Doodling the Twisted Serpent

Photo by a_joy ©2025 all rights reserved

This is hard to write about. Part of tilling soul soil is being willing to admit things. And while I can admit this to myself [sometimes] and those around me, I’ve had problems admitting some of this to other people.

Breath in - grab soil - exhale. Descend.

There is this place inside that still has memory spills all over the kitchen floor. A little puddle over here. A big puddle over there. Re-membering, in my mind, wants to be data points. It wants to convert memory into a pie chart or scattergram. Memories don’t work like Christmas tree lights hung up on branches in some kind of aesthetic sequence. To me, memories are more like photos in an album and flipping through pages looking at faces and weeping.

I doodle. I make maps using what some people call art. I don’t call it art. Art is another basket of rules. I don’t qualify and I don’t want to try. I’m not hustling memory.

Because I doodle, I doodle whatever happens to intersect my present moments. It seems random. So does Spirit wind and the sound of footsteps in the trees. It’s hard to tell the story about the glimpses of the fork tongue and strange concoctions that sell love as violence. I never saw them with clarity. I only felt them with terror, anxiety, restlessness, panic, and stoic numbness.

They were normal even when my body, my being, said otherwise.

So, I used to be a Christian. Now I say this with a sort of shutter because it’s hard to explain and I don’t want to give critical, mean, Christian movements power or proof. I don’t talk about it much, not even to myself. But it’s there, in my barren landscape like howling wind -I used to be a Christian and I know the reasons.

I wasn’t a Christian theologically. I was a Christian behaviorally. The theology, once I stood at a distance of a pocket full of years, never sunk in. Indeed, when I “came to Christ” it was within a certain con-text - a habit of culture - to present religion and spirituality from the convenience of position. Christianity was the main gig in town. I had read a self-help book on anxiety, I was in my 20s, and it recommended that spirituality or religion can often help partner with people who deal with chronic anxiety struggles. I ended up going the Christian route looking for a healing partnership without thinking very deeply about the choice. I mean, Jesus loves me and can heal me, right? The whole colonize every breath part is never really spoken about while the interesting spirit possession part is happily glossed over as normal.

Desperation will do that to people. It did to me. I was barely making it.

Thus, I began my journey as a Christian in terms of behavioral alterations to my life tapestry. I said the “sinner’s prayer” which wasn’t really hard since I already felt badly about myself. I moved on. I can’t say I deeply understood the savior message since it’s packaged as a believe message - believe in love, believe in healing - find hope, maybe some prosperity, usually some community. I honestly wish Christianity had the courage to really sit people down and tell them what it deeply means before the baptismal tub is filled. Not in some half backed syllogisms or memes, but deep theology, deep history, deep relationship offerings. Honestly, I think too many people would pass, which is why the threat of hell and the love of God packaged in salvation sells a better solution. Who doesn’t want eternal life and to be loved?

I don’t think it’s fair to say I wasn’t committed. I dutifully began to reframe my entire life experience within Christian frameworks. I had a proper conversion story, I had the proper church attendance, I had the proper virtue signaling, the language, the books on my shelf, and the self-defense that’s baked into the religion. I tried. I fell down again, I tried. I numbed out. And when I say I tried I don’t mean I sinned all over the place. When it came to the bigger issues glued to the insecurities of the conservative version of Christianity, I was successful in spades - except for the male headship thing. That never flew with me. By the time I would move through well over 17 years of Christian space, I was sicker than ever. My partner in helping me find healing and hopefully less anxiety wasn’t much of a partner. It burdened me beyond belief and blamed me in the process. It’s a place where “never good enough” is like a vine into the sky and a whole other world. At the top of the famed beanstalk is in fact a giant - a giant ambivalent sort of monster that is never really satisfied as its life passes through the lips of its pastors, prophets, and teachers.

