had six wings and it was obvious what we were dealing with.
ANOTHER MAJOR FACET
This is something that I want y’all to home in on. Because seraphs are given to true worship of G-d, the TS is given toward advancing the agenda of anything that fights true and genuine worship (AKA: a religious spirit). These things advance the religious spirit. “If there was a spirit that wanted the end game of a Religious Spirit, TS would be it.
MY PERSONAL WORK AND THOUGHT ON THE RELIGIOUS SPIRIT AFTER SEATTLE
Following the encounter with the TS at Stetson, and following Seattle, I put together intuitively that, like the Dark Keruvim like to block us from receiving intimacy with G-d, the Twisted Seraphim are the ones that block us from true worship, from giving true worship to the L-rd. They can slow us in that arena.
Briefly, I want to note that I have worked with one person in tossing one of these critters out, and will keep y’all posted on the progress there.
Thus, if we are dealing with a TS, we might approach it with the same strategy that we use in dealing with the Dark Kerub (DK), or a Teflon Coated Critter, whose authority to be there come from other people. With the DK, we pit the weight of the accusations of those who accuse you of not having intimacy and not desiring intimacy against the witness of our desire for intimacy.
With the TS, we pit the weight of accusations that our worship and expressions of worship are invalid against the weight of the opinions of those who celebrate the validity and legitimacy of our worship and our unique expressions.
You have a unique expression of worship, and that expression is valid, and the Trinity’s opinion of how He designed you to worship, and how He hardwired you to express worship weigh more than all the accusations. And when you get that revelation, you can kick this critter out.
So, take that cut from Tough Spots in Inner Healing titled “Black Cherubim” and extend the principle in the direction of worship.
You were not just designed to receive intimacy. You were also designed to give true and genuine worship in accordance with your unique design.
A Teacher’s Manifesto
Well-fenced, and well-languaged, Jeremy Crenshaw has suffered much for what he is gifted to do, even though it has cost him professionally.
This is one Teacher that makes me honored to call friend.
He writes:
Not too long ago I heard one biblical scholar critique another. He suggested that the scholar in question was more confessional. The suggestion was that, even though this scholar is considered to be one of the giants in his field, the scholar was some how less academic because he was biased towards the Bible, Christianity, and the Church. My thought then and now is “what the heck are we doing then?” I felt led by the Spirit to attain higher education, to get my Ph.D., as a way of serving my Lord to the best of my ability. Being “confessional” should be everything for the biblical scholar. I certainly did not get into this for the fame and fortune! I could have went and got a doctorate in engineering or medicine if I wanted that. What have I endured all of the trials and pain of this journey for, if not to use it to proclaim the truth to the best of my ability? Education is worthless if it causes me to doubt and be cynical about the Lord, his word, and his people. This is the same reason that I reject modern “academic” notions in certain circles that say “everything should be on the table for discussion” because it is academics. No! No! No! I might add that this is the same reason that I have rejected certain “principals” of certain church groups when they argue for things that clearly are not scriptural. This has, in fact, cost me dearly on a professional level. Yet, I say let his word be truth and everyone else a liar. So, excuse me if I sound “confessional,” but my allegiance to my Lord is much more important to me than methodological skepticism guised in the cover of academic rigor. I started this, and I continue to do this because I really do believe. In fact, the more that I have learned the more that I have been strengthened in that belief. At the end of the age, I will gladly stand with the scholars being critiqued by arrogant systems of this world and be told “well done my good and faithful servant.” It is much better than the alternative.
#manifesto
Social Intonation: A Dynamic of Community, and a Major Need of the Exhorter
G-d the Father is the G-d of Community. He it is that is the Member of the Trinity that is devoted to life and our sense of Belongingness.
It is through Him that we understand we belong.
And it is He who sets us where He wants.
The communities that we form on the third level of holiness are critical to the networking of whatever plan the L-rd has for us.
And we are supposed to not only be thrown willy-nilly into whatever communities at hand, but more specifically, we need to be placed by our Father (1 Corinthains 12:18) were we were designed to fit.
Amanda Damon, a friend of our family’s, made an observation, concerning Exhorters, because with Exhorters, it is painful to deprive them of social networks and groups of friends, without which they suffer deeply, as did one of my close friends:
An Exhorter homeschooler needs people. It just means the parents get to choose what people. Tons and tons of homeschool community these days. Field trips every week, co-ops if you want, group electives, Konos, the possibilities are endless. I think it more depends on the parents and how in tune to their kids they are. Homeschooling can be a place to thrive!
First, let me say this much.
With respect to Exhorters, if you are going to homeschool an Exhorter, it is true that you will get to pick what people with whom the socialize. However, it also means that you need to ACTUALLY EXECUTE THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROACTIVELY pick some peeps to connect with your Exhorter. Don’t just assume that because you homeschool your kids, and you have the freedom to pick the kids they hang with, that they are going to end up with the right crowd.
The freedom to pick playmates for your bubbly Exhorter is also the responsibility to expose them to people, so that together you can pick out the right people for them.
Otherwise, they will pick anybody and everybody.
Second, more generally, note that phrase “in tune”. It reminds me of Mr. Hardy, my high school Chorus teacher. He placed a premium on this concept in music that we call intonation. It applies to music.
But Amanda’s comment, in response to a hard conversation on homeschooling, caused me to hear an idea for the first time.
Social intonation.
We need “social intonation”. We need to be placed in a community that not only looks right, feels right, seems right, and enhances our image, but also one that sounds right, AND one with which we can tune and among which we can blend well.
And we need the right kind of community even if it conflicts with deeply-held convictions and biases.
Some Exhorters need homeschooling. And as a result, their parents are thus required to select friends for them, because those Exhorters by and large REQUIRE socialization of some sort.
