At first glance, they feel deeply un-Christmas-y. No gingerbread. No sugar. No peppermint. Just… flesh.

But that’s actually closer to the heart of Christmas than we usually admit.

The incarnation is not about vibes or nostalgia. It’s about God taking on flesh. Weight. Blood. Bone. Jesus does not merely appear among us—He comes to be eaten, so to speak, as true food from heaven. He Himself draws the straight line from the manger to the cross, and from the cross to the Communion table.

As the hymn Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence puts it:

“Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood,
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heav’nly food.”

We have been trained to keep Christmas cute and non-corporeal. Yet Christmas is our redemption made visible. The incarnation is earthy, embodied, almost confrontational in how physical it is. It continues as we are baptized into His body. We will rise with Him! So we enjoy the sugar. But don’t forget to feast on Christ: our hope, born in a body, bled in a body, and the One who will raise our bodies too.

That is very good news indeed.

Love it or hate it, bots are settling in.

You can see them popping up everywhere, automating work and replacing humans as AI enthusiasm seems boundless in many quarters. And no doubt, some aspects of life are in the crosshairs. The arts has been one of the first, with artists complaining about being steamrolled. From Hollywood’s writers and actors to social-media influencers, musicians, and illustrators—everyone’s got a horror scenario about the bleak and soulless world of AI-generated culture.

Some of them have pretty strong feelings about it. Both fear and loathing. Actors and writers held strikes. Artists and authors want compensation when their work is fed into the learning machines. I’m not sure where we’re at in the AI hype cycle, but Silicon Valley is giddy with its new toy. Eggs, omelettes and all that.

What are artists complaining about? You probably know already. Matthew Inman at The Oatmeal fears the machine will take work from human craftsmen. Like the Luddites before him–he would like to smash it all down. He rails against the pervasiveness of the tech, feeling that no human endeavor will be untouched as moneyed corporations and government go all-in. Next, he sees AI tools as enabling mediocrity, allowing the midwit to punch above his weight, like a kid pretending he’s making music by pressing the demo button on a Casio keyboard. He laments that the side effect of fast tracking and outsourcing the creative process will be loss of growth and joy for makers. Downstream, consumers who’ve embraced the mediocrity or mistaken it for excellence, are being denied the benefits of great art. But as with most of these protests, it’s not clear who he’s angry with—the people who use AI, the people who build it, or the fact that such technology exists at all. Probably all of the above.

Humanity has always had a complicated relationship with its tools. Socrates worried that writing would ruin human memory. Medieval clergy opposed mechanical clocks for placing human artifice on God’s times and seasons. Critics of the printing press warned of “a confusing and harmful abundance of books.” Anglican minister Edmund Massey, perhaps the earliest of vaccines skeptics, preached against small pox inoculations in 1722. He condemned the new practice as playing God, since he viewed illness as a divinely-appointed form of judgment. Historically, new things were usually greeted with suspicion. These days, we care a little less about what God thinks of our technological innovations, but the rise of artificial intelligence has triggered lots of chatter.

But humanity adapts and on it goes, right?

Technology has always arrived with a promise. The earliest tools were extensions of human ability: a hoe for longer reach; a pot for carrying more water than hands. This tech was basic enhancement, aimed at survival. By the industrial and electrical ages, we had survival fairly well in hand. Technology began promising ease from life’s harsher limits—efficiency, economy, speed. Home appliances promised more comfort, less toil. Automobiles and airplanes promised to outrun time and distance. Medicine promised to fend off pain and death. The digital age has gone further still. These tools aren’t aimed at easing the burden of being human—they promise escape from it altogether.

It’s not uncommon to meet the assumption that technology is neutral, that anything can be used for good or ill. For example, a couch is just a couch. But it could be used to entertain guests or hurled at an enemy, I guess. Yet every invention reshapes more than is intended and each in its own way. A couch might change how you lay out your living room, but a smart phone can keep you up at night, ruin friendships or get you into debt.

Professor Josh Brake tells of upgrading his road bike to an electric one—what it gave him, what it quietly took away. Every new tool promises speed, ease, safety, control—but as he says “every innovation is a bargain.” We usually ask what our tools can do for us and rarely what they’re doing to us. It’s hard to quantify the affect while you’re in the thick of the cultural smog. Only when it lifts do we notice what’s changed.

Lately, I’ve tried to think through the thought-terminating claim of tech neutrality. Maybe a handy rubric for judging is to think about when tech is philanthropic and when it leans transhumanist—tools can serve creaturely life or they can attempt to undermine it. There’s room to argue about the categories (by all means, have at it in the comments), but some of our newest technologies tip easily into modifying human essentials. We are thinking, learning, suffering, working, embodied creatures, created by God. Every new tool changes how we live, but the question is whether it still helps us live as humans.

Don’t mistake my wariness for rejection. Technology itself is a fruit of human creativity—part of our God-given mandate to shape and steward the world. But since the Fall, our inventions carry both purpose and pride. No tool is neutral, because every tool teaches its user something about power and dependence. The question isn’t whether we should use technology, but whether it helps us live as redeemed creatures—or seduces us into forgetting that we are creatures at all.

The labor-saving devices of yesteryear promised to provide more leisure time than we would know what to do with. Clearly, mid-century inventors never envisioned “notification syndrome” or the existential dread wrought by a forgotten password. Nor the grind of daily commutes, the paralysis of choice and the tyranny of measurement and credentialing. Professor Michael Sacasas once wrote, “When machine-like consistency, efficiency, speed, or production is demanded of creatures, then creatures are made to live as if they were machines.” Not sons motivated by imitating their Father who is working, but for the maintaining of systems and money.

Could we lose our ability to think, as Jeffrey Tucker warns at The Epoch Times? “A student or a worker who relies on AI to generate all answers will not ever develop intuition, judgment, or even intelligence.” The epistemological work of “learning how to learn” might be the most vital skill for the next generation.

Even suffering—the part of human existence that technology most frequently promises to erase—is a uniquely human part of life, this side of Eden. The technocratic mindset sees any discomfort as unnecessary. And so, in the name of compassion, we invent drugs to kill the unwanted unborn and contraptions to suicide the sufferers. Yet, it is suffering that keeps us dependent on our Creator.

I probably don’t need to rehearse the impact of digital connectivity on human interaction. Humans are embodied, made for presence — to look one another in the eye, to share bread, to work side by side, to bury and be buried. Yet our technology keeps pulling us toward abstraction: conversations without bodies, compassion without proximity, outrage without action. We can know what’s happening on the other side of the world while ignoring the person in the next room. All sorts of tools have muted the significance of our physical existence, but digital technologies have made what we stand to lose a little more obvious.

Some inventions do honor our creatureliness; they don’t hinder our ability to live as beings created by God’s—worshiping, judging, working, loving. They amplify the human vocation to steward creation. Others, though, aim at divinity itself. The first kind of tech keeps us human. The second kind tries to make us gods. Like those building the tower of Babel, the goal is to “dissolve the distinction between heaven and earth, mortal and immortal, the transcendent and the mundane.” These are the technologies that promise omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, or eternal life—the godlike attributes humanity has always lusted after.

Today we have the full gamut of opinion about our AI future and Christians would be wise to be thinking clearly. At one end there are those, like Sam Altman, who place all their faith in the machines, speaking glowingly of an unimaginably prosperous future where virtual everything is normal and the virtually impossible is a snap. Yet, he is so oblivious to the wrench in a machine future: humans. When he sat down with Tucker Carlson, he seemed genuinely puzzled that morality can’t be averaged out or coded in. Someone will always have to rule on what is good. Meanwhile, outflanking him in fervor are the cheerful apocalyptics who reason consistent with a survival-of-the-fittest worldview: if a superior intelligence rises up and wipes out humanity, then so be it.

And then there are those who have no time for AI devotees and want to claw back some humanity. They aren’t curmudgeons, just sad and concerned. As a self-professed “AI hater”, Anthony Moser has a grim take, warning that those who build AI are slaves and enslaving:

In a kind of nihilistic symmetry, their dream of the perfect slave machine drains the life of those who use it as well as those who turn the gears. What is life but what we choose, who we know, what we experience? Incoherent empty men want to sell me the chance to stop reading and writing and thinking, to stop caring for my kids or talking to my parents, to stop choosing what I do or knowing why I do it. Blissful ignorance and total isolation, warm in the womb of the algorithm, nourished by hungry machines.

Back in 2016 Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli said of AI content: “I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all..I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.” He mourns humanity’s loss of faith “in ourselves.”

But do either of these men have an answer besides a gritty, no-AI Amish-style hold out? Or a nihilist’s despair as the machines rise and rise? They want to convince the ones with the Casio keyboard that there is more. But those guys are probably busy pushing the demo button, over and over. Moser concedes that those who are satisfied with AI-generated content probably won’t hear such arguments: “If you’re pushing slop or eating it, you wouldn’t read it anyway. You’d ask a bot for a summary and forget what it told you, then proceed with your day, unchanged by words you did not read and ideas you did not consider.”

I’m not anti-technology; to live in this world is to use it, but we need not be used up by it, as Moser fears. Technology started by helping humans do things they couldn’t do, but now we need to guard the things only a human can do. There will be some who treat AI like the airplane: they don’t know how to build it or fly it or how it works, but will happily just get in and go where it’s going. We need some who will not check their brain (or faith) at the login screen.

The slow march of progress is easy to trace along the threads of what is called progress. From swords to guns to drones; from hunting to farming to printing food; from heralds to letters to phones to neural links. Vulcanized rubber to pneumatic tires to jet engines and space ships. Extension to ease to escape. Every leap promises liberation but brings tripwires. Our newest inventions make life faster even as they claim to make it easier. The noise multiplies while discernment withers. Move slow and make things is an antithesis to the acceleration, grounded in the Word of eternal life.

