I am a disciple of Christ. Unashamedly so! Being a disciple of Christ means that one does one’s absolute best to follow the teachings of Christ, to “come after” Him (Matthew 16:24). Following the teachings of Christ holds one to a certain standard of behaviour — not merely outward behaviour because that can easily be faked, either consciously or unconsciously; but one’s inner world too, the way one’s mind works, the way one regards the world outside, the way one deals with impure or unfitting thoughts, the way one leaves behind all the old affiliations and prejudices, the way one shuns anything which can interfere with one’s spiritual development, the way one wrestles with and overcomes any residual personality quirks and disorders left over from one’s unregenerate life which have stamped themselves into one’s being (which includes any so-called “trauma-patterning”). One doesn’t always succeed right away, and it is certainly not an overnight job (although some elements do drop away quicker than others). But thanks to penitence and forgiveness and the ever-ready presence of the Holy Spirit, one improves and, above all, one wants to improve. That is the main element in progressive sanctification: Improvement. One can see in oneself a tangible trajectory of betterment — what Paul calls “intensifying glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is nothing to brag about. It is nothing on which to rest one’s laurels. But it is a quiet encouragement to oneself that the Spirit is working within. You can see the evidence of it every day, and it sometimes amazes you to see how it all works (not to mention that this steady improvement also increases your faith). There will be slips and stumbles along the way, but these are simply incentives to the betterment which I have mentioned above.

Therefore, one should become aware of the development in oneself of a deeper sense of such things as compassion, mercy, insight, perception, self-awareness, discernment, love of truth, hatred of lies, the conscious putting to death of sin and all forms of moral failure, a self-effacing humility, loving empathy, and so on. I could have added other things such as holiness, righteousness, and justice as separate items; but one has to be careful these days because those can become subtle pietistic ways of spiritual virtue-signalling to others about how pious one is, and there’s a lot of that about. A lot. So the practice of holiness can turn into a “holier-than-thou” attitude (always seeing others’ sins but not so much one’s own). The practice of righteousness can turn into self-righteousness (involving a complete blindness to one’s own obnoxiousness). Justice can turn into fanatical crusades riding on the crest of bandwagon waves. The reality is that holiness manifests in the compassion, mercy, loving empathy, self-effacing humility and conscious putting to death of sin. Righteousness manifests in an abundant self-awareness which fingers one’s own peccadillos and gives one a love of truth and a hatred of lies. Justice manifests in the insight, perception and discernment which have countless fruits in one’s life. All of this, and so much more, should be a growing part of the disciple of Christ’s inner and outer comportment. These qualities are what should be seen in anyone’s life who claims to follow Christ or even to be a “Christian”. But it only takes one incident to prove that a great many people who call themselves “Christians” are unlikely to be disciples of Christ and are certainly not manifesting the qualities of one.

In the last week or so, I have seen the most appalling comments coming from people concerning the killing of the lady in Minneapolis. Now, many of the comments to which I’m referring came from people calling themselves “Christians”. Many of those appalling comments centred on victim-blaming, ranging from the more mild old chestnut, “She shouldn’t have been there” to “She deserved everything she had coming to her”, or “Fuck around and find out” (often abbreviated to FAFO). Other victim-blaming tactics came in articles such as one I saw claiming that these women are seeking martyrdom (and therefore if they get shot they have brought it on themselves). Another said that because she was a lesbian married to another lesbian, it was God’s judgement on her and she deserved everything she had coming to her. (I’ve noticed with these fire-breathing hardcases that they are always so ready to claim they know what God’s judgements consist of. That is always a presumptuous and dangerous way of thinking). Another Christian page did a takedown on the Minneapolis lady’s alleged religious beliefs, criticising her because she was described as a loving “Christian” who believed all faiths lead to God. Plainly, she was not a disciple of Christ, but an unbeliever’s wayward religious ideas should be a focus for evangelism rather than providing a sick justification for her killing. Yet, that piece was presented as if it was indeed a justification for it! That’s like saying, “She deserved it because she was an unbeliever”. Unbelievable! There is a kind of insidious subtle gloating over all these victim-blaming justifications. It is like victim-blaming on steroids! Where does such a grim, inhuman attitude come from? What could be its true provenance? I will develop that further below.

