I took a little time off during Spring Break and for this first week back from school as I get my teacher legs underneath me again.

The end of March is one of the busier parts of the year for me. My kiddos are doing all of the things and Spring semester for teachers is pretty atrocious.

For a while I was doing weekly articles, and I may start that pace up again during the summer.

However, because of the time constraints I am going to step back a bit on the publishing schedule with a goal of 1-2 articles per month until then.

I am currently working on an article to put out for March, but it won’t be ready for a hot minute.

I have made social media for this Substack which I am trying to get off of the ground. I am also working on getting a TikTok channel up and running where I may read some of my articles and post some other content as well.

Thank you all for your patience

Instagram: @prayers_andpetitions

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Dr. King ‘Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam’

I have been thinking a lot about Dr. King lately.

Particularly King’s sermon “Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam.”

I think this sermon from King is one of his best and most understudied. There is so much here that reveals the foundations of King’s ethics and theology.

“I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice…In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth.”

It is impossible to see what is happening in Iran and not feel all of the obvious comparisons of history weighing down on us. I have lived through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. My father lived through Vietnam.

America is at a linchpin moment in our history.

I do not write this article and ignore the atrocities of the Iranian government and its leaders in the last 50 years. I do not pretend that they are common allies to goodness and graciousness.

But I will also not ignore the actions of our allies. Good friends speak the truth to one another. During the course of this article I am going to criticize the country of Israel and the barbarism to which they have made the United States an accomplice.

There is an important distinction to make with this criticism of Israel:

Criticism of the government of Israel is not anti-Semitism. To argue in opposition to a government is not the same as raging prejudice against Jewish people.

I am speaking most of all because I love my country. I am disappointed in my country, but I have a profound love for what America is and what we try to be when we are at our best.

I am speaking because I believe in the good news of Jesus Christ. That news is not just for me, but for all people. God so loved the world. I cannot support the killing and exploitation of other humans while trying to deliver the good news of Jesus.

I speak knowing my audience is small, but my conscience demands I say something.

Let me explain…

Economic Injustice

Militarism is one of the primary diseases that is ailing America.

In 2024 the US spent $1.8 trillion on military spending, while Medicaid and public education combined came out to $1.4 trillion.

I do not oppose having a military whose primary purpose is to defend ourselves. Rationalizing spending more money on waging war than on educating and providing healthcare to our children is symptomatic of spiritual rigor mortis

It is estimated that at the time of this writing the war is costing the American taxpayers at least $1 billion every single day it prolongs. That is over $11 billion thus far.

The New Republic has reported that the Pentagon under Pete Hegseth spent at least $93.4 billion in September of 2025. Furthermore, $50 billion of that was spent in the last few days.

If that wasn’t enough the Pentagon bought a $98,329 grand piano for the home of the Air Force Chief of Staff, $5.3 million of Apple products, $2 million for Alaskan king crab, $6.9 million on lobster tail, $15.1 million in ribeye steak (just in September), $124,000 for ice cream machines, and $139,224 on donuts.

Isaiah spoke against the Israelites who worshiped war and wealth. He spoke out against their performative worship and their public fasting. He told them that the fast God required was to seek the end of injustice, feeding those who hunger, allowing the homeless to find a home.

At least those leaders pretended to fast as a sacrifice to God.

Our country also faces an energy disaster in which it is nearly impossible to speculate the complexities and consequences. Many in the White House are saying we go forth in this fight for a multitude of reasons. Regime change, freeing Iran, nuclear weapons.

Make no mistake; the fight for oil to boost our economy is central in this battle.

We have long debated if the US should turn from oil gradually, turning to green energies such as wind or solar power. It is impossible to calculate accurately what it would take to implement a new energy system based on green tech. It will be incredibly expensive and difficult to accomplish.

But there will be no wars over wind turbines.

People will not slaughter one another for solar power.

While we ignore and agitate the lives of the poor at home and all over the world, the United States will not wear the crown of the liberator, but instead will play the role of the oppressor.

Not the forces of democracy, but the enforcer of empire.

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An Institutional Failure

Even more than the economic crisis, this war is a moral and institutional failure. This war will be a blight on the history of the United States, removing our standing as a world leader, disinheriting our claim to the ideals of democracy.

If I were living in a country ruled by a despot, attacking a weaker country in order to feed the rich from the spoils of conquest would be a normal event. If I lived in Sudan or Russia, with no rights and the threat of violence hanging over my head I would not question the reason for going to war.

That is not what we are in the US.

Every day as the causation for war shifts, it is becoming apparent that the administration has not taken the time to think through the “why” for this attack.

This is unsurprising; it is the pattern of autocrats who experience any amount of “victory.”

Hitler took Austria, Czech, Poland, Denmark, and France with little resistance. The high of victory led Hitler to invade Russia as he was actively bombing Britain.

The President took Venezuela quickly and bloodlessly for the Americans. We claimed “victory” over an authoritarian regime, secured a new supply of oil, no boots on the ground, and then it was done.

I have zero doubt in my mind that was the expectation for Iran.

Kill the Ayatollah, bomb their infrastructure, declare victory, possibly make a profit, set it and forget it.

