The Twisted Serpent: Part I
Titled: The Twisted Serpent. ©2025 a_joy Art/ajj all rights reserved
Behind. the. Figma
For me, the intersection of love & violence is called the Twisted Serpent. I have an entire arting world around this growing knowledge and curiosity. It comes from my own story and is inspired by the bible. That’s why it gets uncomfortable. I generally don’t enjoy talking about the bible. My perspective on the text isn’t a happy face.
In so many ways, I live in some sort of Christian influenced universe. It lives and shows up even if some people have no clue it’s operating in the dark recesses of culture and all it’s glamorous pickle-faced assumptions. Right now, a particular version of Christianity is more or less front and center as Christian Nationalism and the conundrum of Evangelicalism continues to be studied and questioned.
My story here feels like a weird ride.
My time in Christian space has been somewhat ecumenical. In other words, I’ve plodded through several denominations not really knowing they were very different from one another. In my last round of Christian experience, I ended up with a group of second wave Pentecostals known as the Assemblies of God (Assemblies). Within the Assemblies there was a cell movement called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). At this point in time, I think they prefer to be called INC from the research and work of Brad Christerson and Richard Flory in their book The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders Are Changing the Religious Landscape. I tend to call them NAR-lings.
Within this group is a very large church called Bethel, which is located in Redding, California. Bethel has a couple of things going for it. One is the supernatural school of ministry and the other is the healing rooms. I’ve been to Bethel a couple of times as a spectator and that includes experiencing the healing room ministry and how it operates. I bet you’re wondering if I got healed. The answer is no. It was actually a very disturbing experience.
I bring this up because the Twisted Serpent is related to Bethel’s theology/activity regarding the spooky spooky woo woo of the supernatural. They love prophetic everything. It was from Bethel’s roost something called Prophetic Art came into being through a gal named Teresa Dedmon. Her ministry is now pretty large and well established. She runs her own gig through the Create Academy.
Now, I bring this up as an origin story but also to point out how the Twisted Serpent works - how there is this intersection between love and violence that appears to be so overlooked due to the normalization of the intersection. For me, part of the journey is found in Dedmon’s downloadable brochure titled Your Creative Destiny Blueprint [see left]. I have no idea whether this is available any more, but this is a picture of the cover of the copy I possess.
Without going into what the hell prophetic art is, at least not too deeply, it’s basically touted as a type of spiritual gift one can receive an anointing. They even have conferences for training and receiving the anointing. It is situated in the Seven Mountain Mandate for the Mountain of Celebration [or Art & Culture]. It generally has a couple of functions. Creators with the anointing can create art that serves as a prophetic word or as a healing vehicle. Click the right arrow on the picture and there is a screenshot of page 2 of Dedmon’s brochure. You will see how she works through supernatural art as a healing vehicle. It’s also on that page, that she parenthetically cites Nos. 21 [Numbers 21] as a biblical text to support that the deity found in the bible heals using art.
Now, before anyone gets bent out of shape about this all being hallucinatory hog washing, I need to stress this is a sub-culture of Christianity that has a great deal of what others may call folk-healing practices. They are continuationists of the greatest order.[1] Some argue these types of healing practices can easily segue into a sort of alt-right healing/wellness pipeline. While I’m not necessarily going to identify with the language, I can report in my experience it does nose dive into a significantly big pipeline of anti-vaccine/natural medicine types of beliefs and activity. Let me just say, COVID was not fun with these peeps. At any rate, it does not involve pigs, water, or soap. It does, however, involve some interesting behavior. There is such a thing as the placebo and nocebo effect. So, just cool your jets if you’re looking for a hog to wash.
When I went to Bethel’s healing rooms, they used to take people into these rooms in groups. Before you went in, they took people into a small theater where they primed us for the healing room ministry. It’s all designed to build faith since the healing rooms rely on supernatural healing [you know, the placebo effect].[2] Part of that priming was the use of scripture and a particular understanding of the God of the bible. The one thing that really stood out to me, was the insistence that God did not make people sick.
Enter in prophetic art as a supernatural healing vehicle, Nos. 21, God doesn’t make anyone sick, and that intersection of love and violence. It gets twisted.
NAR-lings are also often Evangelical. They do insist their revelatory claims be found and substantiated with the text of the bible. They do this often by re-negotiating the text. I am not judging this, it just appears to be what happens. Nos. 21 is a type of proof text, if you will, that Dedmon has re-negotiated to substantiate the art and healing link.