When I started doodling it was skeletons that showed up. I picked them because it represented the death I felt and the stripping of my flesh that I deeply found littered not just through my nervous system, but through my hopes, dreams, and total well-being. I felt robbed of a certain sense of my own humanity. And I was tired - oh so tired - of living this shit.

When the Spirit blew through my hair as I doodled I started noticing little places of glimmer in the dirt. A little bobble there, a little gem over in that clump of hardened earth here. I’d pick these little bits and bobs up and examine them. They were clearly broken pieces of something else - like discarded pottery. As I peered into their gleaming colors I would remember and notice this bypassing of violence and the naming of it as love.

This became what I call The Twisted Serpent.

Titled: *The Twisted Serpent*. © 2025 a_joy. all rights reserved

Let me show you. Do you see this blue bobble here in my hand? This piece right here is called prophetic art. What the hell is that, right?

Well, the last seven or so years in Christian space was in Pentecostal space. It is known as the Third Wave. If you don’t know what that references, you may have heard of the New Apostolic Reformation or the NAR? The Seven Mountain Mandate or 7M perhaps? They are the present Charismatic types, many of which are Evangelicals, that are swooning over Donald Trump. Think - Paula White- and your close enough to spit in the wind while whistling.

Prophetic art was invented by a woman named Teresa Dedmon. She is someone who works with Bethel Church in Redding, California. Well, at least she used too. I’m not sure if she’s still there but I do know when I was exiting out she was still working with the School of Supernatural Ministry.

She ran groups on Facebook for artists, gave conferences, and now runs something called the the Kingdom Creative Movement, formerly known as Create Academy. Part of this blue bobble goes with this compost heap over here where this old brochure is decomposing. I don’t know how old this thing is [flips it over looking for a date]- but it’s a .pdf I got somewhere from her. [Finds a copyright] Hmm, it says here on this scrap it was copyrighted in 2019 so I guess it’s 6 years old. The file is largely a work space to help one create their own blueprint by prayer and asking questions. The front page looks like the image on the right.

I’m going to let Teresa’s speak for herself. You can get a glimpse of what prophetic art is through her own words. You’ll have to ignore the highlighting for a second [second image to the right - click the arrow].

You’ll see down here at the bottom - this last paragraph - she tells how it works. She describes her encounter with Simon Bull who ends up painting live at Tree of Life Church [see the third paragraph]. Prophetic art painting at churches like this is common during worship as is dancing and flagging. She reports how after worship she felt a prompting by the Holy Spirit to have people come look at Simon’s painting so God could heal eye problems [see the last paragraph]. Then she reports the miracles and she writes:

“This time, I introduced Simon to another way of painting with the Holy Spirit’s direction. I was able to give Simon the gift of seeing new ways his art can release physical healing” [Your Creative Destiny Blueprint].

Would you believe me if I told you my heart is starting to pound? It brings back a lot in my body and in that space of time that still creates trembling and hyperventilation.

Prophetic art was basically cooperating [or channeling because people describe it that way without saying the word “channeling.”] with the Holy Spirit to create art that could either be a prophetic word/revelation, or an instrument of healing. Nowadays, it has direct attachments to the Seven Mountain Mandate and Christians being the top artists in the world through the power of a spirit [through spirit possession - because you receive the spirit here - people - and that spirit tells you and guides you and does push you around.][1] Okay.

The Intersection

As I’ve looked at this piece - that has impacted so many other parts of my life - I need to talk a bit about Bethel’s healing rooms.

I’ve been there.

I won’t labor on about it, but before they take groups into their healing room operation, they basically prime people. They specifically talk about how God doesn’t make people sick and that God doesn’t want people sick. Let me say that again. They believe the following:

God isn’t responsible for any illness you may have.
God doesn’t want you to be sick, but wants you to be healed.

