Keith over at Sign of Jonah has written a great article entitled The “Loaded Language” of the Prophetic Movement that talks about something I forgot all about when thinking about the third-wave…..
The “Christian Codewords”, or as Keith called it, “Loaded Language”
No, this is not the typical “Christianese” heard in many churches today. This is an entirely different language that occurs in many different Christian circles and ‘anointing’ in many cases is determined by how much of the ‘Lingo’ you know and speak. In fact, Keith gave a great example of this in both the link to the IHOP glossary page as well as the clichés spoken for their ‘apostolic apologetics’. Instead of ‘apologetics’ for defending their obscure doctrine, maybe they should ‘apologize’ for propagating the horrible pragmatic doctrine the is shallow in theology.
In fact, much of the ‘loaded language’ the church practiced was really adapted from the boardrooms of corporate America and the war-rooms of the military designed as part of the ‘breaking-down’ of the individual to shape them from a thinking person to a ‘corporate clone’. What happened in the church was that the ‘loaded language’ was designed as part of the ‘breaking-down’ of the individual to shape them from a Bible-Based Berean to a ‘Christo-Cultic Clone’.
Where Keith pointed out some excellent real-world situations that do take place within these organizations, one interesting tactic that he did not discuss but I have seen in these types of groups is the following scenario where a high-profile leader in these types of groups is in gross sin and someone out of a truthful and Godly conscience exposes the sin that leadership tries to suppress.
Yes, the one who exposes gets the ‘accuser of the brethren’ and the ‘judge not lest you be judged speeches’ and the ‘Curse of Ham’ scriptures. What happens next is that someone will start prying into the exposer’s life and find some past sin (especially a sin considered to be a ‘worse’ offense within society) committed years ago and already dealt with and bring it out into the open. It is a harsh form of ‘Payback Proselytizing’ designed to (1): Embarrass the exposer to the point where he wished he had never spoken. (2): Use the mentality of ‘you have sin too’, who are you to talk; and the most important of all (3): Attempt to ‘neutralize’ the exposed sin of the leader to purposely divert the attention from the exposed sin of the leader to the newly exposed sin of the exposer viewed by the group as being a ‘worse’ sin even though the Bible treats every sin the same.
When these tactics have failed and people are now questioning to the point of leaving / disassociation with these groups, then the “Christian Curses” / “Holy Hexes” come forth from one of their ‘prophets’ promising death, destruction, generational curses to last for four generations, sicknesses, poverty, divorce, missing the rapture, etc. to come upon the exposer’s family and future descendants.
Another realm of thought I have also seen this is in the areas of signs and wonders. The Toronto Blessing was notorious for their ‘new language’ such as ‘carpet time’ (being slain in the Spirit), ‘an-OINK-ing’ (when the physical manifestations came and the animal sounds manifested, and ’soaking’ (hours in prayer and worship. The ‘new language’ and ‘buzzwords was used to indicate them as being ‘more spiritual’ than other Christians.
Where this comes into play is in the realm of ‘messiness” versus ‘decency and order’. Decency and order is equated to ‘putting God in a box’ while messiness is equated to ‘letting go and letting God’ with the indication and measurement device being ‘the more messy it is, the more of God they are seeing. The video I highlighted in the Apostolic Aerobics blog post I wrote last weekend is the perfect example of the equating of messiness, confusion, disorder, etc. as being more Godly than the Scriptures that call out for decency and order.
