Why Are So Many “Christians” Hellbent on Being Horrible?

Why do so many objectively hideous people declare themselves "Christian"?

Hi,

There’s a question that’s been swirling around in my head for years now, and I think it started when Trump won in 2016.

Here you had this man who was just objectively hideous, being voted in by hardcore Christians.

It was weird.

“Thank You, Lord Jesus, for PRESIDENT TRUMP!”

Since then, every additional fact we’ve learnt about Trump makes him seem even less Christian — in both his words and actions. And yet — his hardcore Christian fanbase remains. Sub in a variety of other so-called “Christian” leaders (in America especially) and the same pattern emerges.

As I’ve reported on various church leaders over the last year, the same kind of very basic question kept coming up: Why do these men whose actions are so unchristian call themselves Christian… while also being adored by a bunch of Christians?

Today, Webworm regular Joshua Drummond tries to answer that question. He’s done a far better job than I ever could.

David.

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The Good Samaritan

by Joshua Drummond.

By now, you’ve heard about Jordan Neely. You know what happened: Jordan, a homeless man riding the New York subway, shouted, and threw his jacket to the floor in a way that one onlooker described as “violent.” For this, he was choked to death over the course of 15 minutes by a man called Daniel Penny, as people looked on and — inevitably — shot snuff films of the whole thing. 

Enough people have already written about this tragedy without me adding my take. Instead, I want to talk about something specific that happened in the aftermath, and what it says about one of the crumbling pillars our society stands on. 

12 days after Jordan’s death, the Wall Street Journal (owned, of course, by Rupert Murdoch) ran the following headline: 

I took note of their use of the word “Samaritan,” by which I mean I yelled at my phone when I saw it come up.

And then I saw that Florida Governer Ron DeSantis had said the same thing, in a tweet where he’d pledged his support to Jordan’s killer:

Ron DeSantis tweeted this on May 12, 2023.

And my reason for shouting was this: that someone who kills another person is the opposite of a Good Samaritan.

The Good Samaritan is is a story from the Bible. It is a parable, an allegorical story told by Jesus himself, to answer a question posed by the Biblical version of a concern troll: “Who is my neighbour?” 

Let’s do a quick recap for anyone who’s out of the loop: A Jewish man is on a journey when he is jumped by robbers. They beat the shit out of him, steal his stuff, and leave him for dead on the side of the road. Two men — the first a priest, the second a different kind of religious type — spot him and, instead of helping, leave him for dead. But then he’s spotted by a Samaritan, who takes pity on him, cleans his wounds, gives him clothes, takes him to an inn and pays in advance for him to stay as long as needed. 

An important point of the story is that Samaritans and Jews were at this point in time very much not friends. Jesus told the story to make a point: a neighbour is anyone — even an enemy — who shows kindness to someone in need of it, especially when those most obligated to show kindness do not. 

Bible translations vary a lot, but there is no version of the story where the Samaritan puts the injured man in a chokehold and kills him. 

Plenty of people have made this exact observation, not least the Reverend Al Sharpton, who delivered the eulogy at Jordan’s funeral.

But I’m interested in what it says about the many people on the right-wing of United States politics — including, perhaps, up to 25 percent of the population — who call themselves Christians. 

I don’t think they’re Christians at all. I think they’re something else. 

Something terrible. 

If you’ve read my stuff on Webworm before, you’ll know that there was a time when I took everything Biblical not just seriously but literally.

When I was a kid, it was prophesied by a local holy man that I would become a preacher. I figured it was my Christian duty to fulfil my destiny by understanding as much about the Word of God as possible, so I read every single word of the Bible. I am not exaggerating. I read every book, chapter and verse, even the boring obtuse books that no-one reads, and I read the more interesting books perhaps hundreds of times. 

This is a lot more than many modern Christians manage. Despite the fact that a founding principle of the Protestant movement was that Christians have the right to read the Bible, many Apostolic and Pentecostal Christians hardly read it at all. They’re directed, from the pulpit and via “study groups,” to certain passages and verses that are dissected ad nauseam. The vast majority of the Good Book never gets touched. Our church environment was no different, and this made for uncomfortable discussions with my parents’ friends —  they hated being schooled by an incredibly annoying but ultimately correct eleven-year-old on what the Bible really said, as opposed to what they thought it did. 

I’m rusty, but I still know enough Bible to whip plenty of believers at a game of Bible Challenge (5.1/10 stars on BoardGame Geek). And I’m going to really lean into my prophesied alternate-universe preacher self, with an actual honest-to-God fire-and-brimstone sermon. 

Why? Because according to the Bible itself and the words of Jesus — and not the backward interpretations being thrown around by media commentators and Republican politicians — many of the Evangelical Christians in the United States are not followers of Christ at all. 

Here are a few examples. 

Jesus said: “Turn the other cheek.” 

“Christians” say: “Stand your ground.”  

Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor.” 

“Christians” say: “God wants you to have money.”

Jesus drove moneychangers out of the Temple with a whip.  