Wendell Berry once wrote: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” It’s clear we can’t always trust the makers of tech to have creatureliness in mind. They think about improvement, money, power, progress and throwing off constraint. We consider stewardship, worship, redemption and eternity. There are those who don’t recognize they are creatures, those who can’t stand to be one. Distance, pain, dependence, mortality—all the things that remind us we are creatures—are part of the curse. Believing the machine can save us will result in counterfeit redemption: power without repentance, knowledge without wisdom, presence without love, eternity without God. The only One who ever reversed the curse did it by taking it on His own body—not by code but on the cross.

Other stuff I wrote that you might like:

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[yes there are spoilers…]

I finally finished watching Andor last week. It’s easy to see what all the fuss was about: the prequel-to-a-prequel won over both critics and wary Star Wars fans. Showrunner Tony Gilroy’s fascination with the “little people” in the galaxy far, far away yields stories that are brutal and unrelenting, and his immersive world-building pairs sumptuous costuming with real-world locations. Digital effects create stunning worlds episode after episode.

Gilroy’s aim was to tell a story about how the fully-formed Rebellion of George Lucas’ originals was built from small victories against the might of the Empire. The decisive blow would come after many sacrifices made by a multitude of ordinary people who took up the challenge to throw off tyranny. Their stories are brought to life by a great cast and dialogue deemed worthy of entry into the Star Wars canon.

So, to catch you up if you’ve not been following along: Andor is set a few years before Luke Skywalker famously maneuvered down the Death Star’s ventilator shaft to deliver the lethal blow. It tells the backstory of Cassian Andor, the man who helped steal the Death Star plans that revealed its fatal flaw—events first told in 2016’s Rogue One. The series traces Andor’s journey from a purposeless mischief-maker to a committed operative in the nascent Rebellion.

Many commentators have hailed Andor as a triumph of “left-wing storytelling”. One Guardian columnist found parallels between Andor and the Gaza conflict. Others found immigration narratives, noting how Andor’s friends are “undocumented farm workers” in one episode. Redditors thought the dehumanizing high-tech prison where the inmates unknowingly make parts for the machinery of war was similar to using modern prisoners to make uniforms for the U.S. military. The Huffington Post declared that the show has “Eerie Real-Life Parallels To Trump’s Presidency” and has inspired a #Resistance.

So is it a “left wing show”?

Plenty of bloggers say Andor’s Empire is clearly comprised of space Nazis. The Emperor—or perhaps Orson Krennic, the man in charge of the Death Star program—is a dead ringer for Trump. In that take, the evil and controlling ISB is cast as the Republican Party, or some manifestation of MAGA. Online commenters assumed that Trump supporters would surely wilt under such a blistering critique of their political party, showing them to be the authoritarian, patriarchal colonizers their critics believe them to be.

Granting, for the sake of argument, that fascism is a well-defined ideology (I don’t think it is), that it sits neatly opposite communism on the political spectrum (I’m not convinced), and that it can be faithfully replicated outside the unique tumult of the 20th century (historians still fight over that one), I’ll concede that Andor borrows some European fascist aesthetics. Nazis surely did a disservice to the arts with crappy poetry and centralized paranoia over what was and was not artistic. Andor’s ISB certainly has that tinge. The belts, hats, and jodhpurs of the ISB uniforms, along with the cold, impersonal architecture, certainly nod to the Third Reich. Meanwhile, the rebels on Ghorman are dressed straight out of the French Resistance playbook—berets, trench coats, and even a faux-French dialect to match.

But the similarities are only surface-deep. Those who insist Andor is simply a critique of fascism (or a warning about Trump) miss a bigger theme: the Empire is a managerial surveillance machine. Conservatives who value small government and personal freedom would probably end up on the Empire’s bad side, if we’re being honest, since every major antagonist in Andor is a career bureaucrat. Its technocratic soullessness could just as easily map onto communism, modern China, or—more uncomfortably—increasingly low-trust Western liberal democracies drifting toward soft totalitarianism. I’ll even take a line from the main protagonist, Luthen Rael, to illustrate: “The Empire has been choking us so slowly, we're starting not to notice.” You can fill in the blank about which regime that applies to. Suffice it to say, fascism isn’t the only way to do tyranny, which is something modern progressives seem to forget.

Anyway, Gilroy insists he didn’t write Andor as political didacticism. He wanted to make it harder to pin on one moment in time, instead drawing from many historical sources and it shows. He’s made a fine piece of TV and it should age well, given the craftsmanship, and the way it provokes reflection on the human experience. “You could drop this show at any point in the last 6,000 years,” he once said, “and it would make sense to some people about what’s happening to them.” I suspect that’s not just a liberal feint. During a slightly awkward interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, Gilroy batted away the notion that the show had a partisan mission. When Douthat pressed the “so, it’s left-wing” angle, Gilroy lobbed back the rhetorical grenade: “Do you identify with the Empire?”

But back to the question..

Gilroy said his real aim was to write “fascinating” characters, but then—perhaps without realizing the irony—he explained why he thinks Andor is, in a sense, left-wing: because liberal artists make better art. Why? According to him, the actor or writer with a “more generous and progressive point of view” will be more empathetic, and empathy is how one “inhabits” a character to write it well. Hollywood seems thoroughly convinced of this; Jane Fonda said something similar last year at an awards ceremony. It’s a neat, flattering loop: the more progressive you are, the better your art will be; the better your art, the more progressives are shown to be the ones capable of real humanity.

@rufuswainwright“Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. And by the way woke just means that you give a damn about other people”. The great Jane Fonda delivered one of the most inspiring and urgent speeches I have heard when she accepted the Life Time Achievement Award at the SAG Awards this past weekend. I have been incredibly blessed to get to know her better in the past and I am so grateful that she is lending this voice that wakes us up, that lifts us up, that shakes us up to my Dream Requiem on May 4th at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Thank you Jane for all you have done and for all that you will still do! #jamefonda #sagawards #sagaftra

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But even if you could truly understand a man’s mind and heart –Jeremiah might dispute that is possible– where does that leave you? Gilroy assumes good people obviously won’t agree with the Empire, but that’s wishful thinking. If he expects his audience to simply feel its way to truth through empathy, he is deceived. There is more than a little bait-and-switch in insisting that you must understand a character but never identify with him if he’s a baddie. This is the problem with making empathy the highest virtue: you risk feeling deeply without ever acting rightly.

Andor is a refreshing break from the preachiness of many modern dramas. Yes, there is an obligatory lesbian romance, cohabiting unmarried relationships and, of course, the violence. But it draws you in because it often refuses to moralize, letting us witness greed, loyalty, fear, and love and their consequences. It leaves some ends loose, some stories left untold. However, far from trusting the audience to conclude the right things using their empathy, Gilroy does make judgement calls. His nuanced Imperials—who plausibly believe they are bringing order and prosperity–get their comeuppance. The heroes, though compromised by their zeal to end tyranny, are vindicated, even though not all find happy endings. This is closer to Tolkien or Dostoyevsky’s conservative imagination than progressive fans may admit.

That gap between Gilroy’s stated MO and the story he actually tells is clearest in the manifesto of a young rebel named Nemik. Bluesky progressives were sharing it online like scripture:

“Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.”

It sounds stirring, but Andor’s reality says otherwise. Freedom doesn’t erupt on its own; Nemik dies fighting for it. Tyranny and control aren’t some alien force—they’re baked into the fallen human nature which is evident, episode after episode. And authority isn’t unnatural; even the righteous Rebellion relies on honor and deference, order and chains of command to push back evil. There’s the codeswitching: Nemik talks like a progressive, but his actions—and the story itself—reveal that he’s working from an older truth. Nemik’s optimism echoes Rousseau’s assertion that man is “born free,” yet Andor’s world is far closer to the wisdom Augustine discovered that everywhere, men are in bondage to sin.

I’m not saying progressive artists are insincere when they claim empathy drives great art. But Andor’s success isn’t built on empathy alone. Is it compelling because we relate to the characters and feel what they feel—or because they’re fighting to restore what we know is good, true, and beautiful? A story that aims only to elicit empathy, no matter how technically brilliant, won’t satisfy for long—least of all when the plot revolves around a cosmic struggle between good and evil. In the end, people don’t just want to feel; we want to know if those feelings mattered. Empathy can help us understand behavior, but it can’t justify anything.

That’s an underlying problem for modern art more generally. The Left, which dominates most creative industries, often treats empathy and novelty as its highest virtues: break the mold, make people feel deeply, and you’ve done something worthwhile. Conservatives, meanwhile, get cast as yokels—too unfeeling or preoccupied with outdated ideas to create anything fresh. The morality is seen as stale and constricting, the worldview too quaint and familiar to jolt anyone into change.

To be fair, the criticism does have some bite as Spencer Klavan observes: conservatives can be too easily content with schlock. But while conservatives may struggle from not caring enough about excellence in art, the Left’s art scene suffers from caring too much. It worships emotion with no higher standard of truth, no gods beyond government, no religion but loyalty to The Current Thing. The result? Art that’s loud but often hollow. Historian Steven Mintz has noticed the weakness in a lot of modern works:

“We live in an era of overtly political art…And yet, much of this art feels forgettable. It rarely moves us. It rarely lingers. It rarely asks more of us than to agree.”

And that’s why calling Andor “left-wing art” is a superficial assessment. It works not because it preaches progressive politics but because it taps into universal truths: the struggle against evil, the need for sacrifice, the pull of loyalty, home, and memory. Gilroy may frame himself as a skeptic, but his story leans on virtues progressives often dismiss: honor, hierarchy, tradition, the sacred. Even the Empire is treated seriously as a vision of false order that must be answered with true order. Strip those virtues away, and Andor would be just another weightless piece of political content.

Here’s a final difference between how each side of politics perceives art that I think is worth considering: liberals often put too much stake in art as a vehicle of change, while conservatives tend to overlook its transformative power. Once, the church and the wealthy were the gatekeepers of art. But played as a long game and brought to the masses through TV and the internet, progressives used creativity to install their values so thoroughly into our cultural landscape, we barely notice unless we look backwards.

