THESE DAYS, every time I read a mainstream media article, or even catch a glimpse of the array of newspapers in a shop with their lurid propagandizing headlines, or hear the ‘news’ blaring from a shop radio or TV, I feel somewhat dirty, as if something vulgar has penetrated my being in a strange and terrible way. Even just observing photos of the vain narcissistic expressions of politicians (who are so zanily disconnected from truth and reality) somehow discombobulates my soul with subtle waves of quizzical repugnance.

Having studied the discipline of epigenetics and its implications, I know very well that anything which comes into us from outside — whether seen, heard, imbibed, eaten, smoked, absorbed, studied, kissed, or sexually embraced; whether it comes into us through a fluid (water, beverages, saliva, semen, vaginal secretions), a foodstuff, the air we breathe, words spoken to us, a philosophy, a relationship — in short, anything which we take into our system, whether mentally, physically, emotionally or spiritually, has the capacity to affect our DNA in powerful ways, for better or for worse.

This is not to say that your actual DNA sequence can be altered, but all the above influences — everything which comes into you one way or another — can change the way that your organism reads DNA sequences. In other words, your immediate environment can bring about epigenetic changes that will affect how your genes operate. Everything that we do, eat, drink, have sexual relations with, think, listen to, breathe, believe or take on board as part of our life journey will alter us genetically. So, if you spend your time eating crap food, taking drugs, drinking alcohol, smoking, ‘partying’, listening to today’s ‘unmusic’, watching TV as a couch-potato, believing (taking in) lies, having ‘one-night stands’, involving yourself in casual or loveless sexual encounters, indulging in extramarital sexual intercourse, visiting prostitutes, creating idols for yourself (whether false gods or some ‘shiny’ thing), being in denial about the existence of evil (thus opening yourself up to it), deliberately failing to expose darkness (thus making yourself into a lackey of satanic forces), reading newspapers and other media uncritically, listening to the so-called ‘news’, failing to deal with your inner ‘demons’ and historical trauma, involving yourself in relationships of any kind with toxic undeveloped people, your genes will be altered in a highly negative manner, and that will affect your whole being, not to mention making you into a magnet for demonic forces.

This is why it is so important to know how to be quiet and enjoy silence, how to make yourself impervious to propaganda and advertising tricks, how to embrace the whole panoply of nature and the cosmos (especially making friends with birds, bees and trees), how to be a healthy recluse while also only having close relations with those who will enhance you intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, knowing how to become who you are meant to be rather than a mere clone of your parents or peers and, above all, how to discover and relate to the Power who created you.

I write mainly for those who are disciples of Christ, but I always have my mind on ensuring that whatever I write will hopefully attract anyone who is not yet His disciple to becoming one. For discovering and being able to “relate to the Power who created you” can only mean becoming a disciple of Christ (for He is the only intermediary between humans and the Divine); and I believe that one can only truly be a serious person when one has taken that vital step of discipleship. For if one claims to be a serious person, yet vigorously denies that the Christ came into incarnation as “God manifested in the flesh”, one undermines all the seriousness one claims to have. To deny truth makes one into a trivial, frivolous, shallow, superficial, easily-deceived individual; and this world is full of such folks. Indeed, it is run by them (humanly-speaking)!

In other words, it is the duty of human beings to become serious people who only seek Truth and light, who expose and eschew falsehood and darkness, and who resolve to discover the meaning of purity and maintain it in the midst of this evil fallen world, and — above all — primarily to discover the Source of that purity.

By “serious people” I do not mean having ‘a long face’ or typical ‘hangdog’ expression, as is common in pietistic church circles where the mere appearance of seriousness is mistaken for true seriousness. You know how it works: Public praying with multiple clichés and a pious-sounding voice, always trying to impress others rather than humbling oneself before God, and so on. It is very easy to successfully fake seriousness because so many folks can only see as far as someone’s outer skin and have no ability to look within a person, thereby taking everything at face value. Yet, doing so — being able to see what lies behind the façade of an individual — is part of what is known as the “discernment of spirits”, a necessary attribute for today. People who claim to be “Christians” yet who fake seriousness with superficial affectations might as well be part of the New Age scene where being “spiritual” is all about virtue-signalling on social media with selfie yoga poses, wearing eastern garments, changing your name to something Indian-sounding, etc.

This is why mere religion (superficial pseudo-spirituality) has to be transcended. True spirituality means discipling oneself to Christ. Discipling oneself to Christ means repenting of one’s past idiocy, contrived ignorance, and having stupidly imagined oneself to be an autonomous individual who is not answerable to one’s Creator. Only then can one become a truly serious person; and it is our duty to be such.

But being a serious person does not mean that we can never smile, laugh, joke, play, or be lighthearted. On the contrary, a serious person knows what good, clean fun really is. Pious, pseudo-serious people (spiritual posers) will speak about how Jesus is never recorded as laughing and enjoying lighthearted moments therefore He must never have done so. But to deny that Jesus ever smiled or laughed has serious Christological implications, for it is an attack on His humanity, His human nature. Laughing and enjoying lighthearted moments in a lovely sinless manner is not incompatible with being a serious person. On the contrary, a serious person needs such interludes from time to time. “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven… a time to weep and a time to laugh” (Ecclesiastes 3:1,4).

So, “be sober-minded and alert” (1 Peter 5:8), for that is what makes a person serious (which we have a duty to be) in the face of demonic evil, while the preacher commends “enjoyment” in life (Ecclesiastes 8:15, Strong’s Lexicon, Hebrew: Blithesomeness) to offset the necessary seriousness of the genuine disciple.

Therefore, if we are really to be serious people (and we have a duty to be so), this means understanding that we really do become what we eat, read, hear, breathe, believe or kiss — that is, whatever one takes into oneself through one’s actions or beliefs becomes (in both blatant and arcane ways) part of one’s being — even having powerful genetic repercussions and having deep implications for our spirituality.

So we must approach life with all seriousness, being discerning about what we take into ourselves, whether mentally, physically, emotionally or spiritually — though never to the detriment of our ability to be lovingly lighthearted and lissom, discerningly winsome, and exercising all wisdom.

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[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]

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