SUNDAY MORNING IS A GOOD TIME TO GET REAL. So here goes… I am so fed up with all the factionalism in the Christian scene. The Christian scene IS factions. People LOVE taking sides and they want you in their gang! It is bad enough that the secular scene is full of factions. In fact, this whole world is based on factionalism and conflict. Social class, political affiliation, job status, etc., etc. The world is rooted in division and conflict. This is partly what inspired me to write the book, “War is Who We Are”. Even that very title caused factions to arise when some folks ‘got the needle’ and I got some stick for it! 😊 One expects that in the world. But in the Christian scene? All the factionalism I encountered totally broadsided me. SOMEONE: “Are you Covenant Theology or Dispensationalist?” ME: “I don’t like making and joining systems; I just like discovering truth”. SOMEONE: “Are you Calvinist or Arminian?” ME: “That’s like saying “Are you Man United or Man City! I am just a disciple of Christ who loves discovering truth rather than being part of a faction”. SOMEONE: “Are you Catholic or Protestant?” ME: “I am a simple disciple of Christ who doesn’t get stuck in history”. SOMEONE: “To which denomination do you belong?” ME: “The body of Christ”. The factional questions are legion. It is so easy to make a system out of some pet ideas. Just cherry-pick some verses and… bingo… you’ve got a sect or a cult! Not only all that but discovering the presence of so many seriously pugnacious people in the Christian scene was an unexpected revelation which completely blindsided me. I have even had people shouting at me in full-volume over something comparatively trivial (though sometimes it was simply because they had been exposed for what and who they are). That even happened to me in a regional Pastors’ Meeting — a pastor yelling at me — with dozens of ministers present! These are Christian people about whom I am speaking in all the above instances! Some of them were so see-through yet so many others were taken in by those ‘see-throughs’. Then there was the discovery that so many, when they disagree with something you have said or written, think nothing of badmouthing you to others behind your back or even telling outright lies about you in order to discredit you. There is also much of what I can only call “professional jealousy” in which someone who has a ministry will happily run down another ministry with lies and inuendo if they feel threatened by that ministry or risk having their bullshit exposed. I remember my amazement some twenty years ago discovering that some woman who ran a so-called “discernment ministry” wrote a whole piece about me, hysterically accusing me of all sorts of nonsense without any evidence, even claiming that I am databasing people for the Antichrist! 🤔😱🤣 And all because she didn’t like my eschatology and because she is also a King James Bible Only fanatic who didn’t like a revealing review I had written about a deeply flawed book in which the author (another woman) had extolled the KJV as the Word of God and slagged off ALL other Bible versions as being New Age. (There are far too many off-the-wall full-of-themselves wimmin running around the internet posing as bona fide teachers but knowing very little). Often, if folks are really into some wacky deceiving Christian bandwagon like “The Rapture” or “Deliverance Ministry” or pretending to be a “healer” or a “miracle worker”, or speaking gibberish (or a zillion other bonked-out “Christian” bandwagons), they will happily tell big lies about someone who isn’t into those bandwagons and who exposes the deceptions in them. Rather than seriously examining the Scriptures objectively, they will try to dig dirt on you in order to discredit you. Even (or especially) as a pastor, I discovered a litany of lies and coverups, backstabbing, misrepresentation, hypocrisy and outright evil amongst professing Christians (and professing Christian elders). I was continuously encountering those so willing to lie and calumniate at the drop of a hat and I just kept saying to myself, “Why is the Christian scene not the suburbs of heaven and instead is so full of so many belligerent nutters and compulsive liars? Why is it so adversarial and combative and not simply seeking to discover what is objectively and obviously true? Above all, why do so many sheep just go along with all this for fear of ‘rocking the boat’?”. What’s more, when I wrote about this around twenty-five years ago, I was inundated with mails from many (including pastors and elders) who had undergone the same mendacious and bellicose experiences, many of whom had jettisoned being part of the Christian scene at all. I realised that probing, truth-seeking, insightful, let’s-get-to-the-bottom-of-things type of people are not wanted in most churches and are anathema among all the factions of professing Christians. However, if you can just somehow ignore all this and smile you will not encounter any issues and you will be a “member of the church in good standing”. But if you are someone who leaves no stone unturned in order to get to what’s real — if you are a spaniel who won’t let go of a trouser-leg until you have got to the naked truth — if you will not take any crap lying down — if you expect Christians to be real people rather than puppets with chips on their shoulders the size of Mauna Kea (base to peak) — if you can see through bullshit with king-sized spiritual binoculars… then you will be hit full in the face with a mountain of dung which will knock you for six unless you learn how to neutralise its foul stench. This is partly what drove me away from the Christian scene for some years a while back. However, what eventually enabled me to live with that scene is the full realisation that one doesn’t have to be part of the Christian scene in order to be a Christian — one doesn’t have to ‘go to church’ in order to be a disciple of Christ. This is partly why I do not “go to church”. Churches are places where factionalising flourishes with ease (and where malintentioned people can divide and split a church as casually as a child playing marbles). If you are a skim-the-surface type, you will not notice much that is amiss because you do not want to. You will simply ‘turn a blind eye’ and just wear a smile. If you ‘play ball’ and know how to play the game — you know… bow and scrape to the pastor on the door as you’re leaving the church building on a Sunday, say all the right clichés, pray all the right public prayers, NEVER ‘rock the boat’, always skim the surface, wear a beatific smile on your face — you will not encounter any issues. But I do not want to be part of a group of phonies who have made a profession out of pretending and conforming. I expect a gathering of those who profess to be disciples of Christ to be the very opposite of dissembling and disingenuous (unrealistic expectation, I know). I expect a gathering of those who profess to be disciples of Christ to raise the discovery of truth above all other things (unrealistic expectation, I know). I expect a gathering of those who profess to be disciples of Christ to make love (real love) into the centrepiece of its service (unrealistic expectation, I know). I expect a gathering of those who profess to be disciples of Christ to be self-aware — that is, to be self-effacing enough to know when they are behaving like assholes and to do something about it as soon as can be (unrealistic expectation, I know). I expect a gathering of those who profess to be disciples of Christ to rate the need for a sense of humour and a keenly amused eye for the absurd as being de rigueur in this harrowing world (unrealistic expectation, I know 😉). I expect a gathering of those who profess to be disciples of Christ to be ‘Biblicists’ rather than any other “-ist” and to relentlessly search the Scriptures in depth to establish the truth as near as it is possible to do so (unrealistic expectation, I know). I expect a gathering of those who profess to be disciples of Christ to have left deceitfulness behind and put it in the dustbin along with all the other aspects of their old selves (unrealistic expectation, I know). I expect a gathering of those who profess to be disciples of Christ to see through deception of all kinds and to be grateful for the God-given insight to do that (unrealistic expectation, I know). I could go on for some time with these (unrealistic) expectations and much else; but no doubt it will just become tedious to readers, if it hasn’t done so already. How has this state of affairs come to be? What really lies behind it? Do you want to know what I think is the answer? A combination of a lack of grace, the absence of genuine metanoia, and the scourge of proliferating apostasy.

.

.

.

© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2023
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

.