When we develop unqualified biases for or against a certain type of community in all of its manifestations, whether the institution is homeschooling or church or any ither type of school or business or people of differing faith views and we say, “All [pick your institution]s are [bad/good/terrible]”, then that keeps us from seeing the possible good in a situation.
When I say all homeschooling is bad for Exhorters because they don’t get to socialize, then it keeps me from seeing the possibilities for socialization that are available with at least a modicum of effort.
Now, let’s pull back and distill a more general principle.
Those biases that keep us from seeing comprehensively and clearly are then harnessed by the Mesmerizing Spirit and we thus cease seeing clearly. We then stop seeing situations, circumstances, places, and people accurately and with precision (the way the L-rd sees them).
As a result, we become candidates for the Spirit of Deception. And the moment we are willing to believe the lies of the Spirit of Deception, then sooner or later the lie involves some sort of pit of despair, a trap which this spirit lays. And if we follow that path of deception into the pit of despair, the subsequent downward spiral can lead to death and suicide.
We deeply need to be part, not just of any community, but the community that Father picks out for us, whatever community that looks like.
For, we can possess our birthright as individuals, but we will not become people of destiny outside of community.
Thus, when you are looking for a community, ask yourself, “is this a community with which I can blend to make that right sound?”.
Find the right sound for your hardwiring. Find the right gathering that meshes with your hardwiring.
And be blessed, gang. This is a new concept, but it is one that I am hashing out repeatedly.
Musings From Romans 8:38-39
πέπεισμαι γὰρ ὅτι
οὔτε θάνατος
οὔτε ζωὴ
οὔτε ἄγγελοι
οὔτε ἀρχαὶ
οὔτε ἐνεστῶτα
οὔτε μέλλοντα
οὔτε δυνάμεις
οὔτε ὕψωμα
οὔτε βάθος
οὔτε τις κτίσις ἑτέρα δυνήσεται ἡμᾶς χωρίσαι ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ θεοῦ τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ κυρίῳ ἡμῶν.
Romans 8:38-39
A Fractal of Ten, gang. The 10 Outes.
Death
Life
Angels
Rulers
Things Present
Things to Come
Powers
Height
Depth
Anything else of a different kind in all of creation
None of these things will be able to separate us from the Love of G-d. Even if these things were arrayed against us (Romans 8:37) with the intent of separation from the love of G-d.
We can remember the following things about the Love of G-d:
It overcomes death through the Life of the Father,
It brings Dominion out of Death from the Son,
It Honorably redeems us for companionship with the Holy Spirit in a way the Angels cannot comprehend,
It brings to life the Principles in such a way that baffles the Rulers of this present age,
It yields an Authority that trumps everything that is present with the intent to separate us,
It teaches us a Responsibility that is effective in thwarting a contrary and fearful future,
It shows us how to Steward what the L-rd has given us in order to surmount the heights,
It brings a Freedom that delivers us from the depths of Tartarus, the Abyss, Hades, and Death,
And It Fulfills us in a way that nothing else in all of creation that satisfy.
#withlonglifelovewillsatify
An Excessively Brief Overview of the Fractal of Four
Thank you Sonia Brownless, for provoking this post.
Okay, so the Fractal of 4 is the pattern of 4 that we see in nature amd in life.
I wonder if we also see it in Scripture as well.
A fractal is little more than a pattern that repeats itself.
And the members of the Fractal of 4 are as follows:
1. Father
2. Son
3. Holy Spirit
4. The Kingdom of G-d
One of the easiest ways to illustrate the Fractal of 4 is with the human heart.
The Right Atrium parallels the work of the Father, which is the first chamber that receives the blood that is capable of sustaining life and funnels that life into the Right Ventricle, which in turn pushes the blood to the lungs to receive oxygen, as the Son pushes us to places where we can breathe freely and receive the life-giving air we need to function and take Dominion.
Life flows from the Father accordingly and Dominion flows from the Son who pushes us into the place where we can receive from the Holy Spirit.
From the Lungs, the blood returns to the heart, and, specifically, the Left Atrium which is the launching pad for this now well-oxygenated blood to get sent into all the body.
In the same way, we are also given the life-giving breath of the Holy Spirit and then thrust into all the world to hand them the same life of the L-rd. This place of extending the Kingdom is a distinct honor given to those who heed the Spirit’s call.
Arthur Burk’s Review of Sweetwater Electronics
Arthur writes:
HONOR TO WHOM HONOR IS DUE
Customer service is broadly at a very low level. Most of us could spin out 100 stories of absurdly bad customer service.
Against the pervasive backdrop of a poor labor pool, abysmal lack of training by management and deliberate corporate policies to make customer access more difficult, there are the occasional stellar performers.
Sweetwater.com is a electronics supply house. We use them for all sorts of gadgets. Sometimes it is a generic stock item. Most of the time, Megan has to talk to Jason Koon and say, “I am trying to do THIS. Is it even possible?”
He asks a few incisive questions, shows her two or three ways it can be done, and then processes the order.
Their search engine ad says:
Discover The Sweetwater Difference! Unmatched Customer Service & Free Shipping. Free Expert Tech Support.
It is ALL true.
The precision with which they address our technical issues, giving us SIGNIFICANT free coaching is impressive.
The speed with which they get products out the door is amazing.
And the accuracy of billing, packaging and delivery is the best of all our vendors.
We had a small glitch in our electronics and on Monday Megan asked if she could replace a component before it completely crashed.
Midday she placed the order. Today, Wednesday, FedEx delivered it with panache.
All of that bespeaks exceptional systems that are carefully watched over by some wise manager.
But the personal touch is over the top. I called and placed an order once.