However...the Iranians have been preparing for this for 20 years.

We have made this war an existential crisis, the Iranians (and their government) have to fight in order to survive. They do not have to defeat our military:

They just have to outlast us, and they have all of the resources and ability to do just that.

None of that changes if boots are put on the ground, which I see as more and more likely every day.

A news clip from Al Jazeera shows an Iranian citizen stating, accurately I think, that many young Iranians who do not remember the Iranian Revolution in 1979. They do not comprehend fully the CIA-backed coup in Iran in 1953. They do not completely understand why their parents and grandparents hate the United States.

They do now.

He also states that the United States government they are fighting against is the government of the “…Epstein Class. They are a government that either rapes little girls or bombs little girls.”

What bizarre approaches to liberation we are using to help the people of Iran.

King again:

This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments.

We absolutely can, and should, support the liberation of Iran from their totalitarian government. But we cannot do it by bombing them back into the Stone Age. We cannot do it by prioritizing oil profits at the expense of the miracle of human life.

The escalation is already beyond American control. President Trump cannot end this war now even if he wanted to.

Even if we ceased all military activity immediately, we are not the only ones involved now. Directly or indirectly Russia, China, France, the UK, Japan, and all of the gulf countries are now involved.

We obviously cannot control what Israel is doing since they seem to be calling all of the shots.

Furthermore, looming over this is the potential for an energy crisis setting the stage for an economic catastrophe. Even if oil shipping experiences just a partial delay, the entire world will see severe economic consequences.

And that is without trying to guess Iran’s reactions.

Thousands of Iranians have already died. More are injured. The US and the Israelis are bombing population centers, power plants, police stations, anywhere that provides any kind of civic service or provides resources.

Videos are coming out of Tehran of oil refinery explosions that are literally raining oil, and smoke, and fire onto civilians. They are scenes out of a nightmare.

(“Black rain: the health and environmental risks from Tehran's oil fires - CEOBS”) Source: @sentdefender

The political ruling class of Iran is over 10,000 individuals. This is not Venezuela or even Iraq. They already have a new leader Mojtaba Khamenei whose father, wife, and children are now dead. They have a line of succession for when leadership dies.

These are not a disorganized tribal people, but a civilization and culture with roots stretching back to the Persian Empire. These are not a people to take lightly.

We have never been able to enact regime change solely from air bombings. The last time we tried anything remotely like this was with Kosovo War in 1999. President Clinton ordered 78 days of bombing and air raids from US and NATO forces.

The result? The bombing failed and Serbians responded by ethnically cleansing around 10,000 Kosovar Albanians, displacing over 1.5 million people from their homes. The worst air campaign in US history.

For the moment.

The Germans attempted something similar in the Battle of Britain during WWII. The British did not have to win, they just couldn’t give up. The Germans exhausted themselves and were on the back foot after.

The American Revolution was the exact same. That was an unwinnable war for the British Empire. It was always going to be too much money, too much death, too far away to really care. The Americans outlasted the British.

This also ignores the legacies of other endless wars we have engaged in against an “inferior enemy” that is in danger of being oppressed by their government.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam.

Altogether, 36 combined years of fighting, more than $5.46 trillion spent, over 66,692 Americans killed, estimated 5.17 million total deaths including civilians.

There is no clear off ramp that ends hostilities where we have full control. I truly believe that this is a moment where America is entering a tempest that we are unlikely to exit as the superpower we have been in the last century.

The US has never been successful in these types of war at any point in history. No matter how many leaders we kill, tons of bombs we drop, or barrels of oil we take we will not ever win this war.

Moral Failure

When President Trump is unsure of his next move, he throws spaghetti against the wall. On any issue in which he is unsure of public sentiment he (or his officials) will make statements, no matter how much they may conflict or contradict, until he finds the pulse of the public mood.

That is what is happening in Iran.

The reasons offered are half-truths overflowing with hypocrisy.

We say Iran cannot have nuclear weapons while we refuse to get rid of our own.

We say Iran abuses their women while hundreds of women die from lack of access to reproductive health and have their right to vote hindered.

The US condemns Iran stating correctly that it is a theocracy, an authoritarian dictatorship, while we promote Christian Nationalism and refuse to see fascism constricting around our country.

The US condemns Iran stating correctly, that their government funds terrorism, while the US secretly funds coups, assassinations, and genocides.

We cannot claim the moral high ground, stating that the US values the sanctity of life, yet remain indifferent to the bombing of children.

We declare that we want to protect our children and our daughters, using prejudice against transgender people, yet we try turn a blind eye as little girls are killed by our missiles.

We declare our hatred of Iran’s morality police and the lack of legal protections for Iranians, yet turn a blind eye on or justify the unconstitutional and hostile actions of ICE in the United States.

The United States will not be able to make the case that we are acting with any sort of integrity or wisdom as the White House and the President post memes daily making light of the deaths of the Iranian people.

I think the reality is besides the Trump administration expecting an easy war, the US was apparently pushed into this war by Israel.

Many Christian nationalists have adopted a theology of Israel that conflates the modern state into the biblical kingdom. Therefore, the United States must help them, because the people of Israel are the chosen people of God.

