Copyright © 2007 Ron Schwartz
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Domesticating Christians

July 4, 2007

By Ron and Karen Schwartz

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Fruitfulness And Natural Order

Romans 1:26-27 KJV

26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

In this passage, we find repeated the phrase “the natural use.”  The word “natural” comes from the Greek word phusikos, which means “produced by nature or inborn (as in instinctive).”  The words “physical” and “physics” are derived from this word.  It has to do with what and how things occur in nature.  Since the Hebrew language contained no word for describing “natural order,” it is odd to find a Jew using a term that had a clear connection to Greek pagan culture.  The Greeks view of natural order (physics) didn’t include a single God orchestrating the balance of nature.  To them, natural order was like a great machine that was once set in motion and since then continued on its way.  The Jews thought of the physical universe as the world that God created, governed, and sustained.  Nature was the manifestation of God’s glory and goodness.

When Paul wrote of “natural order,” he was referring to the creation account.  During creation, God used the phrases “after his kind” or “after their kind” fifteen times to describe procreation.  Every plant, animal, fish, and bird reproduces “after their kind” by following “the natural use” as it was created.  This was the “natural order” of the physical universe.  It is interesting that when God made mankind, He did not tell man to procreate “after his kind.”  Instead, God referred to creation of mankind using the words “after our likeness (Genesis 1:26).”  Though mankind would reproduce “after his kind,” his purpose was to reproduce after God’s kind.  Therefore, every plant and animal spoken into existence during creation has value and purpose in this physical universe only.  But mankind is different.  Not only does he have a physical purpose [i.e., to “replenish the earth (Genesis 1:28)”], but also a spiritual one [i.e., to become “the image of God (Genesis 1:27)”].  Mankind tends to be a blend of the physical and spiritual.  Take for example the act of procreation.

All the millions of different species of insects, animals, fish, and birds, are born with an instinct for how to procreation.  However, many behaviorologists question whether or not this is true of mankind.  Though born with a strong sex drive, most (if not all) children seem to need instruction as to how sex is actually performed.  Why is this?  When it comes to procreation, God has given to mankind the instinct to reproduce after God’s kind, NOT after his own kind.  Wherever you go in this world you will find this instinct.  Every culture that has ever existed worshipped some form of god.  Even in the most remote regions of the Amazon, in places where no civilized person has ever visited and where the natives have not had other human contact for centuries, you will discover that they worship a god.  Mankind is born with an intrinsic desire to serve God.  It is his destiny.  It is his “natural order.”  Natural order is important to God because it often reflects the spiritual order God has established for his people. 

In this first chapter of Romans, Paul begins to describe perversion.  He tells how that some men “did change the natural use into that which is against nature (Romans 1:26).”  He is, of course, describing homosexuality.  But let’s take this idea to its logical conclusion.  When men change the “natural use [order]” that God established, what happens?  Nothing, and that’s the problem.  The “natural use [order],” which Paul describes, is for the purpose of procreation.  When this “use” is perverted, there can be no procreation.  Men who change this order not only disregard God design but do so to satisfy their own twisted pleasure.

Paul goes on to write that since creation and natural order are the manifest goodness and glory of God (e.g., the Hebrew concept of “natural order”), when men pervert the “natural use [order],” they “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man (Romans 1:23).”  He repeats himself a couple of verses later when he writes that men “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator (Romans 1:25).”  Perversion - to change the order that God established – is mankind humiliating the God of the universe.

The idea here is that mankind cannot go against “natural order,” even though it feels good, without insulting the God who created it.  It is not man’s prerogative to use nature any way he so chooses.  We understand the natural implications, so let’s now consider the spiritual.

Since mankind has both a physical and a spiritual purpose, mankind has the ability to pervert in both a physical and a spiritual manner.  When men go “against nature (Romans 1:26),” they offend God and lose the ability to procreate.  In addition, when men go against the Spirit, they lose their ability to be spiritually fruitful.