Before Jason filled the order, he had to ask about Megan. Was she still here? Was she OK? He found her very easy to work with and was a little put off when I called. (I am not Megan!)
As many thousands of customers as Jason deals with, that is simply impressive.
Join me in sending some blessings their way. A wonderful company to do business with.
And if you ever need an electronic widget of any sort I encourage you to send some money their way.
They are real.
And they didn’t pay me for this and don’t know I am writing it.
I am authentic too in my praise, and never for sale.
This is evidently a for-real company. And Arthur always gives polished and unembellished real commentary. If he, as a businessman and a consultant, says you can bank on a company, then do so.
Concerning Steve Jobs…A Modification
I would like to say the following.
Growing up, I have always viewed Prophets as unilaterally the safest of the Redemptive Gifts. I have used them repeatedly for counsel and input from time to time. My best friend is an RG Prophet. Some of the most thoughtful people I know are Prophets, and their prolific ideas are often dizzying.
In short, it is possible that I have been so spoiled by a plethora of high-functioning Prophets, many of whom I view as plush teddy bears (I know some that will contest that image, but anyway, it is the one that works), that I would not recognize a carnal Prophet if I saw one. Probably in large part due to tunnel vision.
Steve Jobs doesn’t in any way come close to reminding me of other Prophets that I know or with whom I have had experience. I won’t expose those Prophets that I currently know that don’t behave in a carnal manner, but I have about five that I deem extremely valuable that are don’t come across as mean or unapproachable
Most of my negative experiences in the household of faith, with few exceptions, have come from Exhorters, and there isn’t even another horse in that race. I have seen the deeply carnal at work, and the moderately soulish as well, and the refusal to traffic in reality is a mind-boggling dynamic.
But a precious spiritual mother, Sandy Landry, pointed out some traits in Steve Jobs that are actually pretty irreconcilable with the full picture of the Exhorter.
Typically, Exhorters really do care what other people think. Steve on the other hand, not so much, and went out of his way to call others out for their, in his word, “vanity”.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-steve-jobs-was-such-a-jerk-to-employees-2015-2
Today in a profile in the New Yorker, Apple chief designer Jony Ive — a close friend of Jobs — explains how he once asked Jobs to tone it down after seeing his colleagues feel crushed.
Jobs disagreed.
“Why would you be vague?” Jobs asked Ive. “You don’t care about how they feel! You’re being vain, you want them to like you.”
His argument, which Ive came to agree with, is that managers should always give clear, unambiguous feedback. They should not care whether their employees like them — and to even consider that is a form of vanity.
Instead, the best thing for the company is for managers to put their own ego aside and state exactly what they want, and explain every time an employee comes up short.
That said, Ive is much calmer when he criticizes his designers, although the lab is certainly full of brutally honest feedback. Also, Ive was not a big fan of Isaacson’s biography, which contained many examples of Jobs’ meanness.
“My regard couldn’t be any lower,” he told The New Yorker.
He also was very, very frank with people who worked for him, and abusively so in a mean-tempered way.
Ex-Apple Employee: Working for ‘Giant Jerk’ Steve Jobs was a Nightmare
Earlier this week, a new account emerged from a supposed former Apple employee that revealed what it was like to work for Apple under Steve Jobs. The anonymous worker painted Jobs as a very demanding boss who worked his employees to the bone. Of course, we already knew that.
Now, however, we’re pointed to a new account from a former Apple employee who isn’t anonymous. The disgruntled former project manager suggests that not only was Jobs incredibly demanding, he was also a “giant jerk” who didn’t value his employees and who blamed others for his own mistakes.
Erin Caton currently works as a project management consultant, and she knows very well that she’ll never work at Apple again. Why? In an old post on Medium dug up today by Business Insider, Caton pulls back the curtain on what it was like from her perspective to work at Steve Jobs’s Apple.
It wasn’t pretty.
First and foremost, it’s important to note that Caton worked as an Engineering Project Manager on the MobileMe team. MobileMe, as you might recall, was an absolute disaster, so it stands to reason that her experiences at Apple weren’t great. But even if she is disgruntled, her accounts are hardly unique — like all wildly successful CEOs, Steve Jobs could be a jerk.
Caton says she had two experiences with Jobs while at Apple. The first was when she was waiting in line for lunch and a man cut in front of her. When she turned to a coworker to ask who the “douche” was who had just cut her in line, she was informed it was Jobs.
Her second experience was significantly worse.
The former Apple worker recalled the lead-up to Apple’s big MobileMe launch, which the entire team working on the project knew was going to be a disaster. The product simply wasn’t ready and they had pleaded with management, but Jobs demanded that it launch on time.
When MobileMe crashed hard on launch night, hundreds of MobileMe team members worked around the clock to fix the service and get it running again. Then when the deed was finally done, they were all called into a meeting with Jobs.
“We all walked over to the building like we were headed to the guillotine,” Caton wrote. “He stood in front of us and yelled at us, told us that we should be mad at each other, said we could have done a staggered launch and complained that we didn’t even try to do all the things that we (those on the ground floor of production that actually make the [expletive] products of the world) had been begging to do. It was the world’s best de-motivational speech.”
Her full post is linked below in our source section.
This is not your typical carnal or even soulish Exhorter behavior at work. This is more akin to a carnal, self-legitimized Prophet at work.
For example, let me draw your attention to Paul. As an Exhorter, he had a rough time dealing with either real or perceived rejection in his ministry from within the camp. Outside the church, no problem, bring it on and it does not matter. But let someone who is a believer question his authority and the ink flows onto the page and spills over into the next two or three chapters.
So, I must readily admit that I won’t get it perfectly all the time, but it is possible on this that I was wrong. Which isn’t a problem to me to admit. But I am more given to wanting to get things right.