Conservatives often make art with eternity in view—passing down traditions, amplifying beauty, or teaching moral lessons. Progressives, by contrast, increasingly wield creativity as a weapon for the here and now. Art becomes a high-stakes game, because power and justice are always on the line; every creative effort must also be a form of activism. That contrast shapes the kind of stories each side tells.

Luthen Rael, the series’ tortured anti-hero, shows what happens when ideals are severed from any transcendent anchor. In one of his great monologues, he speaks of his struggle against the Empire:

I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them.
I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything!

It’s moving, but also tragic. Luthen sacrifices endlessly without hope of redemption. His conscience is broken, his methods indistinguishable from the Empire’s, his ego consumed by the fight. In the end, all he has left is melodrama—a sunrise that may never come. He pours out his life never knowing if it will change anything or if he will be remembered.

That’s where much of modern art stops. Like the empathy it claims to be built on, it can diagnose tyranny, even stir sacrifice, but that’s all. And that’s where conservatives have an advantage. The left has “an entire network of industrial-strength machinery” as Klavan points out, but conservatives have the material. We have centuries of beauty, history, and faith—deep wells to draw from. The question is whether we will use them to create art that actually challenges, inspires, and endures.

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I still find myself thinking a lot about Charlie Kirk.

And clearly I’m not the only one. Vigils have been held across the world–from Europe to Australia, in London and South Korea, where he spoke days before he was killed.

Debate is raging over whose politics is responsible for more violence, with fingers pointing at rhetoric, higher education, social media algorithms and gaming culture. But there’s a deeper problem that makes all those things combustible: the infantilizing power of modern life. If functioning societies are built by citizens who are responsible and self-controlled, then our cultural incentives point the opposite way.

Generations have worried about young people frittering away their days in childish pursuits, but now the encouragement to embrace childish thinking comes wrapped in progressive political ideology, funded by elite programs, and endorsed from the top. And it’s not just the young.

Progressive ideology declares it perfectly acceptable for adults to display the emotional immaturity of an untrained child. It’s become a tactic. Histrionic meltdowns in the face of dissent. Fragility in the face of disagreement. Shouting, screaming, being obnoxious until you get your way. Ruining it for everyone if you can’t have what you want. Dividing the world into either/or. Deflecting blame, avoiding responsibility at all costs. And if you can’t win, then sticks and stones can break the bones of those whose words hurt you.

Kirk rattled such folks when he denounced the sexual revolution and promoted Christianity. But it wasn’t just his words–his life was an affront. As Kathleen Stock observed, “these young people hated…Kirk [because] he acted ostentatiously like an adult. He was not frightened of sexual maturity and responsibility; he embraced these things.” She continues:

“He actively told people not to give into every passing desire, but to be continent and restrained. He was also able to tolerate opposing viewpoints to his own, without feeling the threat of personal disintegration, or the need to get lost in defensive persecution complexes.”

Whether by design or by drift, the left has made a point of fostering immaturity. If you trace the through line from Marxism to feminism to identity politics to wokeness – some of the left’s most significant ideas – the foundation is the same: victimhood weaponized. Weakness as strength. Emotion as authority. Grievance as truth. And they hate those whose serious, contented goodness exposes their sin. As Peachy Keenan puts it, to be 31 and happily married with kids today requires “a lot of unpopular choices that your peers may mock”—yet it’s a picture of maturity and freedom that repudiates the power struggles Kirk’s detractors inhabit.

Is it any surprise that those who make gods of their emotions lose control of them? Those who make idols become like them—as the psalmist reminds us—capricious, demanding, indifferent to the suffering of those around them. There is no tolerance for failing, waiting, being wrong, being denied and being last; that is just an admission that you have no agency.

But we have better examples. St Stephen, who stood firm as the crowd of people covered their ears and rushed at him in fury. St Paul who endured insults as he patiently reasoned with pagans and kings. Christ, who refused to play Pilate’s game, calmly reminding him that he had no authority except what was given from above. This is what it means to be grown up in the Spirit: self-control under pressure, courage in the face of hatred, and faith that God remains sovereign even when the world throws its tantrums.

Other stuff you might like:

Empathy can kill:

Luigi Mangione and the illusion of agency:

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The news landed like a royal announcement – Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are getting married. Well, they’re engaged. The way I was taught, engagements were meant to be just long enough to organize a wedding day. Short and sweet, with the focus on starting a life together. Today, engagement is celebrated almost as it’s own life stage, a sign that you can handle a serious relationship. The notion that engagement is a sort of trial run before the “real thing” is odd when you think about it—why sign up for marriage if you’re not intending to marry? Then again, we have funny ideas about marriage these days.

People magazine called the engagement “a win for Millennials,” proof that dreams can come true. The dress she was wearing in her post sold out in 20 minutes. Many Swift fans are the same age as she is, and writer Emily Rella described how their lives have mirrored Swift’s, marked by heartbreak and “glimmers of hope” chronicled in her music. Swift’s fairytale romance feels personal to them, Rella wrote, because “we experienced all those milestones right alongside her… this moment of Taylor finding true, unadulterated, effortless love felt like something to celebrate, personally.” Her takeaway? Don’t settle. Hold out for a sweeping love story.

A lot has been said about Swift’s love life. Famous from a young age, it has been noted that her early songs held marriage as the ideal. But after a string of high-profile break ups, things have changed a bit. Swift said she feels her experience is similar to “many of her friends” who had a “very unique moment in life” around age 19 or 20 where you have “one foot in childhood, one foot in adulthood and you don’t quite know where to stand.” But whether her record shows she was “holding out” for The One or that she was just being swept along by cads who never took it seriously, she’s undeniably a grown-up now.

The idea of waiting ‘til all the planets are aligned to “settle” may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Setting aside the “significant risk factors” associated with teen marriages, the National Marriage Project says there is no evidence that getting married in your 30s or later has any advantage over those who marry younger. Yet, those who want to get married in their 20s are going against the cultural current that assumes that getting hitched is best left ‘til later.

Some years ago, John Hopkins sociologist, Andrew Cherlin proposed two competing views of marriage – the cornerstone vs the capstone. Cornerstone marriages (between ages 20-24), function as a foundation to build a life on. Today, as the National Marriage Project reports, cornerstone marriages have fallen on hard times in many places. The prevailing view is that “capstone” is better:

In this capstone approach, marriage for many is seen as a symbol that signals the achievements of two emerging adults who have reached a basic level of personal, psychological, and financial stability. Marriage is viewed as a crowning experience, the culmination of a lengthy transition to the adult world. Rather than anchoring a young adult life in a foundation of marital commitment and shared life-building with a spouse, emerging adults first set out to check off a set of tasks and personal achievements before entering the institution of marriage. Milestones such as finishing education, securing employment, and owning a home, which were primarily achieved during the early years of marriage in previous generations, are now seen as criteria for marriage readiness by many of today’s young adults and their parents.

Perhaps that is why so few young Americans have attained all “five marks of adulthood”–they’re yet to check the “get married” box.

Over on X, Paul Skallas summed it up like this:

Reactions to Skallas’ post show how people really see marriage: risky, expensive, unnecessary, even harmful. Men claimed to be discouraged by the prospect of divorce courts taking everything they have; the cost of dating, let alone weddings is not worth it. Over at MSNBC, Christina Wyman warned women that Swift is “about to find out what a lot of married women already know” which, according to her, is that “marriage creates more problems than it solves.” She goes on to assert that men benefit more from marriage and that single women are happier than those who are married. This isn’t true, but it’s telling: marriage is now perceived as a gamble at best, a patriarchal death sentence at worst—at least if you get your worldview from op-eds.

If this is what our culture has to say about marriage, no wonder young people put it off. It’s starting to feel like marriage has reverted to its pre-modern status: a luxury for the rich, who can afford both lavish weddings and the fallout of divorce if it all goes to vinegar. But Brad Wilcox at the Institute for Family Studies argues that marriage’s decline isn’t primarily economic. People stayed married through the Great Depression—when they were broke, hungry, and choking on dust storms—while the golden age of the 1990s saw a retreat from marriage. What changed wasn’t wealth but values: “The counterculture, sexual revolution, and rise of expressive individualism… undercut the norms, values, and virtues that sustain strong and stable marriages.” And while culture tells us to delay marriage until we’re “ready,” it is strangely silent about choices that actually raise divorce risk, “such as having multiple sexual partners before marriage and pre-engagement cohabitation”.

But celebrity engagements still grab so much attention. We roll our eyes at marriage– critics even fret that Swift will have nothing to write about now, warning that ”The fairytale ends when the princess marries the prince: who cares, really, what happens to her after that?” But a pop starlet’s ring announcement still stops traffic. Our culture has made marriage both the natural step after getting your life together and entirely unnecessary; it’s the pinnacle of adulthood but also a high-stakes game of chance. It is a most important quest, but we don’t know whether we even want the prize. Yet, despite these mixed messages, we still celebrate weddings because the longing to be fully known and deeply loved—so uniquely symbolized by marriage—remains a universal human desire.

There’s error in believing, as Rella hopes, that a wedding day magically ushers in “true, unadulterated, effortless love.” But it’s equally wrong to accept Wyman’s caricature of marriage as drudgery and irritation. God designed marriage not as another prize to collect over a curated life but as a covenant that forms you, sanctifies you, and anchors your family. It reflects, despite its human frailty, the love Christ has for His church and the perfect communion of the Trinity. Martin Luther likened the marriage union to Christ taking His Bride’s humanity onto Himself and bestowing His immortality upon her:

“For if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?”

The call of faithful, lifelong marriage is higher than the world understands, as it downplays broken homes as just one of those things. It overlooks the gift that marriage is to humanity, mistaking it for just another trinket that thrills for a while before it is set aside. It misses the mystery in its pursuit of the fairytale. The world swings between Hallmark-level romanticism and open contempt for marriage, but Christians get to tell a better story.

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How did we get here?