For the most part, illness is attributed to demonic activity. The priming is all designed to make it more plausible you will be healed in the healing rooms.[2] They use scripture to back up their premises to erase your doubt. At the end, they provide you with teaching about how to hold onto your healing. So, when Teresa mentions Nos. 21 in that highlighted portion, she’s talking about Yahweh/Jesus through this lens.

But have you ever read Nos. 21? It’s kind of an interesting passage when you’re operating a prophetic art that heals ministry. This is over here in my composting pile too. [Grabs remains]

Nos. 21 is the story of the bronze serpent. 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 at verses 4-5 reads like this:

“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].

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 and whatever food they had was pretty disgusting.[4]

It’s important to understand in my own decay and rebuilding, that many Christians re-negotiate texts across geography, space, and time. Teresa is doing that here. She’s re-negotiating a text to provide biblical certification and historical proof that Yahweh definitely heals people using “art.”

But the problem is pretty big with the passage - namely God is killing his own people for speaking against the authority problem. That’s a no-no. So much for God not being responsible for your illness - or death for that matter.[5]

And that’s the intersection for me. In the passage, the people realize their sin and run to Moses for interference. Moses does what Moses does, and he receives instructions to build the bronze serpent. If people look to this thing, once it’s created, they will be healed.

© 2025 Methodist church in Oregon. A-joy. all rights reserved

The Problem

While I’m not a biblical scholar, I do know what relationship looks like. I do have training in that space. And what I see from the passage and the history here - taking it as story through a relational lens - I see a supernatural being classed as a deity completely misreading its own creation. Traumatized people can grumble. They can be reactive. They can lose sight of much even behind a cloud pillar by day and a fire one by night. None of that is normal. All of that is hugely stimulating and it comes in aftermath and background of frequently god-based killing of neighbors, family members, and the people over there in that tent group. That’s stress after leaving an enslaved reality with a scary Pharaoh. Our nervous systems need breaks, healing, and the like. They need nurturing. It’s just how we are.

Making matters more complicated, these people have a history. That history is filled with exile and intermittent attention - at least in the stories. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder in many contexts. It makes a real living space for doubt to take up room in that big armchair. But these people had a particular view of gods and being violent and demanding is obviously a trait.

The response of this deity in this situation is to kill people in spite of the aforementioned background. That’s not love. That’s not healing. That’s not safety. That’s not even an understanding of human nature. That’s a desire for obedience.

Yahweh’s behavior isn’t endearing. It doesn’t build trust. It flexes the muscle of obedience. Humans are incremental sorts - it’s every interaction that builds trust from infancy forward. It’s important to be good enough - not perfect- but these are communal ACE events in this religious book. After all, he calls these people his children. And heaven knows, there were children present experiencing, watching, and growing.

Calling this deity loving is very problematic and it requires a serious stretch of what love is, how it operates, and what those outcomes are that produce healthy humans, not just happily pleased supernatural beings. If this is what love is, it explains far too much for me about Evangelicals and their machinations.

The Twisted Serpent

I got the name from Nos. 21. When I did an internet search on how people depicted the bronze serpent episode, what I got was a twisted serpent on a pole. It represents the intersection of love as violence.

In this case, Bethel, and Teresa to some extent, prime people to believe that God is some kind of loving being that uses art to heal his people while she cites - and bypasses - the biblical proof text she’s re-negotiating to support the legitimacy of her ministry. The text shows this god is killing - out of anger - his own people. This text doesn’t allow Teresa to have it both ways. On one hand this god sent the problem that the bronze serpent is meant to correct and on the other, God is love and doesn’t make anyone sick. Of course, the justification of this violent act is reported as the people deserved it for this behavior. That’s another intersection.

The Con-Text

Their is plenty of space to evaluate the texts involved through a relational lens to show how a lot of the god’s behavior is anti-social and creates reactions in our bodies that don’t support well-being.

But there is a con in my text here. It’s in the re-negotiating part of all of this and how it ends in relating to others.