So, I would like to really open the floor up on this one for others to speak. What do you think, gang? Is there a fit better, from your perspective for either Prophet or Exhorter? Or is there something else that meshes better, in light of all the details?
The Redemptive Gift of Exhorter
DISCLAIMER: While credit for the following could partly go to the usual suspects, Arthur Burk, Sandy Landry, and others, there is much to cover that actually flows from my own experience with the Exhorter gift, so, as much as possible I will attempt to express what follows in my own words, and in some ways I flatly disagree with those things that are stated.
Of all the gifts I have dealt with, the Exhorter is the one that I am capable of reacting to the strongest and widest toward and explaining the best.
I have posted a few times with respect to this tribe’s pitfalls, and now, while I may repeat some of those issues, I am really going to give the lion’s share of the attention to the glories of the Exhorter.
PEOPLE WHO WERE/ARE LIKELY EXHORTERS:
Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Franklin Roosevelt, Ed Silvoso of Harvest Evangelism, Jack Frost of Shiloh Place Ministries, Steve Jobs, The Woman at Jacob’s Well in Sychar, The Apostle Paul, Moses, Solomon son of David, And Yeshua.
Let me run into a bit of a diatribe of a man who was mistaken for an Exhorter and whose company is not what I would call a Sapphire Company despite the revolution of the music industry.
STEVE JOBS IN PARTICULAR
Steve Jobs was a very carnal Exhorter, not a Prophet. He was not a technology guy. His main contribution to the computing industry was to take a package and give it the best aesthetics he could. He also took credit for technological work that was not his. Let me leave some evidence from Wikipedia to that end.
Sources from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Brennan-Jobs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field
Concerning his deception of Steve Wozinack:
In 1973, Jobs was working for arcade game company Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California.[27] He was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 (equivalent to $551 in 2017) for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, by using RAM for the brick representation. Too complex to be fully comprehended at the time, the fact that this prototype also had no scoring or coin mechanisms meant Woz’s prototype could not be used. Jobs was paid the full bonus regardless. Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 and that Wozniak’s share was thus $350 (equivalent to $1,929 in 2017).[28] Wozniak did not learn about the actual $5,000 bonus (equivalent to $27,564 in 2017) untilten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.[29]
Concerning his refusal of parterniy to his first-born daughter:
Jobs, however, publicly denied paternity after she was born, which led to a legal case. Even after a DNA paternity test established him as her father, he continued to deny it.[1][4][5] The resolution of the legal case required him to provide Brennan with $385 per month and to reimburse the state for the money she had received from welfare. After Apple went public and Jobs became a millionaire, he increased the payment to $500 a month.[2]Michael Moritz interviewed Jobs, Brennan, and a number of others for the 1982 Time Person of the Year special issue, released on January 3, 1983. In his interview, Jobs questioned the reliability of the paternity test, which had found that the “probability of paternity for Jobs, Steven… is 94.1%”.[6] Jobs responded by arguing that “28% of the male population of the United States could be the father.”[1][2][6] Rather than name him “Person of the Year”, as he and many others expected while giving the interviews, the issue was instead titled “Machine of the Year: The Computer Moves In.”[7] The thematic change occurred after Moritz heard about Brennan-Jobs as well as Jobs’ management style.[1][2]
Years later, after Jobs left Apple, he acknowledged Lisa and attempted to reconcile with her. Chrisann Brennan wrote that “he apologized many times over for his behavior” to her and Lisa and “said that he never took responsibility when he should have, and that he was sorry.”[2] After reconciling with her, nine-year-old Lisa wanted to change her last name and Jobs was happy to agree to it. Jobs legally altered her birth certificate, changing her name from Lisa Brennan to Lisa Brennan-Jobs.[8] Brennan credits the change in Jobs to the influence of Brennan-Jobs’ newly found biological aunt, author Mona Simpson, who worked to repair the relationship between Brennan-Jobs and her father.[2]
According to Fortune magazine, in his will, Jobs left Lisa a multimillion-dollar inheritance.[9]
Concerning his naming of the Apple Lisa:
In 1978, Brennan moved to the All One Farm commune to have the baby. Jobs was not present for the baby’s birth and only came up three days later after Robert Friedland, the farm’s owner and a friend of Jobs’ from Reed College, persuaded him to do so. Brennan and Jobs named the baby Lisa. Jobs named the computer project he was working on, the Apple Lisa, after her. Shortly after, Jobs publicly denied that he was the child’s father. He claimed that the Apple Lisa was not named for her, and had his team come up with the phrase “Local Integrated Systems Architecture” as an alternative explanation for the project’s name.[1][4] Decades later, Jobs admitted that “obviously, it was named for my daughter.”[1]
Concerning his place at Apple during the early years:
In 1976, Wozniak invented the Apple I computer and showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it. Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer (now called Apple Inc.) in the garage of Jobs’s Los Altos home on Crist Drive.[47] Wayne stayed only a short time, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the active primary cofounders of the company.[48] The two decided on the name “Apple” after Jobs returned from the All One Farm commune in Oregon and told Wozniak about his time spent in the farm’s apple orchard.[49] A neighbor on Crist Drive recalled Jobs as an odd individual who would greet his clients “with his underwear hanging out, barefoot and hippie-like.”[24] Another neighbor, Larry Waterland, who had just earned his PhD in chemical engineering at Stanford, recalled dismissing Jobs’s budding business: ” ‘You punched cards, put them in a big deck,’ he said about the mainframe machines of that time. ‘Steve took me over to the garage. He had a circuit board with a chip on it, a DuMont TV set, a Panasonic cassette tape deck and a keyboard. He said, ‘This is an Apple computer.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ I dismissed the whole idea.'”[24] Jobs’s friend from Reed College and India, and an early Apple employee, Daniel Kottke, recalled that he “was the only person who worked in the garage … Woz would show up once a week with his latest code. Steve Jobs didn’t get his hands dirty in that sense.” Kottke also stated that much of the early work took place in Jobs’s kitchen, where he spent hours on the phone trying to find investors for the company.[24]
And in another place:
According to Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak “Steve didn’t ever code. He wasn’t an engineer and he didn’t do any original design…”[184][185]Daniel Kottke, one of Apple’s earliest employees and a college friend of Jobs’s, stated that “Between Woz and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing person.”[186]
Denial is the major weakness of the Exhorter. Steve Jobs marketed; he found investors; he was concerned with appearance, right down to his Black Turtleneck, Levi 501’s, New Balance 991’s, and the look and feel of his tech, including the streamlining of the music industry, not its transformation; he was the face of the company; he denied that anything was wrong with his health; and he denied himself the treatment that could have saved his life from the only curable form of pancreatic cancer in existence.