It has been ten years since the Supreme Court of the United States imposed homosexual marriage on the nation through the Obergefell v. Hodges decision. While the legal argument twisted both due process and equal protection beyond recognition, the real driver behind Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion wasn’t law but sentimentality. His reasoning leaned heavily on emotional appeal, citing “dignitary wounds” and focusing on Mr. Obergefell’s personal story. In Kennedy’s words, “by statute, they [Obergefell and his dying partner] must remain strangers even in death,” a “state-imposed tragedy” which would be “hurtful for the rest of time.”

There was barely a mention of the needs of children, family structure, or the vast historical and anthropological weight behind man-woman marriage. No acknowledgment of the massive social transformation this ruling would unleash. Sex had long been separated from marriage in the popular imagination, but this ruling now distanced marriage from procreation. This was not about what is best for society but about the feelings and desires of adults.

You may remember the glib patter which was repeated to anyone who warned against tinkering with so profound an institution as marriage: If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get one, or love is love. Justice Kennedy himself assured the nation that legalizing homosexual marriage presented “no risk of harm” to anyone. Today, advocates of the decision happily report that life goes on. See? Everything is just fine. But they wilfully ignore how sin metastasizes. When a society blesses what God calls abominable, there will be consequences—deep, far-reaching ones.

And a lot of the warnings have come true.

The clash with religious freedom was immediate. Despite Kennedy’s assurance that those with any objections would not be punished for their stance, persecution came fast. Just days after the ruling, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis was fined and jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples. In Colorado, baker Jack Phillips has been hounded for years by activists weaponizing the law to punish him for his convictions. You can probably think of other instances.

And the ripple effects haven’t stopped at marriage. As Jennifer Roback Morse has rightly pointed out: “If the sex of the body doesn’t matter for marriage, it doesn’t matter on the sporting field, or in the locker room or in the prisons.” The transgender delusion flows directly from the same ideological well. If gender doesn’t matter in one of the most foundational human institutions, why should it matter anywhere else?

Meanwhile, Justice Kennedy’s insistence that homosexuals would benefit from the “stability” that marriage brings has not panned out. When Elton John and David Furnish dismissed their adultery as an “open marriage”, it’s clear the image of a “Modern Family” with clean-cut gay dads living out traditional values was always a PR fantasy. Instead, the moral expectations of marriage continue to be diluted. And far too many Christians and conservatives have made peace with the new normal.

Consider also journalist Glenn Greenwald. Once celebrated on the left, he is now embraced by many on the MAGA right, largely for his role in breaking Edward Snowden’s surveillance story and defending free speech. But after footage surfaced of him engaged in debauchery with a male prostitute, the outrage was not over the sin—but over the invasion of his privacy. He himself stated that he is “not ashamed of anything” he does in his personal life. Very few condemned the sin or the fact that Greenwald, who adopted children with his late “husband”, is raising those children in a profoundly broken home.

Which brings us to the voiceless victims of this sexual revolution: children. By redefining marriage around the wishes of adults rather than what children deserve, the state has blessed unions that are sterile by design. This, in turn, has fueled demands for taxpayer-funded fertility services and commercial surrogacy—treating children not as gifts to be received, but as products to be acquired, often at the cost of severing them from one or both biological parents.

At the same time, the culture’s obsession with affirming every sexual identity has twisted adoption policies beyond recognition. In one horrifying case, a same-sex couple who had adopted children was later convicted of trafficking them to pedophiles—something they had even boasted about. Meanwhile, faithful Christian foster parents have lost children for refusing to affirm a child’s self-declared transgender identity.

This is the crack in the door that we should be aiming to prise wide open: the needs of children. If you start with what is needed to form a healthy child and work back from there, you will arrive at a God’s design for family: a married mother and father who stay together for life. Andrew Walker, a Southern Baptist professor who joined the fight against the redefinition of marriage back in 2011, acknowledged how much was lost in the Obergefell decision. But he believes that the children’s rights movement is gaining momentum. I could point to the backlash against boys playing in girls’ sports, and the recent Supreme Court decision allowing Michigan parents to opt their children out of LGBTQ curriculum, as evidence that he may be on to something.

Of course, marriage was damaged in no-fault divorce, the rise of single parenting and other changes. But genderless marriage has taken it to a whole new level. While activists downplayed the slippery slope–“they just want to be married”– it’s obvious to anyone who observes with honesty that messing with marriage has cost society greatly. Marriage has only one definition. Expanding it has opened the door to all kinds of evil. It could be that Americans are starting to see this, with support for same-sex marriage reportedly waning.

Nevertheless, Dr. Walker believes that reality will always “testify to truth of marriage as it was meant to be.” We are playing a long game. As he says, it is the devil’s weakness to always be hurrying. “The present tense is a cruel master. Christians should never calibrate their moral concerns based on favorability or popularity. History is full of unpredictable contingencies. I believe history will vindicate our arguments when all is said and written.”

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Autism was back in the headlines recently, thanks in part to comments made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His department–Health and Human Services–has highlighted an “epidemic” of cases of autism which it says “cannot be solely attributed to the expansion of diagnoses”. The Secretary has tasked teams of researchers to collect data about potential causes to be included in a report, due to be published later this year. It’s the sort of thing any sane government should want to understand: a dramatic rise in a potentially disabling condition among children. Yet the backlash was immediate.

Advocates from autism support groups slammed the Secretary: it’s not a disorder, it’s not debilitating and speaking this way stigmatizes those with autism. Some parents pointed to their Harvard-graduated children as evidence that folks with autism are doing just fine. Others took exception to the suggestion by RFK Jr that there may be environmental factors causing the rise in diagnoses, an idea that flies in the face of the popular conception of autism as just different wiring. Some even proposed that speaking of autism as a disability will lead to eugenics.

This young man has been well-versed in the current debate:

I don’t have insight into potential causes1, nor do I have any insight into fixes. But the conversation around autism as a public flashpoint reveals so much about our culture. The messaging around disability has long been oddly conflicted. We want it to be normalized, but at the same time, special. Advocates would like to reach a point where no one even notices differences between people, but at the same time, campaign for special help for those who are “differently abled”. Is autism a medical condition to be treated? A social difference to be accommodated? Or an identity to be celebrated? Our culture tries to say “yes” to all three and has ended up with policies that contradict each other, treatments that harm, and a public conversation too confused to help anyone.

Some of the confusion may stem from autism’s earliest definitions. Two doctors independently described the condition in the 1940s, and their frameworks are still shaping the debate. Leo Kanner, an Austrian-American psychiatrist, observed children who were withdrawn, fixated with the “maintenance of sameness”, and uninterested in people. He described autism as a severe, early-onset developmental disorder, even suggesting that cold or distant mothering might play a role. Around the same time in Vienna, Hans Asperger wrote about socially awkward but intellectually precocious children who showed intense interest in systems and patterns. While acknowledging that autism could be disabling, Asperger saw it as a natural variation of human neurology—quirky, not broken; a group of potential geniuses.

Both men identified the same core traits: social difficulties, communication challenges, and restricted imagination—what later became known as the ”triad of impairments.” Some investigators believe that Kanner stole Asperger’s research, but perhaps of more interest is that their conclusions diverged, and that tension remains. Today’s advocacy groups echo Asperger’s view: autism is a difference to be embraced. But the rise in therapies, accommodations, and special education funding still reflects Kanner’s model: autism is a condition that requires serious support. We're trying to have it both ways.

If today’s confusion over disability feels like a Frankenstein’s monster, that’s because it is—the product of decades of shifting definitions, evolving diagnoses, and ideological meddling. For one, autism has no physiological test—no scan or lab work can confirm it—and the diagnostic criteria have shifted over time. Although it remains primarily a social and communication disorder, physician and author Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan notes that well-meaning efforts to expand access to support have steadily widened the boundaries of diagnosis. Screening programs are promoted on the assumption that earlier detection is always better, but as she points out, relaxed criteria mean that many who were “healthy on Monday [are] patients on Tuesday.” The struggle is real, she says—but when diagnosis becomes the gateway to support, it creates pressure to keep moving the goalposts. Overdiagnosis is not without its harms, either.

Secondly, language keeps shifting. We are aware of the technocrats’ and academics’ preoccupation with applying novel definitions and inventing new terms. This may be well-intentioned. For example, the push for “people-first” terminology which represents an effort to separate the person from their ailment, replaces “disabled person” with “person living with disability”. This linguistic device was meant to reduce dehumanization but can end up downplaying the impact of the condition on the sufferer.

Finally, the rise of identity politics has only muddied the waters further. In a culture obsessed with ranking identities by perceived oppression, suffering itself has become a kind of social currency. Whether cause or consequence, the pathologization of every discomfort has become a race to the bottom—what aptly calls “survival of the sickest.” Our society increasingly rewards this with moral affirmation and institutional support, fostering entitlement in some and indifference in others—until no one feels responsible to help, accommodate, or change.

Some might respond, “It’s a spectrum—that’s why people’s experiences differ.” The rediscovery2 of Asperger’s work in the late 20th century lead to the creation of the autism spectrum model, placing “high-functioning” individuals at one end and profoundly impaired individuals at the other. But spectra are only useful when anchored to clear and accessible reference points. Without a defined standard, points on a spectrum become arbitrary and contingent. Even the Harvard parents had to appeal to some agreed-upon standard to show how well their kids were achieving. But having a standard for “normal” is now viewed as a suspect category, because “everyone is normal in their own way”.

Thus, the autism spectrum has become so broad, it’s losing its usefulness. As one writer put it, “If you’ve met one person on the spectrum, you’ve met one person on the spectrum.” Perhaps it should be broken apart once again. Dr Sullivan, who treats children with severe autism, notes that grouping folks such as Elon Musk and Anthony Hopkins together with a child who cannot speak or attend school without full-time support makes serious research—and serious care—nearly impossible, failing those most in need.

Even fans of the newish term, “neurodiversity” are finding a similar problem. Though advocates of the concept draw from past civil rights struggles, which he likes, Bill Williams notes how neurodiversity advocacy “seems to assume that one must have redeeming qualities in order to be valuable.” The movement relies on “normal” as a foil—using it to define its distinctiveness—while simultaneously rejecting the category altogether. He notes the contradiction: neurodiversity advocates bristle at comparisons to “normal” people, yet also believe calling a disabled person “inspiring” is “unintentionally ableist”.