When I was researching this passage to try and understand it in some kind of ancient context, I stumbled upon Dr. Richard Lederman. Now Lederman has an interesting premise that this event in the text may be an explanation for what comes later in the bible when the bronze serpent is destroyed because people were worshiping it. In other words, it was added to explain how the bronze serpent got in the temple in the first place. Quite interesting, no?

Dr. Lederman’s article can be located on thetorah.com and it’s titled Nehushtan, the Copper Serpent: Its Origins and Fate. In his article he makes a curious note about this whole bronze serpent episode. He writes:

“This story may reflect sympathetic magic, where one uses a symbolic model of an object to affect what happens to the real object—like a voodoo doll. The model is used here apotropaically, to protect or in this case to heal the Israelites from the venom of the real snakes that this object is meant to represent.”

He points to other passages. He points to 1 Samuel 6.

At that verse point, there is this little section about the Philistines sending the Ark of the Covenant back to its homeland that reads:

“They replied, ‘Five gold tumors and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel’s god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land.’” [NET]

It’s kind of interesting that in this case, art was an attempt to win over Israel’s God by sending golden versions of the issues plaguing the Philistines [tumors] and the land [rats]. In doing so, the hope was the golden versions would induce the God of Israel to remove both the problems literally from the land. He sights Levine Barush’s work in the Anchor Yale Bible.

As I understand this, the bronze serpent would not have been understood as a piece of art hanging in a fancy gallery some place. Rather, it was a ritual object used for healing through a process called sympathy - or sympathetic magic. It’s actually a healing object the deity is working through to heal people.

The Other Con - Using the Text

Many aspects of Pentecostalism are troubling to other Christian groups. While I won’t go into that to any great length, groups like Teresa Dedmon’s do get a side eye from other less amused Christians. They may call it witch craft - a big scary bug-a-boo for the Christian-verse anyway.

The thing is, Teresa Dedmon is re-negotiating not only a text, but a context for which art happens. Art can be used for a number of inspiring and not so great ways. Art tells a story. In this case, Teresa is converting traditional art into a healing ritual artifact without talking about the divination side of it - you know - like a talisman. I think she’s right about some of the nature of what she’s doing with the proof text - but the failure is on the concept of art as defined in cultural context and its intersection with healing.

Let’s face it - she’s offering artists opportunities to create ritual healing objects that have more in common with magic than she wants to admit.

Meanwhile, they commit spiritual violence toward people who do similar things or have similar patterns of healing rites and objects - people they call witches.

She gets away with it by calling it “art,” and the “prophetic.” Those are all legitimate in their particular space despite similar patterns and uses in other spaces.

It’s fun how we shape our world. How we justify ugliness toward others while ignoring our own patterns, definitions, and motivations. Another intersection.

Let’s just hope if Yahweh inspires you to paint, it isn’t because your entire block has fiery serpents in their yards.

Peace!

Notes

[1] Being pushed by the Spirit [aka Slay in the Spirit]- to the ground - is normal. The Spirit making you laugh - is normal. The Spirit making you manifest as animals or do unusual behavior is also normal. When people would go down in the Spirit they’d move around on the ground like they were riding a bike. Some people called it the washing machine. They would call it “influence” but really it’s about being possessed so you bear fruit. My opinion and experience of course.

[2] I realize this may sound bonkers to all manner of people - but the placebo effect is a real thing even if you don’t want to believe in miracles. It’s in the medical literature here in the USA.

[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] This isn’t monolithic. There are people that talk about God killing people who don’t tithe, who are enemies, etc.

Bibliography

Dedmon, T. (2019). Your Creative Destiny Blueprint. Redding; Teresa Dedmon.

Richard Lederman, “Nehushtan, the Copper Serpent: Its Origins and Fate” TheTorah.com (2017). https://thetorah.com/article/nehushtan-the-copper-serpent-its-origins-and-fate

Featureda_joyOctober 6, 2025The Twisted Serpent, MappingComment