BUT…..have you ever read Nos. 21? It’s kind of an interesting passage when you’re operating a prophetic art that heals ministry. It’s really the Twisted Serpent.
Nos. 21 is the story of the bronze serpent episode. I’m sure you remember it but if you don’t, basically the Israelites are wandering around the wilderness bitching and complaining against Moses and God for all the shitty food and the journey. The text reads like this:
“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story “Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey. So the people spoke against God and Moses: ‘Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we are disgusted with this miserable food’” [NET Numbers 2.4-5].”
In the NET translation, they mention the people were “impatient” BECAUSE of the fuckery-foo journey. A great deal of extraordinarily ugly and stressful things have happened by the time you get to this passage assuming one wants to read the bible as a univocal linear history type of text of some kind.[3] As is typical for this group of people and this storyteller, they have the nerve to question the present situation as - WTF were you thinking God and Moses? You freed us to bring us - well - here? Apparently there was no food or water in that location to be found and whatever food they had was pretty disgusting at this point.[4]
Given the history of these people from a relational perspective, what happens next qualifies as a text of terror for my fevered and traumatized brain. Because the passage reads they were speaking against God and Moses but were doing so out of impatience and misery, [the notion they had no food or water but had disgusting food] it might be time for a pep talk. It may be time for reassurance, nurturing, and a good conversation about basic needs, fear, and years of enslavement which doesn’t create or enhance trust with a deity who pretty much let it all happen but is now claiming “Oh, if you obey you get my protection.” Interruption of scheduled programming - That was a long sentence. I actually turned blue reading it. Interruption over - It doesn’t work that way of course. [5] The issue is - how dare they speak against the situated authority. You don’t speak “against” authority here. God gets pissed and sends fiery serpents.
At this point, as Dedmon sends her readers to Nos. 21 to verify that God uses art to heal people, I thumb through my memory of how God doesn’t make people sick from the Bethel healing room priming. Hmm. Here, God is clearly sending an agent of death - fiery serpents - to bite his chosen people TO KILL THEM. Should I do a belly dance around the text while I read people are dropping in the desert?
Now, let’s not quibble here. Griping might get you bit by a serpent. You can tell me they all deserved it for their griping. I don’t know, the death penalty for bitching against the authority and the shitty treatment in an act of impatience seems a little - well - over the top - er - authoritarian, autocratic, insecure, neurotic….psychopathic? I know in some Christian space I’m not allowed to take that position. And thankfully, I don’t give a shit about what people say about my position. I’m belly dancing here.
That didn’t have to be this God’s reaction to a troubled people he left in bondage for 400 plus years. Clearly, slavery, doesn’t make you crazy, dysregulated, or highly reactive to stress. Oh wait. It does. You’d think an all knowing God might grasp, just for a frustrated second, that these people may be a little PTSD-ish from all the whacky abandonment by that same God. A little inter-generational trauma and some epigenetics from all that enslavement is something a creator ought to know about its own creation. But who am I to argue? Yahweh is always right. [Rolls eyes]. If anything, the passage is a terrifying text to shut the f* up in the wilderness.
From here, Nos. 21 does what Dedmon wants. The people run to Moses, they realized they’ve sinned - holy shit - and they plead for help. Moses moves as the seminal savior and mediator, and is told to build a bronze serpent. This way, once it’s built [which means people are still dying because the remedy is under construction], those who are bit can look at the snake on the pole and be healed.
Now, because I’m a relational person and like to read about the study of humans, I know this story through those lenses is troubling. This type of treatment of humans doesn’t create healthy, well-balanced humans. It creates well - trauma. This is a trauma-inducing moment with a fiery deity. And, it’s normalized. They might very well never do such a thing again, but it doesn’t lend itself to pro-social humans who are well regulated. It builds, “don’t fuck with me fear.” It can, of course, lead to obedience rooted and grounded in that fear enforced and instituted through violent ends.[6] It tends to lend itself to intergenerational fuckery foo, destabilized minds and bodies, high reactivity, and low stress resilience. Yep. An all knowing God creates the perfect storm of sinning by not apparently knowing better. Guess what? You’re more likely to sin in this state of affairs. Hmmm. That’s pause for some reflection.