And concerning the Reality Distortion Field:
The RDF was said by Andy Hertzfeld to be Steve Jobs’s ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement and persistence. RDF was said to distort an audience’s sense of proportion and scales of difficulties and made them believe that the task at hand was possible. Jobs could also use the RDF to appropriate other’s ideas as his own, sometimes proposing an idea to its originator after dismissing it the week before.[3]
The term has extended in industry to other managers and leaders who try to convince their employees to become passionately committed to projects without regard to the overall product or to competitive forces in the market. It also has been used with regard to hype for products that are not necessarily connected with any one person.[7] Bill Clinton‘s charisma has been called a reality distortion field.[8] The chess champion Bobby Fischer was said to have a “Fischer aura” surrounding him that disoriented Boris Spassky and other opponents.[9] The term has been associated with Donald Trump‘s approach to running his 2016 campaign for United States President.[10]
Financial Times used the term when describing Elon Musk.[11]
In short, Steve was an Exhorter, Woz is a Teacher, and Apple is a Diamond Business.
PLACES THAT LIKELY HAVE THE REDEMPTIVE GIFT OF EXHORTER
Los Angeles, Detroit, Manhattan, Chicago, Italy, France, California, Cape Town (South Africa), Argentina, and the continent of South America.
COMPANIES AND INDUSTRIES IN THIS ARENA
Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), Walt Disney, Google, Coca-Cola,
I still think that South America, of the seven continents, with its flamboyant, loud-mouthed, communicative, colorful, gloriously Spanish-speaking cultures, is Exhorter.
And this list reflects many sparkly and lovely traits of the Exhorter DNA, in addition to demonstrating various degrees of success and failure at negotiating the pitfalls of the Exhorter.
My first experience with the Redemptive Gifts, in college, led me to think I was an Exhorter, thanks to a sermon delivered at Madison Street Baptist Church of Starke, Florida, by Jeff W. Crook. However, I later recognized I walked in some strong exceptions to the rule.
So, after I provide a list of the Exhorter traits, I will propose a theory and I will be happy to consider alternatives.
BASIC TRAITS OF AN EXHORTER
NOTE: As with all other Redemptive Gifts, there are deep exceptions to the following traits, and these form a generalized, average picture of the Exhorter. The best way to address your particular gift is to talk with Father, address your own spirit, and consider which set flows most naturally. One of the seven will fit the most naturally.
1) Exhorters are generally friendly, sociable, relational, enjoy dealing with other people, and are, broadly speaking, the most horizontal of the gifts.
2) Exhorters hunt relentlessly for the key to a person’s heart in order to have an on-ramp to engage relationally at a deep level with people.
3) Exhorters, as well as Prophets, and I would argue Mercies, are the most verbal of the gifts. While Mercies need to ascertain the trustworth of the audience in question, and Prophets typically speak without reference to the opinions of their audience, Exhorters will take their daily unused quota of words, build a relationship with someone very quickly and engage in expanding their circle of influence. There is little more they enjoy more than a good conversation, and they will form communities with even the smallest of time allotments.
4) Their capacity to influence other people and marshal other people to their cause is often overwhelming. They typically enjoy a large personality that is hard to ignore and makes a strong impression.
5) Because of this, many Exhorters are outstanding at the resource of relationships. They have a built-in capacity to draw people into their sphere of influence. Therefore, as a result of their design, their lives, in the words of my ex-pastor, are “one big network”. Odds are, if they don’t know how to fix the problem you have, then they will know someone, or they will know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who will be an expert in your given problem. It is in this capacity to network, that we find a great strength and a a great weakness.
6) On the negative side, Exhorters, if they are not walking in a high level of character and integrity, can (please note I did not say WILL, as there is no guarantee any of us will or will not stumble) default to the pitfall of controlling others through that influence.
7) Many Exhorters that function in a low level can often move from a place where they are peers to a place where they are in charge. With the Aztecs, who were Exhorter as a group, “generally conquest followed commerce”.
8) They are often hardwired in such a way that they can easily move from a peer relationship to a place where they are the dominant partner in the relationship. And if they don’t learn how to walk in self-control, then they can leave others feeling used or overwhelmed. The Exhorter must be careful. One of the challenges of the Exhorter is to have peers in partnership.
9) A reason for this is that Exhorters don’t realize they are doing it, and they don’t do it with a bad intention. It often has to be pointed out, and if they are going to have healthy relationships, then they need to be able to have relationships with people from whom they can receive real and blunt correction.