This is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of God’s covenant with the Jewish people. God’s covenant with the Jews, or anyone, did not exclude them from sin or rebuke. In reality, most of the Old Testament prophets spoke of the future conquests of Assyria and Babylon precisely because of the crimes of the kingdom of Israel, and the breaking of God’s covenant promises.

This is not an excuse for antisemitism or any type of anger towards Jewish people or the citizens of Israel. My complaints lie with the current government of Israel and their actions, or lack thereof.

Furthermore, there is another contingent of Christian Nationalist who believe that war in the Middle East, particularly war with Iran will bring about the End Times and Jesus will then return.

This theology substitutes the will of God for the ambition of nations.

Whether it is the end times as depicted in Revelation or something more akin to the Rapture, the Bible is clear that no one knows when it will take place, not even Jesus.

To think that we can “trigger” the apocalypse by waging war with Iran on behalf of Israel is to try to fit God to our will, instead of ourselves surrendering to Him. We cannot do anything to make God do anything.

Faith does not treat God like a controlled variable in an experiment or equation.

That is not faith in God. It is not faith at all. That is a terrible misunderstanding of scripture and a worship of one’s own self and desires.

Marco Rubio was probably the most accurate in why we went through with this attack, which was that Israel was going to anyways, so we thought if we were involved, it would go smoother.

My question to that is to whom is the United States sovereign to?

Israel is a client state of the United States. We protect them and send them money. If we ever pull the plug on that, that is the ballgame and everyone goes home.

Why on Earth are we taking orders from them?

If we are taking our marching orders from Israel and permitting Americans (and Iranians) to die in order to serve the will of the Israeli government, then we are in fact a vassal to a country the size of New Jersey.

Our war betrays the Great Commission of Christ to go and make disciples of all nations. King sums it up:

”…the Good News was meant for all men, for communists and capitalists, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative…my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that he died for them? What, then, can I say to the Vietcong, or to Castro, or to Mao, as a faithful minister to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with them my life?”

If we can tolerate the killing of others, through whatever human made paradigms that justify murder in war, then Christ’s words are falling upon ears and hearts that are not responding to Him.

It is easy to point the fingers at the White House and say that this is their war. I do not want to remove free will and human agency from any individuals involved.

However, if I want to find someone to blame all I have to do is look in the mirror. This is our war.

This is the war for all of us who tolerate inequality, who standby while “other” groups are created. Our society allows a comfortable vanity of American exceptionalism at the expense of dignity and kind-heartedness for those who experience the most disregard.

Everyone has universal rights that do not come from government; the only requirement to have these rights is to be alive. Every time we drop a bomb, or turn our eyes or hearts away from these things, we deny that cornerstone American ideals.

The US cannot lead the world if we are on the leash to Israel.

Christians will not find favor with God by helping Israel destroy the Middle East.

You cannot kill your way to peace unless you are prepared to kill everyone.

Spiritual Obligation

When Christians are compelled to act in the ways of Jesus, we are doing this because we feel a spiritual obligation to help others. This happens when we see Christ in others, as Jesus told us to.

Others may also feel this spirit of obligation to love one another. The Good Samaritan felt a spirit of obligation to help a beaten man though they did not share a common faith.

King stated that we must go further than being the Good Samaritan. We must create a society in which people being beaten and left for dead is not endured.

A radical revolution of values.

We as Americans, as Christians, must be at forefront for this revolution of values.

We will meet these goals, when an economic bottom line is not greater in importance than feeding a hungry child.

We will meet these goals, when reducing the tax burden on billionaires is not superior to providing healthcare or education to those who need it.

Reality will be seen in its fullest as we turn our swords to ploughshares and resist conflict, because it is not worth the spiritual death of making a profit from waging war on one another.

The tools at our disposal are the tools of democracy. We must demonstrate, speak out, and vote.

A human life is a real and precious thing, crafted by a loving God.

Money is a human-made faith system, crafted to create advantage over one another.

But all over the world, there are people, generations en masse, abandoning economies of exploitation for economies of compassion.

Migrating from governments of coercion to governments of transformation.

I do not despair, because I am seeing a whole generation of Americans who know what Yevtushenko knew, that, “When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.” So many people are speaking truth, it is impossible not to hear integrity echoing across this country. Silence not only makes us complicit in the suffering of others, but it gives permission to those who cause suffering, in turn breeding more anguish.

I can still have confidence that America will right our path because so many of us know what Orwell knew, that, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Lies attempt to dominate the highways of our national conscience; truth will clear all of the byways and make a path forward. Telling the truth at this moment is not dissent, but true love for one another.

I see signs that love will triumph because so many of us today know what John knew when he wrote, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.” As we love one another through our devotion to the truth, we arm ourselves with all we need to restore this creation. We cannot give the gospel lip service and then refuse to wash one another’s feet.

Universal love for all peoples all over the world is not weak or naïve. It is more durable and powerful than anything humanity has ever tried to use to exact advantage over one another.

Love and forgiveness are the twin pillars of holiness.