[Sidebar: Just so you know, I do believe that homosexual practice is a sin and have written much about human sexuality and the increasing debauchery in society. However, that is not the point for debate here. Although I regard it as a sin, I still regard those committing such a sin as human beings who — while needing to be evangelised — should not be treated nastily and certainly not violently].

Now, what is really interesting in all these victim-blaming remarks — apart from the fact that they are a clear attempt to somehow exonerate the killer — is that they are very much in the same vein as those which are used by people to victim-blame someone who has been raped. So, in the case of rape, people will say, “By being in that area, she was asking for it”, or “What kind of a girl goes out at that time of night?”, or “Not surprising she got done dressed like that!”, and so on. Why are people always so quick to try and exonerate a rapist or a murderer. Even if the raped woman was in a dodgy place at night — even if she was dressed provocatively — even if she was out at night, that does not mean that a violent pervert somehow has the right to violate her body with his and that she deserved everything she had coming to her. Even if the lady in Minneapolis was in a place where she should not have been — even if she should have been at home with her kids — even if she shouldn’t have been in a lesbian relationship — even if she shouldn’t have been obstructing ICE cosplayers — even if she should instead have been a sweet all-American girl from the Midwest Bible Belt, that does not mean that a violent man with a gun has the right to shoot her FOUR times in the head, chest and arm “because she deserved it”. (And don’t try to tell me that the second, third and fourth shots were “self-defence” or I really will know that your soul has been cauterised)! People just do not seem to realise that this kind of victim-blaming is killer/rapist exonerating — that somehow the victim deserved what happened and therefore the perpetrator isn’t really so bad and is even justified in his behaviour.

Where does all this type of attitude come from? Well, apart from the fact that it mostly comes from Trump idolisers, MAGA cult people, the “Christian Right” (so-called), and right-wing conservatives, it seems that such people suffer from a malaise of internalised anger and what I call “snarldom” which has been just waiting for an excuse to let it gush forth like slurry from an overworked sewage farm. The nastiness and arrogance of Trump and his acolytes and goons have simply given these folks an excuse to express their own nastiness and arrogance. One does have to wonder if there is a lot of sexual frustration among such people and that’s why they love guns so much (phallic symbols) and love the idea of their imagined enemies getting bombed (e.g. the alleged Caribbean drug boats, etc.) which are an outlet for all the explosive orgasms they cannot have! (This is somewhat ‘tongue-in-cheek’, by the way! Although I do develop this in my little book, “War is Who We Are”). The fire-breathers will come after me now!

Of course, there will be those who will be itching to say at this point, “But the Dems are just as bad”. If I had a £/$ for everytime that has been said to me, I would be a rich man! Honestly, I couldn’t care less about Dems and Republicans and all that phony baloney. It’s all just two sides of the same bent coin. I am only interested in truth or falsehood. I do not dismiss a truth being spoken by someone simply because they may call themselves a “Democrat” as that would be unjustified prejudice. At present, a certain screwed-up bunch of (extremely rich) lying rascals with a warped outlook on the world are in the forefront with some very nasty policies (and even false “Christian” doctrines) that have a detrimental effect on society and advocate extra-judicial executions. My role here (because I care) is to highlight all this so that genuine disciples of Christ do not get sucked into its hypnotic maelstrom. Today, I saw a very insightful comment on social media which I believe sums up psychologically why so many people (including professing “Christians”) do get sucked into that hypnotic maelstrom. Here it is:

“Trump and his bizarre administration of unqualified loyalists and fanboys have tapped into a vast undercurrent of people who were always there but never normalized — people who have been waiting for when cruelty, indifference, and open delight in others’ suffering could be treated as normal, even patriotic. What’s most disturbing is realizing how many people who outwardly appeared ordinary or harmless — smiling grandparents, PTA moms — were quietly harboring a comfort with dehumanization and moral emptiness that only needed the tiniest of permission to surface”.