10) Expanding on the reason for this, unless the Exhorter is willing to walk in their principle (which I will get to later), there is often a disconnect between reality, actions, and intentions, Bill Clinton’s behavior during the Lewinsky Scandal was vintage soulish or carnal Exhorter walking in non-reality, “It wasn’t adultery because I didn’t mean it as adultery”. Many times, a low-level Exhorter does not view their actions as wrong because there is no malice in their heart toward the person with whom they are interacting.
11) I think part of the reason Exhorters don’t understand or realize or have a difficulty walking in the threefold Exhorter Principle, is that their root iniquity is the opposite of Reality, which is Denial. There is a denial that kills the best of the Exhorter. Walt Disney had it, Steve Jobs had it, Hitler had it, FDR had it, and others.
12) Back on the positive side of things, the Exhorter usually puts a premium on the concept of presentation. They like to present a package that looks good, is appealing to the eye, is stylish, etc. There is a concern for not just THAT they are presenting themselves, but also the MANNER in which they are presenting themselves. Exhorters have a thing with appearance, and the initial visibility.
13) Related to this, the Exhorter loves a variety of color and sparkle. Many of your Exhorters are known for their clothing, jewelry, and ride, all of which is designed to present a certain image to those with whom they interact.
14) Many times, your Exhorters are found in arenas where they are going to engage with the public and LOTS of it. In ministry circles, Exhorters move naturally toward evangelism and communication with large groups.
15) City-reaching efforts are typically spearheaded by an Exhorter, Ruler, or Prophet.
16) The Principle for the Exhorter is threefold in its manifestation. First, the Principle of Pain and Suffering. Second, the Principle of Sowing and Reaping. Third, the Principle of Reality. If the Exhorter does not have a firm and strong willingness to walk in Reality, hunt for Reality, understand Sowing and Reaping, and then embrace the pain, then most of the negative manifestations will rear their ugly heads. There has to be a staunch hunting for a realistic vision and a realistic understanding of how long a particular vision is going to take to execute, or else the Exhorter is going to find a great deal of frustration.
17) They have an astounding ability to form community quickly. They are the social glue that helps build community easily in a group situation.
18) Exhorters, whether immature or mature, love to talk, and talk a lot. They have an minimum quota of words that they have to get out each day. They were designed to connect, talk, and socialize. They need to have a regular time where they are dealing with others in a way no other RG needs.
19) The big movement is that this is G-d’s choice for the world-changers. They can draw in and communicate to a large cross-section of diverse people, and they cross every kind of barrier, cultural, religious, social, economic, and make friends easily.
20) Exhorters are designed to understand and work in principles and make those cause-and-effect relationships known to others in the body. Moses, Solomon, and Paul were designed and expressed huge gluts of principles in the bodies of Scripture that they authored, precisely because principles are what make up reality.
21) When a peer relationship is upended because one of the parties pulls out in front and grabs for a superior position in what was once a thriving horizontal relationship, the upending of that relationship can feel like a betrayal. This is a place where the Exhorter has to be careful and demonstrate a huge amount of self-control.
22) If an Exhorter makes reality, principles, pain and suffering, sowing and reaping, and looking for what is really happening over a perception of what is happening, then they are on their way to maturity. The problem is, hunting for and demanding reality and refusing to walk in betrayal, is VERY painful, and it requires them to walk in and embrace a harder life than any of the other gifts.
23) Typically, Exhorters can crack open the Bible and grab the revelation that is missing from an embryonic body of truth. They are good at crafting the harsh and blunt message that the Prophet first conceives. This parallels their love of right presentation. I have two friends, one who lives in South Africa, and another who lives in Oklahoma, who are able to spend five minutes in the Bible and the revelation just flows to them. These are both Exhorters. It’s like they have a built-in anointing to just gravitate toward these massive storehouses of truth.
24) Exhorters enjoy enforcing a sense of fair play in a group situation, because it helps build communities, which can lead to a quicker achievement of a group goal. I have one friend in Texas who exemplifies this dynamic of the Exhorter.
25) If you are an Exhorter, your goal must be to embrace what might turn into a painful process. You need a real set of friends who can be authentic with you, call you out on your junk, and you still be able to reject the spirit of rejection that damages so many friendships between Exhorters and their friends. You need a Prophet who can be gentle but frank with you and cover your blindspots, and you need a Giver who can point out through their strong discernment the issues you might not see. You will thrive leading communities, but you will thrive most to the degree that you foster peer relationships with equals that can speak heartily and realistically into your life, and help you set realistic goals for the outworking of your vision. And you need to stand before G-d and renounce and fight this temptation to overwhelm and control relationships. There is a strong capacity you have innate to influence large groups, and you want to influence them toward the right vision, G-d’s vision, and not just something that is good but not the best.
26) The last point is the best. Your are designed by G-d to FLOW IN REVELATION OF THE NATURE OF G-D! Knowing who He is is the key to unlocking everything that is the best about you. Knowing intimately the names of G-d and the purposes of G-d and the heart of G-d and the affection of G-d will provide you with a large volcano that will be life-giving to others.
Exhorters, I am in awe of what G-d has put into y’all. It is deep, hearty, and lovely.
And, my brother is a certified, vintage, card-carrying Exhorter.
May your tribe, Sun, Moon, And Stars, increase.
Holy Roar, The Passion “Translation”, and Works that are Published Apart from the Larger Community: Birthright Without Destiny
“It is possible to posses your birthright in isolation but you will only become a person of destiny in the context of community.” -Arthur Burk-
It appears that a dearth of publications have been hitting the shelves apart from a generous dose of scrutiny, and I am tired of seeing the church fall off the cliff because it was exhorted to believe something that was not true or dubious at best. We fall for stuff only to get hoodwinked in the process by weak scholarship and shoddy writing.