We cannot surrender our determination to live a moral truth. The killing of our enemies, of the innocent, will never protect us.

If we want to protect the dignity of human life, we must reject the political and economic systems that profit from war.

America can show love and dignity to one another as we try to live out that simple founding ideal that ‘All men are created equal’ just as Christ simplified God’s law to ‘love one another.’

A radical revolution of values will show us that both of those ideals fulfil one another and will move our souls toward justice.

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Lincoln – Hope Amid Catastrophe

I have been thinking a lot about Abraham Lincoln lately.

The apocalyptic nightmare that was the Civil War, the fight to end the pestilence of slavery, the political infighting that he had to navigate during these crises.

But mostly I have been thinking of what tremendous hope Lincoln had to have had.

Lincoln grew up in some of the most gut wrenching, back breaking poverty that none of us could ever imagine. Out of all of the US Presidents, he may have the humblest origins.

When Lincoln was younger than 10, his father abandoned his kids for two years to go find a new wife. His older sister who was all of 12-years-old cared for Abe.

Lincoln’s mother died when he was a child, his sister before she was 19. His father was abrasive and physically abusive.

He had maybe one year of formal schooling, everything else he had to learn on his own.

Lincoln’s marriage to Mary Todd seemed incredibly tumultuous (and that is putting it mildly).

They lost two sons, one while Lincoln was President.

That’s all without the particulars of the Civil War, the nearly 1 million who died, trying to keep together the Union, trying to free enslaved peoples (and in turn free everyone else) from the bonds of hatred and greed.

Despite the anguish and death that seemed to trail Lincoln’s first term in his second inaugural address, he appeals to everyone, including those in active rebellion:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all…let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”

To have faith that we could forgive and serve people who worked toward our destruction. For Lincoln to see that America is a work in progress that everyone can contribute toward is to show a profound hope in people and optimism for the future.

Hope and optimism are vital to human success.

Lincoln surely had a phenomenal intelligence, unparalleled communication skills, a ferocious drive to excel. However, if Lincoln did not have hope that things could get better, both in his personal life and for society as a whole, none of those things matter.

How many equally talented individuals have we never heard of, because their hope and optimism did not propel them to use all of their gifts?

Hope is paramount for revolutions as well.

Revolutionary Optimism is the cornerstone for all major movements in human history. Hope will thrust us forward with optimism as we labor to make a more fruitful society for the future generations.

Lincoln found his optimism in many places.

I previously wrote an article in which I mentioned Lincoln’s love of humor and satire, even satire that where he was the butt. Lincoln was certainly one of the funniest Presidents, if not the funniest President in US history. Lincoln also found escape through literature, through drama, often keeping up his young aides by reciting Shakespeare at length to them, late into the night.

Lincoln also found hope and optimism in our shared history. The bedrock of Lincoln’s political rhetoric was the Declaration of Independence. And although Lincoln was surely a doubter, he did often acknowledge a creator and attempt to find wisdom in scripture.

It is well known that Lincoln had a melancholy disposition, but he alleviated that temperament through activities and philosophies that gave him optimism for the future.

In 2026, it is increasingly difficult not to be intensely anxious about our present. To look to the future with anything besides pessimism.

We seem to be approaching environmental disaster with far reaching consequences we cannot begin to fathom. Millions of people are in poverty, victims of hunger, lack of water, or of healthcare. Families are trying to keep everything together, but are now learning that one of the biggest financial expense one can ever take on in the United States is to attempt to have the miracle of children. Women’s rights are being encroached on all sides, and immigrants are being offered up as a sacrifice to the god of the status quo.

Just this last weekend the US has launched an attack against Iran. This is being orchestrated by the same generations who saw endless fighting and bloodshed in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.

This is happening as more and more the Trump administration seems to be trying to cover up any investigation into the Epstein files. Every day we are asking more questions and receiving fewer answers when it comes to the people who run our government and their protection of the individuals involved in this horrifying conspiracy.

One of the most audacious and revolutionary things we may have in spite of all of this, one of the most powerful weapons that the people may yield in the upcoming months and years is to have hope for a better future.

To have a revolutionary optimism that we will make a difference.

Let me explain…

“Flooding the Zone” Manufactured Misery

One of the key characteristics of authoritarian governments is to control the release and presentation of information.

One of the reasons Hitler’s government was followed so willingly is because of the work of his propaganda minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels. If you scream the same lie loud enough long enough, people will forget it is a lie. It will become normal.

Stalin’s Soviet Union was so effective in its propaganda effort that many people turned in their own family members, or even praised him as they eyed their own execution.

Mass media, 24-hour news networks, and social media have led to a literal flood of information and news. The internet is so much noise. News cycles are so much shorter than they used to be, but they are also far more chaotic.

However, it is not impossible to have information slip through the cracks.

Stephen Bannon in the first Trump administration advised an information policy referred to as “Flood the Zone.”

Essentially release as much information as possible every single day. Instead of letting the news cycle be dominated by one or two news stories, the Trump admin would unleash a torrent of stories, making it impossible to focus on any one issue.

Instead of reacting to one negative or sensationalist stories, you are responding to dozens every single day.

It is impossible and it is exhausting.