Absolutely. Perfectly put. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Remember that many of the people to whom that comment is referring would call themselves “Christians” and go to a church (even twice) every Sunday. Earlier, I said “So holiness can turn into “holier than thou”. Righteousness can turn into self-righteousness. Justice can turn into fanatical crusades”. This sums up the whole MAGA/Christian Right scene. This is all related to a wider divide in the Church scene — an ugly gash — which I have observed for decades. I have come up against this sort of character right from the outset of my life as a disciple of Christ. One inevitably will if one is searching out truth and unmasking falsehood (which is the role of all faithful disciples). I discovered many outwardly pietistic elders who were secretly abusing their wives while persecuting pastors and various members of their congregations, married professors of theology who were trying to have “a bit on the side”, people jealous of others’ good ministries and then telling deliberate lies about them to bring them down, staunch members of congregations who were widely respected in the Christian scene yet who could lie at the drop of a hat and double-down on it, serial gossipers and slanderers, abusers of all kinds, and very much more. The more perceptive and open to truth that one is, the more easily one will see through all this. But to do so is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it good to be wise to what is really happening in any scenario. A curse because it will bring down their wrath upon your head and they will do everything they can to mess up your life. As a little anecdote, I remember when I was around ten years old, I was friends with a neighbour’s child. One day he boasted with great pride that he had discovered real gold in his vast garden. I knew he was lying the moment he said it. So later on I snuck into that garden and looked for where he might have been digging. I found it and did some prospecting and sure enough I discovered some stones that he had painted gold. Suddenly, he came rushing out into the garden and I said, “These are just stones you have painted”. His face went blue and became contorted so that it looked like a wonky potato and he threw himself at me with arms flailing. He seemed like a madman. His mother who was a few steps behind then dragged him off and I said, “You shouldn’t have lied” and walked away, never to have anything more to do with him. Well, that reaction is what you get when you expose all these phony “Christians”. They won’t hurl themselves at you with arms flailing because they are far too subtle for that (although I cannot rule it out!). But they may try and break you down through verbal bullying and pressure (didn’t work on me though 😉). However, they will definitely set about trying to destroy you behind your back. It is as if they are working out of a playbook: “The Rumbled Impostor’s Playbook”.

This covert nastiness (essentially evil) is absolutely everywhere in the visible church. But one only becomes aware of it if one has one’s eyes open spiritually rather than wandering around in a fog of religious blindness. At one time I began to wonder if maybe simply being a nice person was not widely regarded as a requirement of Christian discipleship! One day, someone did say to me, “Being nice is worldly. We do not need to be nice”. There are so many holier-than-thou, self-righteous and fanatical crusaders who do not show their true faces until there is an excuse to do so or unless their masks are being ripped off. And they lack the real signs of discipleship to Christ and spiritual sanctification that I mentioned above, such as compassion, mercy, insight, perception, self-awareness, discernment, love of truth, hatred of lies, the conscious putting to death of sin, self-effacing humility, loving empathy, and so on. I am mindful here of Jesus’s take-down of the Pharisees: “You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23). It is so easy for unbelievers to go through the motions of being one of God’s people by masquerading as ‘squeaky-clean’ twice every Sunday yet being given a perfect excuse to manifest their nastiness, cruelty and “moral emptiness” by revering a hollow, serial-lying, non-Christian man as their leader just because he can bluster and brag better than most. It would have been just as ludicrous for disciples of Christ in the early church to worship the Roman emperor! Despite their outward show, these masqueraders seem to have about as much discernment as a disused telegraph pole. How pathetic it all is! The ultimate in impostorship.

One of the great signs of the run-up to the time of the end is that people will increasingly be forced to show their true colours. They will not be able to help it. This is why there will be “the multiplication of wickedness” and “the love of most will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12) and why ultimately almost the whole world will revere the final manifestation of the beast, the Antichrist, and the fallen archangel who empowers him (Revelation 13:4,8). People will be killing disciples of Christ and think they are doing God a favour. When that happens we will know that the consciences of most will have been cauterised. The ultimate form of the Stoßtruppen (Stormtroopers) will, like the ICE cosplayers of today, playing at being a ruthless tacky parody of videogame warriors in camo-gear, be ordered to go from door-to-door rooting out those who are resisting the edict to worship “Our Great Leader”.

How did we get here? Well… I can only say this: Easy-believism is reaping what it has sown. Becoming a disciple of Christ is not as easy as it has been portrayed in modern evangelism. All that nonsense about “Just invite Jesus into your heart”, or “It’s as easy as A-B-C”, or “God has a wonderful plan for your life”, or “Just throw your head back and speak in a spiritual language”, and other such Pelagian/semi-Pelagian false-teaching baloney. Jesus warned about this. On His way to Jerusalem, someone asked Him, “Will only a few people be saved?” His stark answer was,

“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. After the master of the house gets up and shuts the door, you will stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ But he will reply, ‘I do not know where you are from’” (Luke 13:22-25).