HOLY ROAR: SHODDY WRITING THAT ASKS FOR NO EDITORIAL HELP
Recently, worship leader Chris Tomlin, Darren Whitehead “sort of published” a book, titled “Holy Roar” pertaining worship that deals with several words that are recognized as related to praise in particular. I say “sort of published”, because the book:
- only relied on Strong’s concordance for its reference of the meanings of words,
- printed all the Hebrew backwards (for reference, Hebrew is written right-to-left instead of left-to-right.
- made the book avaliable by publishing it through a organization that appears to be little more than an accounting firm, which as a result of #2 above, does not appear to have been thoroughly edited by anyone familiar with biblical languages.
THE PASSION “TRANSLATION”: WEAK SCHOLARSHIP? WE CANNOT TELL.
Similarly, though not in an identical vein, Brian Simmons is in the process of working through translating The Passion Translation. There is a problem with that word “Translation”; the Passion does not even come close to being one, and reads more like a paraphrase.
The issue for Simmons’ work is that it appears to be governed by weak or incomplete scholarship. A couple of elements speak to this issue.
ONE TRANSLATOR OR MANY? WE CANNOT TELL
First, we cannot tell if the Passion is a single-author work or the work of a group of people. In response to the question, “How many translators are working on The Passion Translation? Is this a single-author translation?”, the site responds:
“Although Dr. Simmons is the lead translator of The Passion…, he is part of a team that gives oversight and accountability to the translation project within the historical missionary translation tradition. “
“Lead translator” implies a team.
Single-author translations have deep, historical roots. In the early church Jerome composed the Latin Vulgate; during the Reformation Martin Luther translated the original biblical languages into German; William Tyndale’s English translation later impacted the King James Version. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries there have been many single-person translations, including the translation of J. B. Phillips, J. N. Darby’s Darby Bible, The Complete Jewish Bible by Dr. David H. Stern, Robert Young’s Literal Translation, Kenneth Wuest’sThe New Testament: An Expanded Translation, The Kingdom New Testament by British New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, a translation of the New Testament by American philosophical theologian David Bentley Hart, and more.
The above paragraph, however, appears to be couching The Passion as a single-author translation. So which is it?
Others such as the New International Version, the New Living Translation, the New American Standard, the English Standard Version, and the New Revised Standard Version list the group of people assigned to translate that particular version. However, neither Broadway Press’s website nor The Passion Website list any such group.
By comparison, the lack of disclosure of the team while the claim there is a team lands dishonestly.
And there is a long history of the Charismatic/Pentecostal movement and ministers shelving issues or hiding from reality rather than allowing themselves to be held accountable and deal with the issues.
BADLY TRANSLATED
Second, the way the Passion handled the Song of Solomon is maddening.
There is a long twin tradition that pairs the interpretation of types analogies and shadows in the Song of Solomon alongside the sexual, intimate, and erotic.
Paul addressed the binary between Christ/Church and husband/wife in Ephesians 5…what applies to the one applies to the other. There are principles that apply in the closeness of marriage that apply to our relationship with Christ.
And then there are those that do not.
Any bible translation that purports to be a bible translation that:
- substitutes “breasts” with “pure faith and love resting over your heart” (Song 4:5),
- substitutes “neck” with “inner strength” (Song 4:4),
- substitutes “myrrh” with “suffering love” (Song 4:6-that is gross commentary given there is so much more wrapped up in myrrh than suffering love),
- substitutes “[the king’s] chambers” with “his cloud-filled chamber”, and
- Misses the references to the acts and agents of sexual love and instead subs in references to the tabernacle.
is not a translation in even the loosest form of the word.
Simmons misses half the point. Paul’s words in Ephesians 5 pertaining to marriage between husband and wife is that he draws parallels between that reality and the reality between Christ and the Church; it is a both/and relationship that is read in the text, not an either/or.
Simmons makes the case for one interpretation, the typical, at the expense of the other, the textual, while both are critical to the work of reading Song of Solomon.
OTHER CONCERNS WITH THE PASSION:
I have some other concerns with The Passion Paraphrase (calling it what it is):
1. Competent, conservative, evangelical, Bible-believing, full-gospel scholars and preachers are not lacking to vet the work Simmons does, yet he provides no such list of scholars who could even recommend this work.. I think of Gordon Fee, Craig Keener, Jack Hayford, Craig Keener, Ben Witherington III, Grant Wacker, Ben Aker, Jim Hernando, Joe Casteberry, Roger Cotton, and others.
2. Simmons argues that various scholars have made single-author translations, such as Martin Luther, J.B. Phillips, N.T. Wright, etc. However, the lion’s share of these authors have had the majority of their works vetted in the context of community repeatedly. Simmons on the other hand is a relative unknown to the Church outside of Charismatic/Pentecostal circles.
3. “And adopting the same stringent guidelines used through his missionary work, including teamwork and accountability, his work has been theologically reviewed by professionals such as Greg S. Greig (Ph.D.), Jeremy Bouma (Th.M.), and others.” Neither of these is a known scholar, and the first is unknown to Google.
THE OVERARCHING THEME
There is a single problem that both Holy Roar and The Passion Paraphrase are missing: community. These works are not being done in the context of the community that is designed to bring each to a place of excellence.
Church, we JUST got done celebrating a reconciliation with our community. We cannot reconcile with the community that wants to live in non-reality and isolation.
This is not the season for isolation but for community.
We cannot have community if SUPERSTAR LEADERS OF THE FAITH have such a high and huge platform that they are incapable of asking for help from garden-variety, bread-and-butter believers who are competent to handle the Hebrew Text, let them know that “hey, you aren’t handling the Scriptures right”,or “there is more to this passage than just the clouds of the temple”, or “for crying out loud, your freakin’ Hebrew is backwards”, “the only reference you cited for your Hebrew is Strong’s Concordance?!”