We can track and feel for one or two crises at a time. We do not have the emotional bandwidth to respond to fifty crises every day.

Try to catch a ball. No problem. Now try to catch twenty balls.

Dave Chappelle says as much, “I can’t even handle the latest shooting, because I haven’t had time to get over the last one.”

This strategy makes it incredibly easy to do things that would be heavily scrutinized under normal circumstances, but because there are so many outrageous things happening, these scandals do not get nearly as much consideration.

For example, in August of 2025 Americans were justifiably outraged by the imminent shutdown of PBS, the Medicare cuts of the Big Beautiful Bill, and the deployment of the National Guard in D.C.

What few people, including myself, did not fume over at the time was the Trump Administration cutting minimum wage protection for thousands of federal contract workers. What few protections these workers had was rescinded without anyone noticing.

There is an old saying that, taking away a man’s job is akin to killing him. Removing these protections does nothing but pave the way for the suffering of untold thousands of families.

It is too terrible; we cannot feel like this all the time. People are sympathetic by nature, but sometimes there is so much suffering we have to block it out, for our own mental health.

So we do not pay attention as more than 30,000 VA jobs are cut endangering veterans.

It does not register when work requirements and ACA cuts put nearly 15 million adults 55 to 64 at risk of losing their health care coverage.

We are unaware when the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ has fewer than 200 people employed, including less than 13 trial lawyers.

I do not say all of this to shame anyone, I frequently take social media or news breaks. I want to stay informed, but I am just too drained and all of these things will live rent free in my head.

However, I am trying to search for better ways to find hope. I am trying to find ways in which I can exert Revolutionary Optimism.

Resigning and allowing calamity to become the norm is exactly what authority wants. If our goal as a society is to stamp out injustice, to find more equitable systems to replace oppressive ones, then we must remain optimistic that we can do just that.

Remembering that despair may attack us in the night, but joy often comes in the morning. That a new day is just that, a new day.

As long as there is air in your lungs, you have a chance.

What Revolutionary Optimism is Not

There is a story about a small town where the town motto is “Stay Positive!”

One day a woman in this town is walking home from the grocery store when the bottom of her bag falls out, spilling her food, ruined, all over the ground.

A person walking by says, “Well at least you don’t have to cook now. You can go out to eat!”

The woman smiles and says, “You’re right, I am so blessed.”

A few days later, the woman’s house burns down. Her neighbors with a smile say, “Everything happens for a reason. Now you don’t have to spend all weekend cleaning up the house!”

The woman smiles and says, “You’re right, I am blessed.”

The woman holds back her tears, puts on a smile, and takes a walk through the town square. She looks into the eyes of her fellow townsfolk as she walks.

All hold nervous, desperate smiles.

Anxious to get out of town the woman goes out to the river and finds an old man crying by the riverbed. She asks him, “Why are you not staying positive?”

The Old Man replies, “Positivity is not found in refusing to break. True strength is allowing the rain to fall so that the flowers may grow again.”

To have toxic positivity or to be delusional is just as dangerous as succumbing to doom.

Revolutionary Optimism is not denying the present reality. We must accurately analyze the world around us and call a spade a spade. Then we must meet these despicable conditions with passionate action, not disheartened passivity.

Allow yourself to feel loss, to feel rage, to break.

One of the best teachings I have found in navigating feelings of depression and anxiety has been in Buddhist teachings of Impermanence. The idea that nothing lasts forever. Emotions are like the weather. If you are sad, then allow yourself to be sad, do not try to fix it. You cannot control the weather so don’t try to be happy when you are not. But also know that you will not always be sad. All storms pass eventually. Just hold on until the clouds clear.

Two things can be true at the same time. You can be an emotional wreck, and be hopeful for a better time.

Dr. King said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

What It Is

Revolutionary Optimism is not just hope. It is action-oriented.

This hope is not passive; it does not wait for saving. Revolutionary optimism is hope with callouses on its hands.

One of my favorite symbols of America is on the one-dollar bill. The unfinished pyramid with the great eye looking down on us. The idea simply being that America is never finished. We are always supposed to try to build and become better. To not rest on our laurels, but to spur ourselves onwards toward that idea of liberty and justice for all.

That is how we must be with our optimism.

Do not fantasize about an incredible utopia that is possible, start laying the bricks (or whatever it is your using as the foundation to this utopia).

Pacifying ourselves or not following through will only allow more misery to continue.

Sitting idly by implicates us with the violence of colonialism and militarism. The great historian Howard Zinn in his article The Optimism of Uncertainty states:

“If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future…to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

This is what it means to not be of the world. To look at how things are usually done and say, “No, thank you.”

This does not mean jamming values down people’s throats. It means acting in a way that demonstrates our genuine beliefs without loudly proclaiming beliefs to anyone who will listen.

Imagination

Dr. Martin Luther King remarked that the United States needs a “Radical Revolution of Values.” To dream of what a revolution of values looks like requires imagination. If one has no hope, one cannot imagine new and beautiful revelations of what can be.

We cannot build a new vision without having hope in that vision becoming a reality.

Dr. King had a dream, but dreams are not spontaneous. They contain a substantial amount of imagination.