Meanwhile, it seems many pharmaceutical executives and cultural elites are perfectly content to keep everyone on a spectrum—undiagnosed, unresolved, perpetually medicated. A couple of years ago, California’s Governor Newsom denounced the expectation that homeless individuals should be clean and sober to qualify for housing: “We all need to self-medicate, periodically,” he claimed. Though he was speaking about addiction, not disability, his words exposed something deeper: our refusal to reckon with the Fall has trapped us in a cultural paralysis—unable to name brokenness, let alone heal it. The thought that change is possible is almost offensive.

Any mention of prevention is heard as blame. Warnings about over-reliance on pharmaceuticals are met with outrage. Promoting healthier ways of living is framed as dangerous moralizing. And attempts to raise questions—like those from RFK Jr.—are dismissed as “anti-science,” likened to preaching that “pills are bad and suffering is good”. It reflects the fact that society is adrift from foundational truth. We can’t say for sure that something has gone wrong with creation, so disability must be both special and invisible, celebrated and yet undiscussed, affirmed and yet never clearly named.

But, are we allowed to long for health and wholeness? Or must we pretend that human frailty is itself a form of superiority? The Christian view of suffering is neither brutal stoicism nor blind affirmation. Paul’s letters show a beautiful tension: he exhorts slaves to gain their freedom if possible, yet reminds them that even if they remain enslaved, their lives are still hidden with Christ in God. Likewise, we are called to seek healing, freedom, and restoration wherever we can — but also to endure suffering with hope when full healing is not yet given. Pain is part of the human condition after Eden, but it is not meant to be celebrated as "normal." It is a reminder that we are not home yet.

In this life, not every burden will be lifted. But by faith, we live as those who know there is a resurrection coming. Our weakness is not a badge of honor, nor a mark of shame. It is a call to cry out to the only One who can make all things new. So when we see confusion about disability, suffering, and what it means to be human, we don't need to despair. We can long for wholeness without apology, love our neighbors with tenderness, and rest in the hope that Christ is preparing a world where "normal" means perfection.

Thin women on billboards—
Dangerous, they say.
She'll stop eating.
She'll never feel she’s enough.

Violent video games?
Careful.
Your son might join a gang
of joystick-trained assassins.

But rainbow flags and latex queens
reading to toddlers in public halls?
That’s just inclusion,
nothing more.

Junk food ads
making our children sick—
we ban the toys,
blame the sauce.
But shout abortion
from every screen—
that’s just healthcare.
No harm done.

If you're obeying their religion,
then mimetic is copacetic.
But follow God's design?
“Train up a child in the way he should go”?
Now you're pushing your beliefs on others.

Selective Influence

Many years ago, popular cultural discourse over fashion models filled pages of print, editorials and advice columns. The widespread display of impossibly thin women on the covers of magazines and in advertising prompted a moral panic. Experts and commentators warned that teenagers would be harmed by such unrealistic portrayals of beauty. Imitation would lead to eating disorders and in the case of “heroin chic”, perhaps drug use. Fast forward to today and we find ourselves being told to join the annual celebration of “pride”. But here is my thought: If waif models were thought to lead to eating disorders, what does wall-to-wall displays of androgyny and promotion of homosexuality do?

There is a game afoot, and we cannot be ignorant of the rules:

Influence is “Dangerous” when it suits the narrative:

• Thin models in ads = promotes eating disorders

• Violent video games = turns kids into thugs

• Junk food marketing = makes children obese

• COVID misinformation = must be censored to protect the vulnerable

But then...

Influence is “Harmless” when it promotes the new orthodoxy:

• LGBT themes in every cartoon = just representation

• Euthanasia ads = just compassion

• “Abortion is healthcare” billboards = just truth

• Pride flags in classrooms = just inclusion

• Climate alarmism = just science

Try to promote God’s design for family and gender, or life and the stewardship of creation?
You’re probably a fascist.

It’s a real double standard.

Our culture downplays influence when it’s “raising awareness” about climate activism, racism, and pronouns, but pretends it’s harmful when it’s about chastity, abortion’s aftermath, or “gender transition” regret. You can see how the game is played. You get credit for “choosing” to comply with propaganda, but won’t be trusted with truth.

Here’s the deeper truth:

• Children are impressionable.

• Society shapes them constantly—by design or neglect.

• Strong foundations (in truth, virtue, faith) help them stand.

How can “normie” culture, which is rootless, relativist and tossed by every wind give them what they need for life and godliness? The Word exhorts us to protect children with truth and compassion.

“Train up a child in the way he should go…”
—Proverbs 22:6

“...So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine…”
—Ephesians 4:14

If you're not training your children, someone else is.
If society denies influence, it's only to smuggle in its own.

We’ve built a society that denies the power of influence—until it wants to use it. And the only ones protected are the ones who’ve built their house on the rock

Don’t buy the lie that influence only matters when they say it does.
Truth forms. Lies deform. We cannot “go out of the world”, as St Paul points out, but we must be aware of what is shaping our minds and hearts. Guard the gates.

This essay was originally included in an application to Concordia Seminary St Louis for the Specific Ministry Program. As I am no longer applying for this program, I offer it as a record of my life in Christ thus far. May it contribute to your meditation on the office of holy servitude, the summons of the Holy Spirit, and the syndicates of holy knowledge appointed to oversee these matters. Encouragement and “encouragement” are welcome!

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How shall I now begin my tale to share 
When I aspire Your works, Lord, to declare. 
Let me reflect Your mercy on my way 
Which You have freely granted every day.

My father shepherded a small congregation. The town of George, Washington isn't much more than a truck stop off Interstate 90, but it has the best Fourth of July celebration in the state. We moved there in '99 before I turned two, so I don't remember the early years. My sister, two years older, had been born in Montana, while my one-month-old brother and I were born in Wisconsin. My youngest brother was born two years later. We four were the majority of the youth in church many Sundays.

My early memories hint at an active congregation, but by the time I served as an acolyte, the church was shrinking slowly. Older members died. Their children and grandchildren moved elsewhere. Members left when we shifted from The Lutheran Hymnal to Lutheran Service Book. My father confirmed most youths in classes of one when there was a confirmation class at all. There wasn't much community or circuit support for my father in his tireless endeavor to preach biblical truth to his congregation, and my mother struggled with social isolation and congregational politics. There seemed to be those who wanted my father to change his teaching, but he would not and he taught us to stand firm in the faith by his virtue, honor, and conviction.

Despite the struggles, I enjoyed church: the singing of hymns, the reading and preaching of Scripture, the familiar liturgy each week (adjusted only for Lent and Epiphany), classes after church, midweek and festival services and their familiar readings, the rhythm of the church year echoing the seasons. That was what I knew, that was what my father taught me, that was home. I learned that the rest – the people, the politics, the soup suppers, the VBS and Sunday School, the preschool, the parsonage – were passing.

My father would work in the office at church throughout the week - answering calls, printing the bulletin, studying the texts, preparing Bible studies - but always came home for lunch. He took walks behind the church to unwind after work, inviting us along when we were young and running the route with us as we got older. Every night he led devotions around the dinner table. We memorized the catechism and various Bible passages, he read Scripture and devotionals, and we sang a hymn. He and my mother have wonderful singing voices and I loved singing from an early age.

My mother taught us history, math, grammar, spelling, and anything else we needed to know, always giving time – both for our sanity and hers – for us to go outside and play together in the yard. Twice a week, to supplement our meager income, my mother taught English to the rapidly growing Hispanic community at the local elementary school. Our congregation had declined to host classes at the church. On those nights my father taught us Latin and Greek.

I was home-schooled until I turned thirteen, then attended the local high school. The culture was immediately hostile. My classmates and teammates teased and bullied me, a cultural outsider, underage and overweight. Most teachers did not share my faith and principles. I spent much time alone or with other social outcasts. My best friend was an atheist whom I befriended over our mutual interest in our differences.

Slowly as classmates and teachers began to understand my intelligence and character, I began to earn their respect. While respectful in official matters, I was conversational with several teachers who appreciated hearing my thoughts. I wanted to give my classmates understanding, confidence, and the wisdom to problem-solve, not just answer homework questions. Yet many of my classmates were demoralized from years of apathy. My father had encouraged me when I was struggling early on, so as I began to excel and become well-known, I worked to encourage others. I more fondly remember celebrating with a former bully that he was graduating – the first in his family – than any of my academic accomplishments as a sixteen-year-old valedictorian.

My father encouraged me to apply to the University of Washington and I was accepted into the Electrical Engineering department. I swiftly realized I wasn't the smart kid anymore; classes were harder and expectations higher. What set me apart was not my intelligence and age, but my faith, my conviction, and my willingness to share with those willing to hear. I'm not outgoing, but I had many opportunities for meaningful conversations. University life lent itself to such discussions with roommates and classmates, most of whom were unbelievers.

To equip myself for these conversations, I studied the faith in my free time. I read books and listened eagerly to sermons and podcasts online to feed my curiosity. Further feeding my faith with the Word and Sacrament, Messiah Lutheran Church was a piece of home in an unfamiliar urban world. From Lutheran Service Book, I learned new liturgical settings and more hymns. Pastor Mankin, a pastor's son himself, comforted me in my social struggles and showed great hospitality. I befriended several members, began staying and talking with others before and after services, and joined a choir for the first time. Back home, Christ the Savior Lutheran Church closed, and my father has been without a parish ever since, a vivid reminder to me still of the cost of discipleship.

After graduating, I accepted an engineering job in the Midwest in hopes of meeting a godly woman to marry. This took me first to Cincinnati and India for training, then to the Detroit suburbs for work. In Cincinnati, I searched for a church to attend for the month of my stay and made my way to church early on Sunday morning. The first person I met upon walking in the door, who pointed me to the pastor's office, is now my wife.

