Consider some recent headlines that really should concern us. One of them says this: “We may have been scammed by asylum seekers, admits Church of England”. Another runs as follows: “Whistleblower Exposes Alleged Asylum Seeker Baptism Scam in Church of England”. The first piece begins this way: The Church of England has admitted for the first time that it may have been “scammed” by asylum seekers falsely claiming to have converted to Christianity to boost their chances of staying in the UK. The Rt Revd Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, conceded it was “very difficult” to look into the hearts of converts and be 100 percent certain that they were genuine.

In the past Christian missionaries in places like India had to be careful of “rice Christians.” These were folks who often pretended to become Christians, but their main aim was to get rice and other goodies from the Western missionaries. Material benefits, and not spiritual ones, was the motivating factor.
It seems we have the same problem today, but in a new form. And this includes asylum seekers who are duping clueless Christians into thinking they have converted to Christ, simply to get free entry into the West. In both cases it was the supposed desire to ‘be like Jesus’ that became part of the problem.
Missionaries back then had to learn to be much more aware and careful as to how they proceeded. The same today.
Contemporary social justice warriors both within and without the church have a tendency to be naïve, gullible and undiscerning when they carry on about how “compassionate” they are. They may think they are being Christlike, but too often they can just be ‘useless idiots’ who serve the causes of various activist groups.
And lest folks think I am making all this up, consider some recent headlines that really should concern us. One of them says this: “We may have been scammed by asylum seekers, admits Church of England”. Another runs as follows: “Whistleblower Exposes Alleged Asylum Seeker Baptism Scam in Church of England”.
The first piece begins this way:
The Church of England has admitted for the first time that it may have been “scammed” by asylum seekers falsely claiming to have converted to Christianity to boost their chances of staying in the UK. The Rt Revd Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, conceded it was “very difficult” to look into the hearts of converts and be 100 per cent certain that they were genuine.
She acknowledged there had been a “small number” of alleged abuses but said the clergy “do the best they can” and it was “ultimately” the job of immigration tribunals and the Home Office to assess and vet the validity of asylum claims. Her comments come after robust denials by the Church of England of claims by senior MPs and whistleblowers that clergy have been routinely supporting “bogus” asylum claims and enabled a “conveyor belt” of thousands of asylum seekers to convert.
Abdul Ezedi, the Clapham chemical attack suspect, was granted asylum after claiming to have converted to Christianity, despite having two convictions in the UK for sex assault and exposure. Friends of Ezedi, an illegal migrant, told The Telegraph that he was a “good Muslim” who bought half a halal sheep every fortnight, despite his apparent conversion. James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, is reviewing the facts of the case to establish if the law needs to be overhauled to prevent such abuses. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/11/we-may-have-been-scammed-by-asylum-seekers-admits-church/

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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Friday, April 5, 2024
Spiritual warfare looks like forgiving your enemies, like repenting of your sin, like loving your spouse and your friends. It looks like preaching the gospel and taking the sacraments. It looks like loving your neighbours. It looks like the fruit of the spirit. It looks like prayer.

We contest not with flesh and blood but with powers and principalities (Ephesians 6). This means the grand principles of the fallen world, ruled by evil personalities, and the everyday demons we all encounter all the time.
Which might sound strange as maybe you don’t encounter many demons, but my pastoral experience would suggest otherwise. I’m not going to write a manual for casting out demons but it’s a not uncommon part of pastoral ministry.
Interestingly though, I’ve been in a church which was majorly into this; it saw a lot of demonic opposition and many cast out. I’ve been in churches which just deal with them when they come up. It might sound like the first is facing opposition because they’re really at the sharp edge and should be emulated, but I think that’s the wrong reading. Instead, in normal pastoral ministry they come up and you deal with them, but they love attention because it takes the attention away from Jesus. Ministries or churches focused on demons have usually got things out of kilter.
My point in this post is different. Most spiritual warfare is not casting out demons. Most spiritual warfare is ordinary things.
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The subjects most easily deceived were told things like, “You know brushing your teeth is good for you, right? You’ve been taught this since you were little. Trust us.” When they subsequently heard arguments they never had before, this group felt sheltered and even deceived.  The least vulnerable group were those who had not only been warned against a bad argument they would hear, but they were also taught how to respond. They were also warned they could face additional  bad arguments and needed to be aware and vigilant.  One thing we can learn from McGuire’s experiment is that the method many Christian parents and churches use to pass on the faith—reinforcement without taking counter ideas seriously—is the one most vulnerable to failure. 

Many Christian parents worry about how best to pass faith onto their children. Tragically, statistics suggest they are right to worry. In 2020, the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University found that  just 2% of millennials, a generation now well into adulthood, have a biblical worldview. That is the lowest of any generation since surveys on the topic began. According to a Lifeway Research report , two-thirds of those who attend church as teenagers will drop out of church as adults.  
A significant aspect of the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation has to do with ideas. Helping students think correctly about life and the world, God and themselves, would be hard enough if they weren’t also facing such strong cultural headwinds. Simply put, many young people today leave the faith because they lack the necessary immunity from the bad ideas of our culture. Christian parents must not only present truth to their kids; they must find ways to immunize them against lies.
Dr. William McGuire, a Yale psychology professor in the 1950s, suggested that bad ideas behave like viruses. Specifically, he thought that the more exposure one has to bad ideas in a controlled setting, the less likely they are to fall for those ideas later.  McGuire performed several experiments in which he tried to convince subjects of a lie, that brushing teeth is bad for them. Unsurprisingly, those given no preparation for what they were about to hear were more easily convinced of the lie than those warned against a specific bad argument they would hear.  
However, the subgroups that were the easiest and the hardest to dupe were surprising. The group most vulnerable to falsehoods was not the one with zero preparation, but the one who had merely had the truth reinforced.
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