The “natural use [order]” God established for the Church is for Christ to be the spiritual head.  This “order” allows the Church to experience spiritual procreation.  But just as they did with nature, men have sought to change (i.e., pervert) the “natural use [order]” by placing men as the spiritual heads of their churches.  This parallels the natural perversion of “men with men.”  Men were never meant to be the spiritual heads of men.  This perversion is why the church is virtually barren of God’s power and unprofitable (or unfruitful) to this world.  Because of its “men with men” perversion, the church no longer has the power to spiritually procreate, and just as appalling, the church is guilty of spiritual sodomy.

There is only one solution.  Churches must unseat their pastors as their spiritual heads.  Church bodies must learn to function the way God intended: with the Holy Spirit in charge and in control.  Most pastors claim that the Holy Spirit is in control but funnels this control through them.  This is spiritual perversion.  God does not want or need anyone filtering His authority and leadership with His people.

Knowledge And Natural Order

Hosea 4:6 KJV

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

It’s difficult to image a time when God’s people were without knowledge.  In fact, since the day God first called Abram out of the land of Ur, the knowledge of who God is and what He wants has continued to accumulate.  At the time of Hosea, over 1,500 years had elapsed, the majority of the Old Testament had been written, and volumes of commentary on the law were produced.  Some of the greatest men of the Old Testament, like Moses, David, and Elijah, had lived and died.  They provided valuable insight into the mind of God.  One thing that God’s people were not lacking was knowledge.

Not all knowledge is good.  Take, for example, the domestication of animals.  When the “natural use [order]” of an animal’s environment is changed, it can have a devastating effect on the animal’s ability to thrive in its native environment.  When an animal is domesticated, it often loses the capacity to survive in its own native habitat.  Animals that are raised in a domestic environment can actually become a victim if reintroduced to its natural setting.  Some will actually struggle with its captors to prevent being released.  They often experience terrible fear of being integrated into the environment for which they are designed to live because they no longer see their natural environment as their native environment.

The word “domesticate” means: “To tame (usually creating a dependency so that the animal loses its ability to live in the wild), especially by generations of breeding.  To adapt (a plant) so as to be cultivated by and beneficial to human beings.   To take (something foreign, unfamiliar, etc.) for one's own use or purposes.  To make more ordinary, familiar, and acceptable.”

The goal of all institutional churches is to domesticate Christians.  As a result, most Christians now lack the ability to survive and thrive in the environment that God created for them.  Most Christians read the accounts of the New Testament and wonder why the Christianity as once practiced is so vastly different from the Christianity presented by the institutional church.  They have come to accept that things are just different now, and the current church system is the natural evolution of the church.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Christians now view their native environment (i.e., the Christianity described in the scripture) as a foreign environment, and they mistake the institutional environment in which they now live as their native environment.  Once again, this is a twisting of the “natural use” God purposed for His church.  Like domesticated animals, Christians today need their pastor-farmers to provide for them.  They cannot survive on their own.  Farmers are only too happy to accommodate because the number of Christians they feed amounts to the number of cattle they own.  Christians are beneficial to them (i.e., definition of “domesticate”) and good for their own use or purposes (i.e., definition of “domesticate”).  Christians have become the livestock of churches.  The scripture describes it as follows:

2 Peter 2:1-3 KJV

1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

2 And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

Revelation 18:11-13KJV

11 And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:

12 The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,

13 And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.

Many people are offended to read a note that compares their pastor to a farmer and the congregation of which they’re a part to cattle.  To them their pastor is a benevolent person who would never deliberately cause harm to anyone.  They believe that their pastor simply loves everyone.  Let’s get real.  Most men who are involved with ministry have chosen this career path because they felt compelled to serve God.  Their decision to become a minister was not because they love people or want to serve people.  The problem is found in the institutional church culture in which we live.  In this culture the only way to serve God is to become involved with ministry.  As a result there are vast multitudes of people “entering ministry” who have little respect for people and their needs, for family units, and for the needs of the community.  They are often arrogant and look down on people. They simply enter “the ministry” because they want to serve God.  Their motives may be noble, but their actions can be devastating to people.  When men “enter the ministry” to serve God the goal becomes that of “ministering for the Lord,” and not to serve people.  People are merely a means to their end.  Their goal is very much self-serving – it is for their spiritual development and fulfillment.  This is why in most churches people tend to spin spiritually in the same place for years while the pastor grows and often jumps from church to church following his ministry.  It’s his welfare he’s thinking about.  People are no more than cattle on their ministry farms.  That is why the goal of most every pastor is to get a bigger farm.  If their goal was really to help people then the size of their church would not be important, but only the spiritual welfare of the people.