In India a month later, I found a church in fellowship with the LCMS. The service and sermon were mostly spoken in a foreign language, but the liturgy was identical to my childhood and made me feel completely at home. No interpretation was needed for me to joyfully pray and praise God with them, a potent witness of Jesus' promise to send forth the gospel to all lands and His gift of the Spirit.

In Beverly Hills (Michigan), I found a similar respite from the loneliness of suburban life. Surrounded at work by strangers in a corporate environment, I found at Ascension of Christ Lutheran Church fellowship, comfort, peace, and rest because Jesus is there. As I acclimated to my new environment, the familiar worship and words of Christ sustained me through my darkest days.

In the spring of 2020, the specter of COVID threatened to disrupt my sanctuary. Regular services were canceled in many churches. During this critical time, Pastor Grams welcomed me twice a week to the church and altar. He knew that my conviction was rather to die of plague for attending church than to stay away, and he was glad of two or three at church to preach to, sing with, and commune. For weeks I was nourished by Word and Sacrament, my only regret being that others in the church did not share my conviction. As the months passed, my conviction grew, and I began to look for others who shared it.

In the fall of 2020, I began regularly visiting Rockford at the invitation of Pastor Jonathan Fisk. Inspired by our need amid the world's many stories to find truth and ask Jesus for help, we founded the Sons of Solomon prayer discipline. This discipline thrust me into the Psalms and Proverbs, the inerrant prayers, songs, and wisdom of Scripture. Finding the Lord Jesus Christ within these books kindled anew my love of the Scriptures and opened a path upon which I could encourage others in my church and community to seek enlightenment.

Regular services eventually resumed in Michigan and soon the church's song grew strong. I was invited to teach Sunday School to the catechesis students, explaining liturgical order and meditating on the Psalter. The church community came back stronger than before the crisis and the forge of trial strengthened and encouraged our brotherhood.

Despite the opportunities and growth, I felt out of place. Every trip to Rockford felt like coming home, from the rural surroundings and the humble church building to bittersweet brotherhood and a home-schooling family of unprecedented hospitality. After much prayer, in August 2021 I moved to Rockford, bought a home, and began regularly attending St. Paul.

To help establish the brethren at St. Paul in the Scriptures, I lead a men's Bible study on Saturday evenings. We study Old Testament history to build more familiarity with the stories and context. We discuss how different books and stories connect, how the men who lived by faith in the promises of God to His people are examples to us, and how those stories show the great love, mercy, and justice of God. For the last three years, I have developed my leadership skills, asking questions of the text for discussion, providing historical context, and building our common understanding by encouraging all to share their insights and wisdom, from a ten-year-old child to a congregational elder.

Another opportunity for service arose when an abortion clinic opened in Rockford. The Rockford Family Initiative, a largely Roman-Catholic pro-life advocacy group, coordinates monthly protests at which I have led local Lutherans in hymn singing and prayer. Through this public presence, St. Paul quickly became integrated with the pro-life community in Rockford. We have led Christmas carols, sung at library protests and at the annual Rockford March for Life and Family, and supported other pro-life protests and rallies.

During June of 2024, I organized a display of 3,300 crosses outside St. Paul to show the deadly cost of abortion in this country, one cross for each abortion every day since Roe vs. Wade became the law in America. Illinois proudly and increasingly contributes to this terrible loss of life. The need for the church's pro-life witness in Rockford is growing. Another clinic seeks to open east of the river with support from the city and state. So many poor, vulnerable, frightened parents need to hear the love of Jesus for them and their children. I am eager to support and expand St Paul's pro-life ministry.

In light of these leadership experiences, I was advised by Pastor Fisk to consider the call to the Holy Ministry. Even before moving to Rockford, I have been asked recurrently by others whether I was a pastor or had considered the office. To these questions, I have had the same response. My pastors and my father advised me to be a good layman, so that is what I have been determined to be. I read and teach the Scriptures to my wife and our son, serve as a trustee and communion assistant, and assist my pastor and church musician with service planning. After observing my character and testing me for several years, Pastor Fisk told me that I would be a gift to the ministry. He acknowledges that the church needs strong laymen, but also insists that I have the aptitude, passion, and character to serve as a minister of the church. He too at first had encouraged me toward my current vocation, so this turn of advice has called for serious contemplation.

Unexpectedly, I found Pastor Fisk's encouragement to be a great relief. I love the Bible. I love studying the Scriptures and sharing what I find with those who will listen. When I speak about the Bible, others listen and often ask to hear more. I do desire the office, not only to walk as my father did but to freely give others the comfort, confidence, and love that I have freely received. Through the SMP program, I could continue to serve my community and neighbors without burdening my church financially, allowing for additional mission opportunities.

However, after meeting with seminary leadership, I have elected to wait. Their preference for pastoral formation, especially at my age, is the traditional onsite program whereby I could learn under the doctors of the church with other men and women who are training for service in the church. They would prefer that I leave my new home, leave my local ministries to others, and pursue certification to shepherd a flock elsewhere. Yet I do not think this path is right for me, especially at this time. The church needs less transience and displacement. We are certainly pilgrims but need not be nomadic. My move to Rockford is, should the Lord Jesus bless it, the first step of a long, long road to prospering the people here with peace, simplicity, freedom, and love. I pray that our afflicted may find rest, that our poor may be truly fed, that our widows and fatherless may be defended from evil, and that Christendom may be established here for our good. Since Jesus has brought me here, I shall pray for the good of this city in which I dwell and do here the good my hands have found.

Thus far the Lord has helped me. I shall serve however He calls me. He will keep me in His care and guide me along the right way. He will discipline me, strengthen me, and uphold me till the end. If it is His will, He will in His time ordain me as a shepherd to His flock. If that is not His will, I trust the path before will be beautiful, that the way He gives will be good for me and His kingdom. Unto whatever end, Lord Jesus, strengthen me to do your will!

Γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου.

Soli Deo Gloria

I was struck recently by a story shared on a podcast I was listening to. A man had written in, seeking advice on how to counsel his sister, a nurse, who had come under conviction. She was wondering whether she should continue assisting in cosmetic or reconstructive surgeries now that her employer was taking on “gender transition” procedures. It wasn’t a matter of policy or professional consequence—it had become a matter of conscience. She considered what she was being asked to do and began to wonder whether she might actually be doing harm.

The host of the podcast made an observation worth pausing on: the sister hadn’t come to this conviction because of clear teaching from her church. She had felt pressure, yes—but not from Christians. She professed a Christian faith, but it was, as the correspondent described it, “the temperature of the culture” that pushed her to consider whether she was participating in evil.

Christians are not immune from wilting under the cultural “temperature.” Our sanctuaries can offer some insulation from the heat, but we must be aware that it doesn’t come from one source—it radiates from a whole ecosystem of influence. Government no longer confines itself to maintaining interstates, ledgers, and national defense; it now speaks to matters of identity, sexuality, and the redefinition of family. Corporations are no longer focused on delivering quality products, but on shaping social values. Schools, nonprofits, media outlets, and entertainment all echo the same script.

These institutions don’t act independently—they reinforce one another, creating a cultural algorithm that disciples the public conscience. What we watch, what we read, what we buy, what our children learn, what laws get passed—all of it is pushing hearts and minds either toward righteousness or deeper into confusion and evil. And so it’s no surprise when someone who professes Christ is so taken in by the doctrines of toxic empathy that it never occurs to her that removing healthy body parts to soothe mental delusion is not loving.

God has promised to preserve a remnant faithful to His name, and history has proven Him true. But too often, when the church’s voice was most needed, we’ve chosen to go along to get along. For decades, it may have seemed pious—or at least practical—to draw a clean line between church and state. But those days are gone. Now, “politics” lays claim to every square inch of human life, when we know that this is God’s world. So when pressure comes to speak or act, we could deflect: “The Johnson Amendment! What about our tax-exempt status?” But do we actually believe Jesus when He says the gates of Hell will not prevail against His church? The unwillingness to engage with anything deemed “political” is not a strategy—it’s the consequence of a long compromise. And the idea that Christians should avoid “politics” in church, even as the culture preaches a rival gospel, has become little more than a smokescreen for quietism.

I have no doubt the church in every generation has its particular “ditch” it tends to fall into. I remember, as an evangelical teen, the zealous musician Keith Green declaring, “The world is sleeping in a dark that the church just can’t fight / ’Cause it’s asleep in the light.” In hindsight, his vision—feed the poor and preach the Gospel—almost seems quaint compared to the cultural battles the church faces now, where children are taught they were born in the wrong body. But that only makes his warning more urgent. The fight today isn’t just about social amelioration; it’s about standing against lies that deface creation itself. Do we know the treasure we’ve been entrusted with, in the trust of God’s Word? Do we see what’s at stake if we let the culture catechize our friends and neighbors instead? The darkness has not overcome the Light—but the people of the Light cannot afford to sleep through this fight.

I haven’t forgotten the boldness many churches have shown in past moral battles. There were pastors and congregations who stood firm against no-fault divorce, the flood of pornography, the redefinition of marriage, and even the tyranny of COVID shutdowns—often while the full weight of cultural pressure stood against them. But today, whether from fatigue, fear, or the overwhelming barrage of issues, too many are falling silent. When secular ideologies are discipling the church more effectively than the church is discipling its own people, confusion and compromise should not surprise us. Yes, God in His mercy can use even the madness of the world to awaken His people—but that doesn’t excuse our silence. If the church won’t speak truth, the world certainly won’t. We are called to be a light in the darkness, not a mirror of it.