The fact that Dedmon can talk about healing and use this passage while casually ignoring the context of the basic story - is kind of twisted. God uses art to heal people, after sending a plague of serpents to kill them. Am I not supposed to do a double take when you’re validating your healing ministry through art and creativity through a belligerent act by this God over some probably warranted hysterics out in the middle of nowhere? Is it just me?
And the thing is, when I read the stories in the bible as simple stories whether those events are contrived, imaginary, historical myth, mainly literary usage, or history in all its glory, I see a God treating humans in disastrously traumatizing ways. Our stories tell us something about ourselves. I see a God making things WORSE for its human subjects that is fully normalized. It intersects love and violence in ways that alters our bodies and minds in destructive ways. It wires in that love is violent and benevolent and you may not always know which side you’re going to receive. It fucks with attachment. Please spare me the obey and you’ll receive the benevolent side. Understand, that’s how humans are being parented in the USA and it isn’t healthy parenting.
It’s twisted.
Snakes from Canva
The Twisted Serpent represents exactly this sort of normalized who-haw in human relating. For the record, violence is not love and it’s not a loving act. It’s so normalized in the West and in many Christian circles it’s taken for granted as righteous behavior. Spare the rod spoil the child sorts of thinking deny the real world consequences of the use of violence with children or any aged human. It looks like healing and that it’s legit. It’s not. It’s time to really address this reality.
Let’s think about some of the nonsense in a simple example. If someone wishes to punish a child for hitting another being whether that being is a family pet, a sibling, another child, or even the parent or some other adult, and they do so by hitting the child, what message are they sending? If they think it’s a message of obedience and not to hit, then they need to understand that when the child becomes an adult and has children, they now have permission to hit. It’s a message of who can hit and when. It’s about a certain understanding of authority, domination, and punishment around behavior the child, at the present moment, isn’t entitled to be doing. They don’t have the authority to hit anyone - yet. They are hitting their child to teach them not to hit to obey authority. Kind of twisted - like my incomplete gramma and typos.
Peace!
Footnotes:
[1] It is my, albeit limited theological understanding, that continuationists have some belief that the Holy Spirit is still active in the world. The counter argument would be found in theology called Cessationism. I do not pretend to understand the technical nuance here. Pentecostals are out at the end of the continuum - you know - fringy. They can be a real hoot to be around if you have some good boundaries. Unfortunately, I found them traumatizing on a lot of levels. Some activities are pretty bat shit bonkers looking. And yes, I participated in some of the bonkers!
[2] Priming sounds terribly manipulative doesn’t it? Priming it’s necessarily evil. It can be used in very positive ways as much as it can be used in very nefarious ways. In this case, it was probably more positive than nefarious.
[3] For the record, I’m simply taking the bible at a basic face value in looking it from a narrative perspective. I do not believe the bible is univocal in nature. Just play along.
[4] I’m just taking the story at face value. I’m not wading into critical bible study. I’m looking at the actions of the participants of the story for my purposes. It describes relationality which is my bag of interest.
[5] By the way, letting your chosen people suffer while other people’s sin comes to fullness isn’t a loving act. It’s the Twisted Serpent in action. How small of a God must Yahweh be that it can’t protect its people in another land? And that’s the problem. Often gods were associated with territory but he could go get them or prevent them from going. Let’s stop making excuses. This DOES not work in building or maintaining relationship for our species. The hearers of the story would have a different worldview - but it binds love and violence and normalizes it which is what I wish to untangle.
[6] I’ve always had a bit of a glitch when Christians talk to me about “reverential fear.” I get awe but I’m of the opinion that awe, in a healthy space, is humbling and inspiring. It draws one in to magnificence. Fear though - fear isn’t welcoming. What you fear is functionally unsafe which is why one is cautious about approaching whatever is feared. I would also argue that what is feared is not trustworthy. In order to remediate this, the word “reverential” has to be added to context the fear into respectful devotion. My point is, if you’re afraid of what you revere, you’re still afraid. If you respect what you fear, you’re still afraid, cautious, etc. To me, that doesn’t create proximity. A healthy version of respect is out of love, nurturing, and good will toward another. Sick mind respect is more likely to create mediator type situations where you put something or someone between you and what you fear. Reverence can also suggest submission - which to me is more like subjugation. If you’re afraid - you’re submitting out of fear. Devotion and fear is an intersection of love and violence. It creates ambivalence. Devotion can be present due to nurturing and very pro-social behavior. It’s healthier for humans to be devoted out of that nurturing space.