Like farmers, pastors have come to realize that the more Christian livestock they possess, the more mindless cattle they have to increase the size of their farm.  Christianity in institutional churches is NOT about evangelizing the world but about farm business.  Farms have needs.  So Christian cattle must give of themselves sacrificially to keep the farm running.  God said this concerning pastor (shepherds)/farmers:

Ezekiel 34:1-3 KJV

1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

2 Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?

3 Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock.

These were farmers who were in the business of farming, not shepherding.  They only had the title of “shepherd.”

The word “domesticate” also means “to make more ordinary.”  Only ordinary people who lack the spiritual power of the Holy Spirit are content to remain penned up on a church farm and eating the farmer’s rations, rather than thriving in the freedom of God’s Spirit.  It becomes the goal of every pastor-farmer to convince Christians that they cannot survive in the wild.  They must come into their church/barn, find a place in one of the mindless stalls, and survive on the rations the pastor-farmer gives.  They are just ordinary people with extraordinary pastor-farmers.

Contemporary preachers and institutional churches do not want the extraordinary Christians.  Extraordinary Christians refuse to stay penned up and under the pastor-farmer’s control.  They break through the fences and often take other Christians with them.  This is why so many mature Christians are unable find a church or are unwelcome in the ones they attend.

When you domesticate animals, they generally lose the ability to survive on their own.  They become victims.  Many Christians who attend a church meeting as they were originally held don’t know what to do.  Like domesticated animals, they lack the ability to find their own food.  So they sit and wait to be fed.  They are used to men telling them what God wants, encouraging them, and giving them instruction.  They cannot imagine going to God on their own, the way it was meant to be.  So they fight against any attempt to reintroduce them into their native environment.  They have grown dependent upon the safety of the church-farm and the provisions of the pastor-farmer.  We see this often.  We see Christians visit who don’t want to do any preparation before a meeting.  They don’t understand what it means to “wait” upon the Lord.  They are used to the fast food/fast paced meeting that is completely orchestrated by men.  That has become their new habitat and anything else must be wrong.

Of the untold hundreds of millions of professing Christians in the Western nations, the overwhelming majority has become domesticated through centuries of breeding.  Churches have bred a type of Christian who is dependant on the church-farm and who is slowly choking out the original breed of Christians that were established by Christ and His apostles.  This new breed is not the victorious church that challenges the gates of hell, and it never will be.  The institutional church cannot use Christians who refuse to be this breed of livestock.  So the true Christians are methodically weeded out until only the Tares remain.  Just as Tares have many similarities to Wheat, most church-farm livestock have many of the characteristics of Christians.  For them to take the name “Christian” is an embarrassment to God.

If you are a pastor-farmer who considers yourself a Christian leader, you have nothing to brag about.  You are responsible for the apostate condition of your churches.  You have transformed the training ground for God’s army into a domestic cattle farm for your own benefit.

You cannot change the native environment of Christians without changing their behavior.  The word “domesticate” means “to tame,” and that is what you have done to the people of God.  People who are called to be overcomers you have set as spectators in your churches.  You have transformed an army into an audience.  You have tamed the warriors.  You have tamed their desire to conquer.  You have tamed their desire to live the victorious lives God wants for them.  You have turned God’s chosen warriors into your cattle.  Enjoy it now.  You will have explaining to do when you face God.

Subdue Or Subdued

Genesis 1:28 KJV

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

The word translated “subdue” is the word “kabash,” which means “to tread down, to conquer, subjugate, violate,” and is translated as “bring into bondage, force, keep under, subdue, and bring into subjection” in the King James Version.  Mankind as both a physical and spiritual being was ordained to subdue (conquer) his natural environment as well as his spiritual universe.  But, once again, we find that the men have changed the “natural use” of what God destined for His people.  They cannot be “subduers” (i.e., conquerors) and live peacefully in the farming community of the institutional church.  God’s people are forced to choose: do they want their native environment of conquering and overcoming, or do they want “taming” down – dumbing down - into mindless church-farm livestock?

