There’s a horrifying new trend developing, where people pretend to be Christians in order to claim a religious exemption from getting the shot.

When I say “horrifying”, I mean for the people doing it. Pretending to be followers of Jesus and making a mockery of God and his Messiah will not end well for them. Sitting in a pew for a wedding or a funeral is one thing; pretending you’re a believer (false swearing) and signing a contract to that effect is quite another.

In fact, it’s a temptation from the devil. It has the fingerprints of Satan all over it. In other words, it’s a spiritual trap. The religious exemption option is being offered to ensnare people, not to help them. And many are falling for it, thinking it’s a way out of their predicament.

When you fall for a temptation, you ultimately suffer. There may be a time initially when you think you’ve gotten away with something, but that ends soon enough. And if you haven’t acknowledged the error of your ways before it does end, the fall-out and punishment will be severe.

Remember the parable about the person who was at the wedding feast without the proper clothing? Remember what happened to that person?

I am not at all a fan of coerced injections, but there are other ways around a mandate besides cheapening Jesus’ sacrifice and God’s great gift of grace. It’s a form of spiritual fraud, to claim to believe in order to gain from it.

Even worse, there are now pastors selling (by ‘donation’) religious exemption letters online, no questions asked.

Christians of convenience are not entirely a new trend. For hundreds of years, when Christianity was the mainstream belief system, many people pretended to be Christians in order to gain from it politically or socially. This kind of fraud is particularly rife today within the refugee community, with people pretending to be Christians and claiming they’re in danger of persecution if they return to their home country. Christian organizations in the receiving countries (including the US and Canada) are vouching for these faux-Christians, justifying their lie by calling it a humanitarian gesture. The churches are also, of course, making money from the practice, which I suspect is their main motivation for doing it in the first place.

Having the option to claim a religious exemption for a mandatory shot is a God-send to those who are genuine believers, but a satanic trap to those who aren’t. God permits his own people to bend the truth occasionally (think of how David pretended to be insane so that his enemies wouldn’t see him as a threat), but unbelievers pretending to be believers do not fall into that category.

My prayer is that those who want to avoid getting the injection find another way around it than to pretend to follow Jesus. But if they do choose that path, I pray that the course of their lives leads them to repentance and conversion, and that they actually do end up becoming Christians.