“Christians” put ATMs in the foyers of churches and implement apps to push payments from parishioners. 

I could go on indefinitely. The point I want to make is not just that these so-called Christians are not just skipping a few of the weirder and less-followed ancient Biblical laws, like the one about not eating lobsters, or the one about what to do if your house gets mold (the solution was often to burn it down.) These people are doing the opposite of what Jesus preached, and twisting his words, at nearly every opportunity.

There is a word for taking the words of Christ and giving them the opposite of the meaning intended. 

The word is blasphemy.

I bet you can guess what the punishment is. 

And here’s where the sermon gets real: the rise of this kind of Christian was prophesied nearly 2,000 years ago. 

In 2 Timothy, chapter 3, the Apostle Paul writes scathingly of what religious types will be like in the Last Days, and they are quite easily recognizable as modern, false Christians. 

They will also be ungrateful, godless, heartless, and hateful. Their words will be cruel, and they will have no self-control or pity. These people will hate everything good. They will be sneaky, reckless, and puffed up with pride. Instead of loving God, they will love pleasure. Even though they will make a show of being religious, their religion won't be real. Don't have anything to do with such people.

But it gets better. And a bit freakier. If we’re talking about anti-Christians, we need to deal with… the Antichrist. 

If you’ve never read the book of Revelation, I encourage you to do so. It is an absolute trip. There are multi-headed dragons and giant whores and swarms of locust-scorpions and rivers of blood, in a vivid kaleidoscope of metaphor and of-its-time allegory. Then there’s the book of Daniel, which was written many years before Revelation and also has much to say about the end times. Taken together, in much the same way that a well-composed horoscope or Tarot reading can make you go “whoa,” there’s some stuff that seems, well, just a bit too real to be coincidence. 

Like this passage from Daniel 8 that describes… something. 

After that, a fourth animal appeared in my dream. This one was a grisly horror—hideous. It had huge iron teeth. It crunched and swallowed its victims. Anything left over, it trampled into the ground. It was different from the other animals—this one was a real monster. It had ten horns.

As I was staring at the horns and trying to figure out what they meant, another horn sprouted up, a little horn. Three of the original horns were pulled out to make room for it. There were human eyes in this little horn, and a big mouth speaking arrogantly.

A leader with a big mouth? Interesting! I wonder who that could be? Never mind. Let’s look at a description of the false messiah who the world’s fake Christians will worship, from Revelation 13:  

The whole earth was agog, gaping at the Beast. They worshipped the Dragon who gave the Beast authority, and they worshipped the Beast, exclaiming, “There’s never been anything like the Beast! No one would dare go to war with the Beast!”

The Beast had a loud mouth, boastful and blasphemous. It could do anything it wanted for forty-two months.

Boastful, you say! That’s interesting! I wonder what recent rulers adored by the world’s fake Christians have been notably boastful? Maybe a Google Image Search will help.

The length of a Presidential term is 48 months, but once you subtract the first six months where the government is still running under the previous President’s budget, you get… oh.

Don’t worry! These might be just coincidences. We’ll only know for sure that we’re in the End Times when we see something called the Mark of the Beast, which will be worn on either the hand…

Hmmm.

Or the forehead:

HMMMMMM.

I’m having a bit of fun here. You can do pretty much anything you like with Biblical prophecy, and I’m far from the first to have thought of those parallels. 

But the greater, much less funny point stands: while there are many people who do their best to follow Jesus and live his teachings, plenty of self-described Christians do literally the opposite of everything that Jesus said to do. And, unlike my tongue-in-cheek identification of Trump as the Beast of Revelation, their antics are deadly serious. They’ll seize power however they can, demonize anyone different to them, and they’ll celebrate the homicide of a helpless man on a New York subway. 

I think Antichrist is a perfectly accurate description for people like this, and I’m not the only one. Let’s leave the last word to, uh, God:

Then [the Son of Man] will turn to the ‘goats,’ the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why? Because—

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.’

Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’

He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me — you failed to do it to me.’

 Then those ‘goats’ will be herded to their eternal doom, but the ‘sheep’ to their eternal reward.

— Matthew 25, 41-46, CEV

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David here again.

Whatever religious or non-religious background you come from, I hope this was an enlightening (and fun) read. For me, Josh’s essay just clarifies so much of what I’ve never been able to put into words.

And you can apply it to so many so-called “Christians” in your neck of the woods. Here in New Zealand I look at the John Camerons, Peter Mortlocks and Brian Tamakis. In Australia, America, the UK, everywhere else — gosh, take your pick.

The short version: A load of Christians are the opposite of Christian. Which I imagine is quite annoying for those Christians that are actually attempting to follow what Jesus laid out. For anyone who cares what Jesus actually had to say — Red Letter Christians is a great resource. They’re laser-focused on going “hey what if we did what Jesus said instead of what Republicans say” — and it’s really great.

What did you make of Josh’s take? I know it got pretty dramatic towards the end there, but I’m with him. Super curious to hear any insights from the Worms.

David.