Jesus said, “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Matthew 7:13-14).”  He wasn’t referring to the path of this world as being the “broad… way, that leadeth to destruction.”  He was referring to the religious system that is put in place by pastor-farmers.  How do we know this?  Read the next verse.  “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves (Matthew 7:13-14).”  The broad… way is NOT the path this world takes, but the safe domestic path that is provided by institutional church.  All it will cost you is your life.  By taking that path, you will never again be able to survive in the spiritual domain that God destined for you.  You will be like, or stay like, all the other useless Christian cattle that fill Western church-farms.  You will exist, not for God, but for meeting the pastor’s needs.

Institutional churches and their pastor-farmers have created the “broad way,” and in doing so, they have made Christianity irrelevant.  Individual Christians are irrelevant. They are everywhere but cannot do or change anything.  They are helpless to change our government or schools, and just why is that?  It’s because they are no longer warriors.  They are as irrelevant as cattle.  Christians go to church only to be fed, and they provide no other useful purpose.  Would this world really be any different without them?  How much of a difference do cows make to our society?  They are just being fattened up for when the farmer wants to slaughter them.

Christians not only act irrelevant, but they have become fully convinced that they actually are irrelevant.  They have become conditioned into believing that the only useful tool in the church is the pastor-farmer.  And that their only function is to provide physical and financial support for the pastor-farmer’s business.  Its all a lie perpetrated by the pastor-farmers to keep Christians domesticated.

Conclusion

Many Christians are frustrated by their powerless lives and feeling like dry cisterns.  Their problem is that they truly believe that their institutional church-farms are their answer.  They do not realize that it is in these very church-farms in which they place their hope and trust where the problem lies.  They will never become what their heart tells them they are destined to be as long as they remain locked away as cattle in the church-barn.  The real church is now so foreign to them that they don’t know how to survive in it.  They actually fight to resist any change to the church-farm that might bring it closer to being a real church.  It’s a vicious circle.  They want to change but resist change when they see it.  Their knowledge is corrupt.

God said that His “people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” This has led many Christians to assume that knowledge is the answer. They talk themselves into believing that their church-farms do not need to change and neither do their pastor-farmers.  What they need is just more and better information.  They have come to believe that their spiritual health is measured by the amount of knowledge they possess.  It’s not the amount of knowledge but the type of knowledge that is important.

When animals are taken from their native habitat and placed in a domestic setting, their native knowledge becomes replaced with a new knowledge of their domestic setting.  Animals learn to adapt to their new domestic environment.  The original knowledge of how they were meant to live is lost.  It is no longer necessary.  In fact, retaining knowledge of how they lived in the wild can often cause them problems in domestication.  Farmers need to beat/discipline their old knowledge out of them.  The new knowledge of how to feed and conform in domestication is all they need.  

True Christians who desire to be the subduer/conqueror that God destined them to be are incompatible with institutional churches.  They are incompatible with the church setting that casts them as spectators, like cattle in stalls.  Christians like this have sacrificed their knowledge of how to move and operate in the Spirit for the safety of their church-farm and the mindless duty of being fed by their pastor-farmer.  They believe that only their pastor-farmer is blessed with the gift of feeding.  So they have laid down their swords and armor and quietly conformed to becoming livestock.  They no longer know how to survive and thrive in the environment God designed them to conquer.  They are no longer God’s warriors against the land of spiritual darkness.  They live now in the safety of their stall, and think that this is what God destined for them.  God’s people have quite literally been “destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

Yet deep within the hearts of many of God’s people is a burning desire to conquer.  They sense their untamed hearts saying, “This isn’t right!  This isn’t how it was meant to be!”  Many don’t know what to do, so they pursue a career in the ministry, just to become themselves a pastor-farmer.  They simply follow all the other abusers down the broad path of destruction.

There is a better way!  Let’s begin to reintroduce God’s people to the lives they were meant to live.  Let’s help them to discover their feral hearts.  Let’s end the pastoral control of the local church and turn it back over to the Spirit of God.  Let’s tear down the stalls and help the people of God find their armor.  Let’s repent of the sin of destroying God’s people and army.  Let’s stop playing church and become one.

Amen.