I am not sorry to say this. Song of Solomon saved my second marriage before it started. Before I got married the first time around, I had a man-to-man conversation with a mentor, Joe Castleberry, who is the President of Northwest Unversity in Seattle, Washington, and the man who taught me Greek. He told me what Song of Solomon was really about.
He explained that the references to “hands dripping with myrrh” and “aloes” and sachets of myrrh was designed as a set of principles to help a couple in the bedroom. He recommended to me G. Lloyd Carr’s commentary on the Song, and gave me the best marriage advice any man ever got. And I have used that advice and revelation (hello, Teacher) to walk out that aspect of my marriage. NOTE: for those of you who think by this point that I am obsessed with sex, just stop.
There is a deep affection woven into the Song that Simmons failed to capture because the community that should have been holding him accountable for the whole depth of the text either did not want to or was not allowed to; we have the textual proof that they didn’t. Tomlin and Whitehead got so much wrong because they didn’t want to collaborate with anyone who could have caught the EMBARASSING mistakes of grammar. I will cite from Unsettled Christianity, the blog of a friend of mine who is a Teacher:
On page 118 in the conclusion, the authors have a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. meant for discussion within a group:
“Worship at its best is a social experience with people of all levels of life coming together to realize their oneness and unity under God. Whenever the church, consciously or unconsciously, caters to one class, it loses the spiritual force of the ‘whosoever will, let him come’ doctrine, and is in danger of becoming little more than a social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.”
This is a very important thought that we will revisit at the end of this post. On to the Hebrew…kind of.
First, it must be confessed, that the Hebrew is all wrong in this book. I mean orthographically. 100%. Wrong. All of it. This is embarrassing for Bowyer and Bow, the book’s publisher. It is common for pastors to be unfamiliar with BH and simply copy and paste from their favorite Bible software (Logos in this case, as indicated in the Notes section of the book). But, I find it unforgiveable in the publishing world to print a book meant to introduce English speakers to Biblical Hebrew concepts and yet print 100% of the Hebrew words completely backwards! There is not one Hebrew word in this book that is typeset or printed correctly. One can only assume that Bowyer and Bow did not arrange for a proof-reader who is competent in Biblical Hebrew. This is unprofessional and sloppy. I’m sure there are students who would have loved the chance to proof-read a Chris Tomlin book for free. Now imagine all the young or hip Christian readers who will take this book to their local tattoo artist and get incorrect Hebrew inked backwards onto their bodies. While the MLK quote is enough to justify the price of the book, this mistake is enough to justify a full refund.
The reason these books are horrible is that they are not done in the context of community. There was no one to catch the mistakes Tomlin and Whitehead made, and Simmons, with a PhD from Wagner Leadership Institute, may not have felt like he needed any help. How many people do you know in the Apostolic and Prophetic Movement that feel like they need any help? I rest my case.
The problem is that, so many marriages, which is the root of community, are lacking two things together.
1) a healthy understanding of how deeply Christ loves them.
2) a healthy understanding of the principles in Song of Solomon that help govern our behavior in the bedroom.
And we are not taught that because we think its way better to spiritualize everything. For crying out loud, we call the interpretation that sees Christ in everything the “spiritual” interpretation. And we hunt for Christ in the Song of Solomon AT THE EXPENSE of seeing that, as men, our hands should be dripping with myrrh.
And “let him kiss me with the kisses of his MOUTH for your love is better than wine”.
I mean, come on. Seriously? Marriage and sex in marriage is supposed to be a two person worship service of G-d Most High, where we advance in our birthright as a couple, and I am sick of translations that sanitize breasts out of the translations and remove the effective and virile metaphors from the text in favor of explaining via overnarrow interpretation what we think myrrh means. Such poor translation mangles the text and causes us to miss out on our birthright in sexual expression as married couples.
The Song was meant to not just be this grand allegory of Christ and the church. It was also meant to be our sex manual.
65 other books, and you don’t think G-d didn’t go out of his way to PROPHESY THROUGH THE MOUTH OF THE EXHORTER-SON-OF-A-MERCY SOLOMON the right way to handle sex?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Translations are meant to be done in community. If the word says “breasts”, you translate “breasts”. If the word discusses bodily exploration, then you engage with your covenant spouse in those things.
But enough with the dishonest, sanitized, Charismatic garbage that is done apart from our community.
And enough with the mishandling of the biblical languages, because we are afraid of an editor catching an embarrasing mistake.
I started this blog post with a quote from Arthur Burk. The point was we were designed to walk as part of a community or a series or set of communities. That is the way we walk into our destiny. Like Tomlin and Whitehead needed an editor to catch their mistakes, and like Simmons needed an actual team that was known to the church to produce an actual translation instead of a paraphrase that maquerades as a translation but is not a translation, so we need a community to take our birthright to the best expression we can take it on all points.
Husbands and wives, the metaphors and types of Song of Solomon are social keys to possessing the sexual dynamic of your birthrights as married couples….
And let me close with a verse from Mark that pertains to this whole post.
FOR THIS CAUSE shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;
Emphasize those first three words. Your marriage has a cause. Your life together has a cause. Your expressions in the bedroom have a cause, a purpose, a reason, and a design. And your Bible, darn it, was translated from the original tongues for a reason. And You do not need a gaudy Charismatic paraphrase that really is one part paraphrase and one part interpretation to tell you how to translate terms. What you need is the Holy Spirit, and the Son, and the Father themselves who were designed to be your Interpreters all along.
So, bottom line, go possess your birthright, and go read the text in a way that conveys the many layers of what is written there, not some man’s single interpretation.