It also takes tremendous courage to imagine something different when the world tells us to all fall in line.

Senator Bernie Sanders at the time of this writing is trying to introduce legislation that would tax billionaires. This tax would raise an estimated 4.4 trillion dollars. This would allow everyone to get a $3,000 stimulus, expand Medicare for seniors, and bring the minimum salary for teachers to $60,000.

If we are being honest, I have my doubts about this bill passing. I pray I am wrong, but that is my truthful assessment.

However, I support Senator Sanders bringing this legislation forward for two reasons:

1.) If voted on it will force Republicans (and many Democrats) to pick between billionaire donors or the American people. Lines will be drawn and we will know who sides with the Epstein Class and who sides with the overwhelming number of Americans who need help before the November elections.

2.) It allows us to imagine what could be.

We say all of the time that our only limit is imagination. It is a cliché, but it also happens to be true.

There is no way that the Founding Fathers could have ever imagined that America would become what it is today (as a positive and a negative).

For many years, women could only imagine what it would be like to be able to vote and have a career.

For many years, enslaved peoples in Haiti could only imagine what it would take to overthrow Napoleon and gain independence.

For many years, Nelson Mandela could only imagine what he would be able to accomplish once he went free from prison.

However, in the end…all of those things did happen.

And they were glorious.

Unity

People do not operate within a vacuum. Human beings are social creatures by nature.

As much as history loves to talk about the biographies of fascinating individuals or leaders, the most monumental changes in history have occurred when everyone stands shoulder to shoulder with one another in solidarity.

Howard Zinn again:

“Beyond the handful of activists there seem to be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they tend not to know of one another’s existence…I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

Great movements do not have to agree on every issue. We can disagree passionately and still be willingly tethered together with ambition and purpose to one another.

The 1960s were a decade of profound civil disobedience, few as polarizing as protests against the War in Vietnam.

A number of different groups came together to protest this war. The SDS, the MOBE, the SCLC, the YIPPES, the Black Panthers.

If you take the time to look at these groups, you can see that they are all wildly different. In so many areas and on so many topics they are habitually butting heads.

However…

They all stood unwavering against a war in which they felt injustice was poisoning our very hearts and souls.

In the United States, we focus so much on the individual.

I meditate daily on my own individual work ethic, my own personal salvation – my walk with God, minding my own damn business.

By finding others, we may find a good reward for our toil. We can all bundle together to form a chord that is not quickly broken. We are meant to carry each other’s burdens so that we may keep moving forward.

We do not do this in order to gain favor or “fix” anything; we do this because it will transform us.

We do not merely build a fire to keep others warm, we become the fire.

Love

Finally, this Revolutionary optimism, this radical revolution of values, must be centered on love.

Love is the central support for the great society we all hope for. Whatever future each of us may imagine, if it does not have love then it will not last.

We have so many examples in history of countries built on power, on wealth, on strength, on being great.

There are modern day examples of countries that have not chased glory, but the collective well-being of one another.

Finland, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden. All of these countries rank incredibly high in most studies and surveys that rank the peacefulness of a nation, as well as the happiness of its citizens.

It is no surprise that all of these countries prioritize healthcare as a human right, heavily fund education, highlight childcare as essential to the state, and fight homelessness instead of homeless people. All of these countries are relatively low in crime, low in government corruption, and low in poverty.

Power compels. Love transforms.

This is how we may find others to work with in our cause. We do not always have to like each other in order to love or respect one another.

We may all disagree with each other, drive one another crazy, but if in the midst of the violent river of the world we can find salvation by being supported by love and find relief in one another until the waters recede.

When we are at our lowest moment, when the darkness has taken everything, a single small act of love can light up our entire body.

Imagine what millions of small acts from each of us can light up.

This extends to those who resist or persecute all of us. You cannot hate your way into love. As we are learning now in Iran and elsewhere, you cannot kill your way to peace. A future in which a group of people has been eliminated is an abysmal and frightening place.

We must remember that those who hate and harm others are also victims of a world that breeds and often rewards these things. This does not mean we remain submissive; instead, we must confront abuse in order to free those who feel that might makes right.

This world and its leaders seem to have forgotten that things will not be better when we humiliate or defeat our opponents. Things will not be better when we win or are great again.

Things will only be better when we all realize together there is no need to win or be great if we have a genuine unselfish love for one another.

Have faith in our ability to imagine a better world.

Have hope that others will move with us towards that aim.

Nevertheless, the greatest thing we may ever have is that we refuse absolutely to abandon our love for one another.

Practice

So…how do we do this?

Everyone can do something that is generous towards one another.

Some of us will simply be kind or make one another laugh. Laughter is medicine.

Some of us will do this by raising the most rebellious children imaginable. To raise children who are curious and thoughtful is as revolutionary as anything is.

Some of us will volunteer at our local food shelters, donate to Goodwill, or form mutual aid societies. Start with the small acts that end up being life changing to the people you are helping.

Some of us *ahem* will speak and write about what we see and feel in this world. The internet has ensured that there has never been an easier time to have your voice heard.

