Speaking Shoat

When I analyze the current state of people's understanding, I am convinced that the message has been watered down to a point where people have become immune to and dependant upon the contaminates that dilute the truth. I think that Christianity hasthousands and thousands of practicing members who practice it but don't get it. They said a "sinner's prayer" and believed they were a member, however, their hearts are as dead as they can be. As someone who speaks to Christians, I find that I spend most of my time explaining the A,B,Cs of the faith to people who, if they knew the truth, wouldn't be interested in the first place.

The deterioration occurs when a Pastor stands in front of an audience and preaches from his heart, only to receive 20 angry letters and six phone calls from people who don't even know God. The budget can't survive 20 people not giving, so he holds his tongue and dilutes the message with 20% water. Next Sunday he gets ten lettersof rebuke, and four phone calls, so he adds another 20% water since the building payment is due at the end of the month and they can't take the chance that the offering might be short. He mounts the stage the following week with 60% truth and 40% water. Still five angry phone calls and two letters come in, so it's back to the drawing board. Finally, he finds the perfect formula: 10% truth and 90% water that comes in the form of hype, jargon, and heady-religiosity. When that magical formula comes together, it's a wonderful day at last. Now the sheep and the goats can live together under the same roof in perfect harmony.

I finally understand why Jesus didn't allow His time to be monopolized by Pharisees. He simply dismissed them and walked away. He wasn't willing to water down the message so they could get it and He wasn't about to try to explain it to them because doing so is impossible. He actually protected the message from the Pharisees in the same way that I might protect my children from an unsafe person. The problem with today's institutional system of American Christianity is that we have taken a heart-message and we've turned it into a head-religion. Because we need the money to make the Church payroll, we havefound a way to include both those who get it and those who don't. We have successfully moved the sheep and the goats into the same house. The real catastrophe is that they've started breeding with one another and now we have a generation of "Shoats," people who half get it and half don't. The result of this is that the message becomes compromised and contaminated. I now understand fully why Jesus was so protective of it in the first place.

Jesus identified the goats right away by their response to His teachings. In fact, His teachings were delivered in such a way that they would specifically root out the goats from the sheep. If you close your eyes and listen to the sound of sheep and goats, it's almost impossible to tell them apart. We actually used a baby goat in our Church Easter Pageant one year because we couldn't find a baby lamb, and you know what? Not a single person knew the difference. Jesus, however, found a way to catch the goats and winnow them. He placed "goat traps" all around the message. It had no effect on the sheep but would stop the goats dead in their tracks. When Jesus was finished with His sermon, He would walk through the field and collect all the goats that were caught in the goat traps and dismiss them. The goat traps were nothing more than illustrations that the goats couldn't swallow.While everyone else chewed them up, swallowed them and went on to see and experience the glorious truth that He came to show them, the goats grabbed their throats, doubled over along side of the road, gagging and coughing on an illustration and ended up missing the entire heart of the message. When confronted by one of the sheep as to why He did this to the goats, Jesus said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand." (Luke 8:10)

It was brilliant. He spoke in metaphors and parables because "head-thinkers" can't get beyond them in order to behold the truth. Metaphors and parables become a vault that protects the truth from those who would certainly defile the message if they came anywhere close to it. The metaphor would be so outlandish that only the heart-people could see past it. While the head thinking goats were choking to death from trying to figure out how a man could crawl back up into his mother's womb and how gross it would be to eat Jesus' flesh and blood, the heart-thinking sheep were frolicking in the grass of salvation and relationship with God. Unfortunately, today's version of Christianity has adopted both head and heart principles so that everyone can join, even with partial understanding. The results are devastating. No one frolics in the grass of salvation. Instead, they merely stand in line at the feeding trough with hollow looks in their eyes, waiting patiently for theirpastor to dump the slop in front of them.