This is not the hour to grow weary or retreat. Even the secular world is beginning to admit that its project has failed—secularism is a dead end for civilization. The line between courage and compromise runs straight through our pulpits, our dinner tables, and our own hearts. But Christ has not left us alone. We have His Word, His Spirit, and His people. So let’s repent. Let’s open our Bibles, speak the truth in love, and honor Jesus in every vocation He’s given us. The world doesn’t need a church that echoes its confusion—it needs a church that stands clear and unshaken, a pillar and bulwark of the truth.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

In my congregation, I’ve been running a series about common misquoted and misunderstood Bible passages. One of the ones that I wasn’t expecting to be brought up was Proverbs 22:6. So, how does this verse get misused? Well, it’s often thought that as long as we get our kids involved in Sunday School, then when they get confirmed, and then later graduate and move out, that they will stay strong in their faith, because we made sure that they attended church and Sunday school, at least occasionally. And definitely on those really important days, Christmas and Easter. But let’s just look at the grim reality that’s staring us back in the face. Our confirmands take the oaths of confirmation, swearing that they will suffer anything, even death, rather than fall away from the faith, and then the very next weekend, stop coming to church and fall away from the faith. So either God’s lying in the Proverbs, or we’re doing something wrong.

Well, God’s not lying, so what are we doing wrong? Well, it’s time to take a good, hard, honest look at ourselves. Are we truly bring up a child in the way that he should go? Or are we just bringing him up in the way he should go when it’s convenient for us? What do I mean by that? Well, let’s just look at a few numbers for comparison. Typically, there are 180 days in a normal school year, multiply that by seven and you get 1,260 hours a year spent in school. Then you have extra curricular activities, conservative estimates on this put it at 5 hours per week, adding 180 hours, giving us 1,440. Now let’s assume that you only spend an average of 1 hour a night on homework, and that brings us up to 1,620. This is the average time per year invested in an “average” child’s education. Don’t get me wrong, education is important, it has a long lasting impact on their entire lives. But what about something that will impact not just their entire lives, but their eternal lives? Let’s say that they are confirmation age children. You have 30 hours in confirmation instruction. Then you have 70 church services throughout the year, and let’s say that they are 1.5 hours long. We’re up to 135. Then you have 50 Sunday School sessions, and we’re at 185. 185 hours vs 1,620.

We are training them up in the way that they go, and that is the way that says God isn’t nearly as important. We aren’t taking the time to show our kids, by our actions, that God is important to us. We regularly miss Church for foolish reasons and don’t bat an eye, yet you wouldn’t accept those same reasons for a kid to miss school, would you? We are training our kids up, just not how we think that we are. It’s not enough for us to just drop them off at Sunday School and confirmation and just hope that God’s Word takes root. We have to actively be involved in passing on our faith to our children. It’s in the little chats throughout the day, it’s at the conversations at the family dinner table, it’s at the insistence that we get our stuff together and get to church, no matter that we’d rather be in our pajamas and taking it easy, it’s showing our kids that we read our Bibles too, that we’re still learning from them and will be learning from them until the day that we die.

Yet, even the parents who do everything correctly, sometimes their children still fall away. The author of this parable is Solomon, who wrote this for his son Rehoboam. Yet Rehoboam didn’t listen to his father, he abandoned his wisdom the second that the crown was upon his head. Which means that sometimes, children will abandon the faith. And Jesus warns us about that in Luke 12:51 – 53. Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." But, to that parent who is hurting, take heart. See what the proverb says. “In his old age.” There is still hope. Luke will go on to record Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son just a few chapters later in chapter 15. Repentance does happen. So continue to pray for your children, continue to drop the seeds of God’s Word into their rocky and thorny soil. And trust in our Lord, for He will sustain you in His way, until He comes again. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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He woke not to a sound, but to a shift. The house had leaned. Just slightly. As if the tree beneath him had taken a breath.

He sat up slowly in the loft, rough wool blanket falling to his lap. Morning light was whispering through the upper limbs—no glass, only oiled paper and woven screen. The birch beams above him groaned softly in their tension. He reached down and laid a hand against the central column: the trunk itself, still alive, running through the core of the house.

It was warm. Charged. Not hot—but aware.

From above, he could already hear the faint hum. The canopy coil must have caught something in the dawn wind as ions danced in the upper sky. The tree would hold. Feed the power down, like they always do. But it was the root-spike, buried thirty feet beneath the soil into the water-vein and salt bed, that had made battery acid a chemist’s nightmare from a darker past. The pulse is life. Harmony is hope.

The Convergence was inevitable.

He stood and walked the short wooden steps down to the main room. The writing desk sat on the eastern edge, where the light was clearest. The leather journal was already warm to the touch. He flipped it open, and the writing lamp beside him—no switch, no button—pulsed alive. A gentle green. Powered not by grid, but by grace.

He breathed in. The scent of cedar oil. Of copper resin. Of sky.

The words came—effortless. The house was charged, not just with power, but with presence. He need not even call to mind the great triangulation humming beneath his ribs, his soul, his “everything”: X = e / f

And I am the witness. I dwell between the branches and the stone. I write what we remember. I sing the songs again, and so will my son after me.

Outside, the tree flexed. Not in pain.

In prayer. The wire hummed. The light held. The story never ended.

Some clever clogs—possibly Kierkegaard—once said that life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards. One could take this to mean that embracing uncertainty and boldly venturing into the unknown is what truly matters. But if you emphasize the first phrase, you conclude that reckoning with the past is sometimes critical to getting on with the future. As we pass the five-year mark since the beginning of the covid pandemic, it’s become clear that we need a bit more understanding backwards before we can properly live forwards again.

The impact of that time still assails every aspect of our lives, both personally and communally. Almost half of Americans believe life will never be the same as it was before. That might even be a good thing – “20/20 vision” bought many of us squinting into the light. But with very little accountability for those who made everything worse, the lessons of that period remain frustratingly unresolved.

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Reading some of last week's op-eds on the anniversary, it's clear that we live in interesting times—not in the “exciting” sense, but in the fractured, disorienting sense. There is no shared reality, no single information field. Competing narratives swirl in parallel, with almost no overlap. Disciples of every theory cling tightly to their explanations of what we just experienced, and their conclusions are often completely contradictory, as if existing in separate universes.

Take, for example, New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells. He recently offered a condensed version of the pandemic’s fallout, but his take is simplistic and fails to acknowledge plausible counter-explanations for many of his conclusions.

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Hey there Insiders

Last week, while rummaging through my closet, I found a teddy bear that had been given to me as a baby. It had been a long time since I’d seen her. I don’t remember the name I once gave her, but I do recall she had a little dress—where it is now, I have no idea.

I thought to myself, “This bear has been well-loved.”

It occurred to me that I have not heard that term used to describe a mint baseball card, preserved in acrylic. Or of a vintage car restored to its original showroom glory. Or of an old book in a climate-controlled archive, its pages turned with gloved hands. I understand the instinct to preserve one-of-their-kind things, to increase their value or set them aside for future generations to admire. But looking at my old, worn bear, I thought about our vocations as saints – what would it mean to be described as well-loved? To be used up for the sake of those around?

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Have you heard of Bluesky, the Twitter alternative that became a refuge for distressed progressives? If so, you’re likely familiar with its recent history. The platform saw surges of new users after Elon Musk’s takeover of X and then again when Donald Trump won the White House. Many celebrities and journalists—the self-styled #Resistance—simply couldn’t cope with the removal of speech constraints on X, fleeing what they deemed an intolerably “fascist” environment. But that progressive obsession with purity spirals followed the exiles to Bluesky, where the congregation of despondent leftists needing a “safe space” fueled a fourfold increase in requests for moderation of “offensive” posts.

It may seem absurd to think you can win a fight after walking off the battlefield, but in this case, winning isn’t the goal. Progressives have grown so accustomed to having their views affirmed by media, Hollywood, academia, and at times even the church, that they now genuinely believe speech is violence. I suppose when you’ve controlled the narrative for so long, gotten used to platforms censoring views you don’t like and reported anyone who stated hateful things (like that there are only two sexes), you must miss feeling superior to everyone else. Some points of view were deemed not

worth trying to understand and the exodus from X proves that contempt was always the point.

Perhaps our Bluesky friends have forgotten that Twitter was always kind of toxic, as feminist writer Victoria Smith remembers. Certainly if you were right wing, but even more so in progressive circles where allegiance to the revolution involves keeping up with the New Thing. You must affirm whatever It is at every turn, while denouncing those who doubt. Lefty feminist Twitter from years past exemplified what Smith is talking about:

So many people self-identifying as good, so many invitations to follow the path of righteousness, so much confidence that we, here, are better than the others! So much faith that your own cruelty can be of the kindest sort!

"Cruelty of the kindest sort”, that’s the empathy trap. A thought-provoking conversation between Dr. Albert Mohler and Dr. Joe Rigney makes a compelling case that our culture’s love of outrage and canceling stems from elevating empathy to a supreme virtue. Sympathy was once the starting point of compassion, but today, merely feeling pity or sorrow over another’s situation isn’t enough. You must fully walk in someone’s shoes to be considered understanding. Yet the ever-shifting nature of 'lived experience' makes that goal unattainable—by design.

Empathy, which came from a German term for grasping a sense of what was being conveyed in art or music, has evolved to mean that one fully feels what another feels. Perhaps mere sympathy was always too “othering” to be useful to progressives. To truly be moved by the plight of women, minorities, or “The Oppressed,” one must not only acknowledge their suffering but feel it. Otherwise, you might simply thank God it wasn’t you and move on. While this may seem like a positive development, Dr. Rigney argues that calls for empathy are often weaponized to manipulate and control.

Hollywood provides a prime example of an industry built on manufacturing empathy. At a recent awards ceremony, Jane Fonda explained that actors must deeply empathize with their characters to elicit the same response from audiences: “Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly, that we can touch their souls. We know why they do what they do; we feel their joy and their pain.” Even if actors dislike the roles they play, she suggested they must “dig deep” to uncover what led their character to become a bully or a prostitute, for example. While Hollywood has gotten very good at that manipulation, it has fallen into an empathy trap. The growing trend of explaining villains’ motives through sympathetic backstories—seen in Maleficent, Wicked, and The Joker—has a way of diminishing evil, blurring the lines between victim and villain and also removing actual guilt.