This is serious stuff and it explains why there are so many false converts in the visible church and why that church is in such a mess. So many people hanging out in the church without “wedding clothes”. “For many are called, but few are chosen” (please see Matthew 22:1-14). Yes, it’s about God choosing you, not the other way round! Again, Jesus said this:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).

How much more explicit could He be? There are many demands of a genuine disciple which, if widely applied, would put many off. For example:

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be My disciple.  And whoever does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:25-27).

Obviously the “hatred” to which Jesus is referring here is a comparative one and not a sinful one, as He explains in Matthew 10:34-37:

“Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me”.

Jesus is speaking about the renunciation of anything which stands in the way of the development of one’s spirituality and one’s exclusive relationship with Him. Family ties can indeed do that. So can political affiliations, as they also can blind one to the truth and stand in the way of following Christ to the hilt. Any human affiliation can blind one to the truth. Family, friends, peer-pressure, political allegiance, sectarian denominationalism, religious systems, egocentric ways of thinking, etc. What a challenge it all is! You don’t hear that much from many evangelists about this. That’s because so much evangelism is man-centred and the result is that you wind up with so many impostors and counterfeits in the visible church.

There was an occasion when the disciples “were greatly astonished” by Jesus’ teaching and asked, ‘Who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:25-26). That is the key. Being saved is not a work of man (for that would be impossible) but of God working in him or her. As Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44). That is the magic ingredient. And there is an awful lot of folks hanging out in the visible church who have not been ‘drawn by the Father’. You then wind up with a whole pile of unregenerate people masquerading outwardly as pious and squeaky-clean, even parading around as pastors and teachers, even as prophets! But inwardly they are something else altogether (e.g. ravening wolves!). They create chaos and become fertile ground for falsehood. They are in the forefront of all those countless nutty charismatic megachurches with their false (occult) experiences, false prophecies, false deliverances, and false teachings; all the multiple churches teaching prosperity, fake healing and other such baloney; all the mainstream denominations promoting anything but the Bible; all the legalistic heavy-shepherding churches; and all these cruel-hearted people who are so bereft of a single ounce of discernment that they revere a man like Donald Trump, promoter of false teachers and false teaching while making out he can rid the world of “scum” and create a “golden age”. And they do so even after having it revealed to them that he is a serial liar. Do you know how many lies Donald Trump told during his first administration? 30,573. I’ll spell it out in case you didn’t get the seriousness of it: Thirty-thousand, five hundred and seventy-three. (see https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2024/10/21/according-to-the-washington-post-trump-told-30573-lies-during-his-four-years-in-office-but-it-doesnt-matter/438252/ ). It was common knowledge. You should have known that when you voted for him. The man is revered by so many professing “Christians” yet he is a serial liar (see https://academic.oup.com/poq/article/87/3/764/7275174 and https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/news/2024/10/why-does-donald-trump-tell-such-blatant-lies/ and many more such pieces). He and his acolytes have also told many more lies during the present administration; so many that it is hard to keep up with them all! He really is completely unhinged. When people calling themselves “Christians” deliberately revere someone they know to be a barefaced serial liar and trust all the fanboy acolytes in his cabinet who are equally mendacious and ruthless and support the execution of people for simply being inconvenient, then you have to question if they are genuine disciples of Christ. There has to be a line drawn somewhere. Genuine disciples of Christ, even if they were foolish enough to sign themselves up to a guy like that initially, will surely come to realise the truth and say to themselves, “What on earth are you doing involving yourself with that impure mountain of poop?!?” The problem is that the definition of a “Christian” falls very short of that of a disciple of Christ. This is why I prefer the title “disciple of Christ” and no longer call myself a Christian. I do not want to be identified with mere “Christianity” as most of it today is bandwagon stuff and a gross caricature of that for which Jesus came into this world.

So now you know where all the nonsense comes from in the bizarre and ugly ‘Trumpite’ scene and why so many professing “Christians” are impostors and counterfeits. As Paul put it: “All who desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and imposters go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 2:12-13). It is not just “men” and it has never stopped, and it will continue going from bad to worse until the day of reckoning, the day of the Lord.

.

.

.

© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2026
[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]

.