As a young boy, I had two favorite shows. One was "Tarzan," and the other, "Lucan." Tarzan was the story about a man who was raised by monkeys, and Lucan was a 1970s show about a boy raised by wolves. Each of these characters tried with all their might to adapt to civilization and found that they could not. The moment a stressful situation came along, they would immediately revert to their upbringing and begin behaving like the animals that raised them. Lucan would start growling and attack people and Tarzan would start jumping around like a monkey and climb a tree for safety. As a kid, I thought this was the coolest thing in the world. In reality, if this were to happen to anyone, it would be monumentally heartbreaking. These two men were struggling with an overwhelming identity crisis. Lucan was a man who actually thought he was a wolf and Tarzan believed himself to be a monkey. That's not cool, that's sad.

Because of our watered-down version of truth, Christianity today is full of Sheep who were raised by Goats; heart-people who were trained by head-thinkers. The moment a crisis comes along, they immediately revert back to their goat-roots and begin to behave like head thinkers. Rather than daily live from their heart, the moment something stressful occurs, they must run to their Bibles and find a "promise-verse" to keep them calm. Rather than know God personally, they revert back to the "manual" and desperately search for something to spell it out. Head things bring warmth and comfort to sheep that were raised by goats. It's like throwing a banana to Tarzan or a bloody steak to Lucan.

Ministry today is all about re-training the "shoats" to think and behave like sheep. It's about teaching them who they really are, as opposed to how they were raised. Tarzan was not a "monkey man." He was a man. The monkey part was embedded in his mind, but it's not true. Until he is ready to forsake monkey-mamma and monkey-daddy, he will never really know his true self. Sadly, few sheep are willing to give up their goat-parents.

Communicating with "Shoats" is an art form in this generation. They need a verse to tell them that murder is wrong. They have to read a Scripture passage that tells them to "love one another" before they'll believe it's a good idea. Things must be said within the prescribed method or they'll become skittish and uneasy. It becomes necessary to recreate the jungle experience for them or they'll never open their hearts. You almost have to learn to think like a goat and talk like a goat or you'll have no success within the present system. It can be exhausting to attempt to walk people out of such a mindset.

"Shoats" are an interesting breed. Some are sheep who were raised by goats and others are goats who were raised by sheep. In my opinion, the latter are the most impossible to deal with. I have found that the best way to separate the sheep-shoats from the goat-shoats is to set them all free. The goats-shoats will either attack you out of anger for opening their cage, or they'll run back into a life of sin. The sheep-shoats, however, will thank you and immediately recognize their need for freedom. They'll run nowhere. They will simply graze close to the shepherd because that's where they choose to be.

Another way to separate them is to speak the language of love. Only sheep recognize this language. It's totally foreign to goats. Sheep-shoats recognize it in their hearts even though they've never spoken it before and goat-shoats get angry when they hear it because their head cannot understand a word of it. The truth is encapsulated "in love" so that those who do not love cannot retrieve it.

If you are worried that you might be a goat-shoat, you probably aren't. The very fact that you even care is proof that you have sheep blood running through your veins. If you're angry because you think I'm accusing you of being a goat-shoat, and you need to see a Scripture with the word "shoat" in it for you to grant validity to this post, you're probably a goat-shoat.

I believe that the Free Believers movement taking place all over the world is a great way of separating sheep from goats. ONLY sheep can survive outside the pen. The goats cannot follow us to where we are because they'll run out of breath or starve to death. Surviving in the wild takes all heart in order to make it. It's either sink or swim out here. Learning to live in the wild is one thing, but reclaiming your identity as a heart-thinker sometimes takes years.

It's the path that all free believers are on. I, for one, love it.

I have spent most of my life learning to speak "shoat," and trying my best to move and function in a shoat system. Countless hours have been wasted trying to speak a language that is contrary to my heart. I am learning more and more that the real message is aboutspeaking the language of sheep and not the dialect of goats or even shoats. It's all the same today as it was when Christ came and said, "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me." (John 10:27)

 The purpose of the Free Believers Network is to hopefully recover and resurrect the authentic sheep language. We are constantly sorting out what comes from the heart of love from what was added later by a Shoat Institution. We're not perfect but we're committed to leaving the jungle and adapting to kingdom principals. We have resolved in our hearts to live as sheep, to eat the food of sheep and speak the language of sheep and listen only to the voice of the sheppard.

Darin Hufford