Dr. Rigney sees this problem too: “The sharing of passions – whatever you feel, I need to feel – kind of [sucks you] in and you lose [a] sense of boundaries, a sense of identity, a sense of what's good and what's bad because the feelings and the emotions are now in charge and running the show”. He says that the church has not been spared either. Showing up first in counselling practices, Dr Rigney says soft-hearted Christians assumed empathy had no downside. However, Dr. Rigney warns that, like anger and fear, empathy is a passion—one that can manifest in both good and harmful ways.

Many woke campaigns have aimed to invoke feelings of empathy—whether through appeals to white privilege, 'say his name,' 'pronoun hospitality,' or even the rebranding of illegal immigration—all based on the notion that challenging victimhood claim means you don’t care. Christians, knowing that Christ first loved us, are particularly susceptible to such sentiments. But Dr. Rigney warns of a clash: those seeking to care for the hurting will face a choice—remaining faithful to God or being “steered by the emotions of others,” ultimately yielding to the “most immature and reactive members of their community.” Consider the “women’s autonomy” argument for abortion. It appeals to compassion for the mother but disregards the murder of the baby. Today, Dr. Rigney asserts, “the first person to bring up empathy…is probably trying to steer you.”

I’ve previously written about my belief that the progressive left is coded as female, so I won’t rehash that here. However, given that women are naturally more empathetic, it’s not surprising that they are most susceptible to toxic empathy and also its primary purveyors. Men certainly hear about it when they push back against feminine bullying. You may recall the fallout when the Vice President told Margaret Brennan “I don’t really care, Margaret”. She had tried to have him concede that tough border polices were cruel. His no-nonsense response was something we are not used to hearing.

But don’t expect his critics back down anytime soon. The vice president went on to create another stir, insisting that it is proper for a man to prioritize his nearest and dearest more than the poor and harassed of the world. This is anathema to those who prefer our eyes on “causes” rather than neighbors. Rather than see that it is proper for a man to love his own children more than a stranger’s child far away, critics chose to take his statement in the worst possible way. One post said Vance “apparently meant you didn't have to care much about those beyond your immediate circle.” His reference to Augustine’s idea of ordo amoris even drew a rebuke from the Pope himself.

The empathy trap is an abstraction. For those who have fallen into it, helping the world’s poor lets you off the hook, even if you are shunning your family or neighbor. The manmade religion of humanitarianism thrives on feeling empathy over acting wisely, replacing real virtue with "a vague and undemanding sentimentality." Those who believe empathy is all you need do not recognize the limits of human capacity nor the reality that we cannot right every wrong in this life. The empathy trap is not just about feeling too much—it’s about allowing emotion to override faith, truth and even love. Christians must recognize that true love for neighbor is not measured by emotional conformity but by faithfulness to God’s Word.

Hey there Insiders

I heard last week that Muhammed had become the most popular name for baby boys in the United Kingdom. It overtook Noah as the last top pick. This is not only due to the amount of Muslim immigration into Britain but also because native Brits are not having children at the same rate as those who immigrate.

It is perhaps a strange metaphor for a triumph of darkness over light, and in more ways than one. Of course the growing presence of Islam in formerly Christian countries is concerning, but it’s hardly the case that all the baby Noah’s were named after the Patriarch by Bible-believing Brits. Baby naming trends come and go and Noah was probably popular for reasons besides the Christian convictions of parents.

So why is the popularity of an Islamic name newsworthy? John Stonestreet of Breakpoint noted that religious fervor is foreign to the secular mindset. To it, religion is a private collection of ideas that helps you cope with the world or gives you purpose in life. Why would all those parents name their babies after some long-dead prophet? That seems a bit much.

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By Jonathan Collar for the Mad Christian Observer

In a world where headlines often read like scripted dramas, the case of Luigi Mangione stands out as particularly theatrical. This Ivy League-educated coder, known for his contributions to GitHub and brilliance in tech circles, is now infamous for being accused of a meticulously executed murder—and equally baffling mistakes that led to his capture. The resulting media storm has left many wondering: Was Mangione simply a misguided genius, or was his downfall engineered for reasons beyond his control?

Too Perfect a Setup?

Mangione’s crime was chillingly precise: a ghost gun he built himself, a suppressor, and a manifesto lambasting the American healthcare system. His victim? A CEO notorious for treatment denials. Yet, this high-stakes operation unraveled in ways that defy his intellect. Unmasked at a Starbucks, leaving key evidence at a McDonald’s—these missteps seem almost designed to ensure his capture.

Such contradictions raise critical questions:

Were the “mistakes” deliberate?

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There have always been men who preach repentance and call nations back to God. This week, Pastor Franson’s article shows how Old Testament figures foreshadowed John the Baptist in a marvelous example of the intricacy of God’s plan for the salvation of the world.

Rev Fisk also makes some sense of recent news headlines with the Mad Mondays Observer.

God’s peace

Frisby

This week:

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During Advent we spend a large amount of time with John the Baptist. We know that he is the forerunner of Christ (John 1) and the Elijah who is to come (Matthew 11). However, there are several other Old Testament figures that foreshadow John and his service to Jesus Christ. There are three that we will discuss today. Interestingly, these three fit the offices of prophet, priest, and king.

Let us start our discussion with the most obvious, the one who fills the office of prophet. This refers to Elijah the Tishbite, the “troubler of Israel.” You will find Elijah’s story in 1st Kings 17 – 2nd Kings 2. Elijah certainly occupies a large roll in the history of Israel. He is sent to Ahab, one of the many wicked kings of Israel, the one that has perhaps, the longest lasting effects on God’s people in Judah, through the idolatry during his life and the intermarriage of his family to the royal line in Judah. The wives of both kings hate these prophets and seek to end their lives. There is even a resemblance in their physical descriptions. 2nd Kings 1:8 So [the messengers of the king of Samaria] answered [Ahaziah, king of Samaria], "A hairy man wearing a leather belt around his waist." And he said, "It is Elijah the Tishbite." Mark 1:6 Now John was clothed with camel's hair and with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. Elijah was driven out into the wilderness during many periods of his ministry, after delivering God’s judgment against Ahab and his wicked practices. Elijah and John share the theme of a voice crying out in the wilderness. Both cry out to their people to repent. Both share God’s message of judgment to the kings. Elijah was sent to call the wayward people of Israel back to the true worship of Jesus Christ that they had abandoned when the kingdom split in Jeroboam’s day. John was sent to call a people back to repentance for the true son of David had arisen.

Next let us consider the man whose office is that of priest: Aaron, the brother of Moses and the high priest established by God Himself. John is related to Aaron by blood, both through his father and mother. Zechariah is of the order of Abijah (Luke 1:5), and Abjiah himself was descended from Aaron through his son Eleazar (1st Chronicles 24). Elizabeth also was called a wife from the daughters of Aaron (Luke 1:5). But if this is only a genealogical connection, why should this matter as more than a footnote. What does this have to do with John the Baptist and his duties as the forerunner of Jesus? We know that Jesus is the one who is the prophet to arise that will finally be greater than Moses. Who will not just see God face to face, but will be God who sees us face to face. Moses had Aaron to help him (Exodus 4:14 – 16) because he claimed he was slow of speech. Jesus doesn’t have the same faults as Moses did, being the sinless Son of God. Jesus didn’t need someone to speak for Him because of His speech, but He did have those who spoke to draw others to Him. John the Baptist was one of those, and John knew it. Unlike Aaron who thought himself equal with Moses (Numbers 12), John publicly recognized his subordiante role. He said, “He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30) It was time for the Aaronic priesthood to end, for there was now a new high priest, a priest born from the line of Judah and David. A priest who would enter into the holy of holies not by the blood of beasts, but by the shedding of His own blood (Hebrews 9). And it is John, the descendant of Aaron, who prepares the way for this new high priest, who declares “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29b)”

Finally, what about the man who occupies the office of king? This one may seem like a stretch to many, as this man was never actually a king. I’m speaking of John the Baptist’s name sake, Jonathan, son of Saul. The name John (Ιωαννης) is a shortened and hellenized form of Jonathan (יונתן). This name is a combination of the shortened personal name of God with the verb to give/receive. Many sites will say that this name therefore means, “The Lord is gracious.” But that is slightly abstract. The simpler definition would be “God gives”, or perhaps, “the gift of God”, or even “the one given by God”. In John the Baptist’s case, this certainly fits, as his parents were so long without a child and it was only by the gift of God that they were given a son (Luke 1).

All this has been about the name so far, what about Jonathan, son of Saul? What does he have to do with John the Baptist? Jonathan, son of Saul, was Saul’s heir to the throne, and Saul fully intended for him to rule after his death. But that was not God’s plan. God had taken the throne from Saul’s line and had given it to David instead (1st Samuel 15). Most people in Jonathan’s place here would become resentful of David, or even hated him for taking what should have been his. But Jonathan doesn’t. He accepts what God has done, and instead of summoning David so that Saul could kill him, he warns David and sends him away with peace between the two of them (1st Samuel 20). In other words, Jonathan willingly stepped aside, was willing to decrease so that David could increase. That should sound familiar, as we have already discussed John speaking those exact words (John 3:30). Jesus’ coming means an end to how things were running under the old covenant. It means an end to the sacrifice of the temple, an end to the sacrifices of the priesthood. But John doesn’t resent Jesus for this, John welcomes it. John is happy to see the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, ready to step away so that Jesus can come and take the throne that was meant for Him all along.

John the Baptist is the one who came to fulfill the prophecy that declared, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the LORD; Make straight in the desert A highway for our God. (Isaiah 40:3)” But even as John prepared the way for Jesus Christ, God had prepared the way for John. The forerunner was prophesied about and foreshadowed. And that forerunner and all who foreshadowed him would gladly tell us that their part was not the important part. That they were not worthy to untie the sandal strap of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. Yet, for us, it is wonderful to see God’s hand through the lives of these men. To see God’s plan, put in place so long ago, before any of us had yet been formed, God’s plan of salvation was there. So let us marvel at the complexity of God’s design, and give thanks to Him. In Jesus’ name, Amen.