Some of us will run for public office or join political organizations. If you care about your community, you are already qualified. We have nothing to gain by waiting for a “better” candidate.

I want you to know, if you are reading this I am speaking specifically to you.

We are not naïve for hoping. Our hope is dangerous.

Despair and cynicism are predictable, easy to mold.

To boast that people are unwilling to abandon love is courageous and an act of rebellion.

History is not made by acquiescing to futility; it is made when ordinary people decide that their historical footnote will be of compassion and not apathy to cruelty.

That first act of rebellion is this: reject despair. Choose hope. Then build.

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Why Did Renee Good Die?

I was snowed in and playing with my girls when I heard Renee Good had been killed.

It is truly disorientating being around your innocent kids, and then seeing reports on something so uselessly violent.

The main cornerstone of teaching history is to tie historical events to the present. Using the trials and tribulations of the past to help us understand what is happening in the present.

So every now and then, usually if something seems historical, I allow students to ask me questions about what is happening in the news.

My golden rules for talking politics with high school students are these:

1. I try to take any controversial topic and describe how each side would see that, in the way that someone who believes in that opinion would explain it. I try to present every side as operating in good faith.

2. If I do give my opinion on a political issue, which does happen sometimes, I always try to preface it with students by explaining to them that my opinion and my word are not the law. I get things wrong all the time. I sometimes change my mind, and I try to be open about that. If they disagree with an opinion of mine, that is probably actually a good thing because it means they are thinking for themselves. I should never be the final word, I should be the beginning of their own research.

3. I never try to demonize the other side. I always call the President with his title. I try never to say Trump, but always President Trump. It’s a respect at the very least to the office he holds. I also try never to guess at intentionality in front of students.

After the weekend of January 9^th-11^th when literally so many potentially newsworthy and confusing events occurred, I allowed students to anonymously write down questions for me to answer. My goal again, not to sway minds, but to provide information.

Moreover, although I knew this question would probably come up, I wasn’t quite prepared for the depth of this question upon reflection:

Why did Renee Good die?

I explained the situation the best I could, as dispassionate as I could, with the facts as best I knew them. I did not try to assume the intentions of anyone as being guilty or not guilty.

The following article will be the opposite of what I usually give to students. I will definitely be impassioned here.

This shooting has demonstrated so many unsettling things about our nation. Our learned selective outrage -- what this means about justice in America -- what have we come to accept as the cost of order – who are we willing to offer up as a sacrifice in order to keep everything calm. But most of all:

Why did Renee Good die?

I have friends who are police officers. I have very close family members who are police officers. They are incredibly brave, compassionate, and professional individuals. I think that 99% of police officers, like any profession, are perfectly normal people who try to do the best they can every day.

I also want to acknowledge that being a police officer is an impossible job, and that is before accounting for potential life-threatening situations in which an officer has at best a tenth of a second to make a decision to end a life. I could not imagine being in one of those situations, I could not imagine making that decision, I could not imagine being so scared. It is absolutely an impossible job.

It is maybe the ultimate damned if you do, damned if you don’t job.

Nevertheless, the American justice system carries a history of injustice in its bones.

America is founded on ideals as well as contradictions. The original sins of slavery, segregation, and uneven opportunity was not extinguished – it restructured itself into our present political climate.

Systems do what they are designed to do.

If 81% of African American students graduate high school, compared to 90% white students, that is what the system is designed to do.

If 40% of the prison population and 26% of arrests are black men, that is what the system is designed to do.

Regardless of the best intentions of teachers or police officers, we are still a part of a system that is built to do these things. Many are trying to remedy this, but progress has been slow. In these systems, and many others, America’s original sins have found a new nest that will hatch calamity and hate.

I know officers who risk their lives for strangers, for their families. These officers understand that due process protects law enforcement as well as individuals. Masked agents who demonstrate disregard for those ideals harm the integrity and reputation of the police.

As of this post, 8 people have been shot and killed ICE, and 39 people have died in detention since Jan. 2025.

Violence is the ultimate breeder of chaotic scenarios in which police officers, trying to protect and serve, inevitably will be injured or worse as they are forced to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with ICE.

ICE is making victims of police, protesters, immigrants, bystanders.

Everyone is fair game when dominance, not justice, is the end goal.

The ICE Raids are Un-American

Legality does not equal morality.

Those who oppose illegal immigration argue that crossing the border is breaking the law, that illegal immigrants take advantage of American taxpayers, and are the source of unspeakable crimes.

To that last point, I do not think there is a single person who does not think that we should deport drug smugglers, human traffickers, violent criminals, or cartel members.

Those opposed to ICE make the argument that the vast majority of people crossing the border illegally are trying to escape the very things we have mentioned that scare ourselves.

“Then do it the legal way.”

Immigrating legally is incredibly complicated and expensive.

I think very few people who bemoan illegal immigration fully understand the legal immigration process, forwards and backwards, top to bottom. Many of us are speaking from a place of ignorance and privilege, without a clue about the artificial obstacles of immigration.

As a father and husband, if my choice is hiring a lawyer I cannot afford or watching my children be murdered, starve to death, or trafficked…well that’s not a choice at all.

I’m climbing that wall.

If our conscience ebbs and wanes with the Supreme Court calendar, something in us has gone quiet.

Whenever ICE is picking up people at immigration hearings, where people are trying to do it the right way – I ask, “Is that the worst of the worst?”

When ICE is pulling day laborers out of Home Depot, I have a hard time believing that this is actually about lazy people taking advantage of the system.

When they are targeting schools, terrorizing students and parents, I have a hard time believing this is about protecting our children.

I would say something here about Jesus and his sayings on children and millstones, but if I have to convince you that harming kids is bad then there is really not much to say.

There are plenty of reasons that some people do need to be deported, that is not a controversial statement.

But there are moral ways of doing that --

What ICE is doing right now, under the Trump administration, creates chaos where there does not need to be any.

For ICE to not give due process to their detainees -- the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, the right to a speedy trial, habeas corpus, the fourth amendment – abandons the ethical and legal high ground of our Founding Fathers.

Additionally, there have been many arguments that these rights and civil liberties only apply to citizens, not people who have immigrated here illegally.

The Constitution at no point says that any of these rights belong exclusively to citizens. It explicitly says ‘persons.’

Furthermore, to say that only American citizens deserve any of these liberties is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what liberty is.

Freedom at its most basic level is being alive. In order to be alive individuals must have access to resources. Finally, people must have an equitable ability to make decisions about these resources.

That is democracy realized.

All of the civil liberties mentioned so far are instrumental in allowing people to be free. To deny those rights to anyone else, anywhere else, regardless of citizenship, is to admit that one does not think other people deserve to be free.

Sit with that for a moment.

Moreover, removing citizenship was one of the first things done by Nazi Germany with the Nuremberg laws in 1935. Removing citizenship the Nazi’s argued removed any protections and rights of Jewish people that Nazis had to respect.

“The Reich citizen is the sole bearer of full political rights in accordance with the law.” – Article 2 of the Reich Citizenship Law

ALL people need these rights in order to be free, not just Americans.

Without any type of due process, it is impossible to determine who is innocent and who is guilty. If we value liberty, Americans cannot be the sole bearer of these rights. Every human is born with these rights.

The fundamental question is:

Are we all equal, deserving of freedom, and baring the Image of God?

Or are some animals more equal than others?

The Plank in Your Own Eye

In my last article, I wrote about the murder of Charlie Kirk and his public sanctification. The large public memorial, the President speaking at the ceremony, the works. I think it is very telling to witness the lionization of Charlie Kirk vs the demonization of Renee Good.

The Secretary of Homeland Security and the President described Good as someone who intentionally attempted to kill an ICE officer, that he was lucky to be alive.

The President is a human starting gun -- when a President opens their mouth, the whole world pays attention.

I think it is apparent that when the President opened his mouth about Renee Good he had not seen the video of her murder.

Words were released before the truth had settled.

Here is a breakdown from the Star Tribune of the shooting:

Renee Good clearly turns her wheel all the way to the right in order to get away. In the heat of the moment, sure, the officer may not have seen that. There have been arguments that the officer was scared for his life and reacted.

Probably true; I think it is also obvious Good was scared.

If my wife is in the car and someone tries to break into her car, dressed in tactical gear and masks, no identifying markers, I am hoping to God she drives away as quickly as possible.

“She made contact with the officer.” This has been disputed, and if contact was made, which is possible, it appears to be minimal contact at best.

I do not have tactical training. I do not know what legally qualifies as justification to open fire in that situation.

However, I suspect that is also true of the ICE officer.

The idea that he is lucky to be alive, is demonstrably false. This does not mean that hitting the officer was fine, but I do think it is obvious she was not trying to hit him, although the ICE officer may not have known that.

The Fog of War is a term that is thrown around in these scenarios. In these moments decision-making is impossibly difficult.

This situation radiated fear and confusion on all sides. It was also avoidable.

When anxiety and righteous vengeance replace restraint and deftness, these situations occur.

It is plain that Renee Good was not a domestic terrorist. She was scared and confused. That should not warrant a death sentence.

I think her dog in the back seat or her kids toys in the front seat should be a clear indicator. Even if you still disagree with the way Good handled the situation, she was not a domestic terrorist.

This is not how a nation that claims to be shaped by the Sermon on the Mount behaves.

Vengeance is Mine Says the LORD

Just a few days after the shooting of Renee Good, a registered nurse Alex Pretti was also shot and killed in Minneapolis.

Like Renee Good, we have videos from nearly every angle.

Like Renee Good, ICE officers appear to respond to the situation escalating the violence instead of deescalating.

From what has been uncovered in the video, ICE officers appeared at a large protest. There appear to be multiple points of conflict between protesters and ICE.

From what we can see, Pretti is using his phone to record officers. Then is face-to-face with an ICE officer, both shouting at one another. Nearby a woman is reeling on the ground. Alex Pretti starts to help her up as officers are crowding in, grabbing and spraying mace.

Pretti’s back is turned to all of these officers as they grab him.

The kicker is that Alex Pretti does have a weapon, at his waist is a legally registered SIG Sauer P320. He has a permit to conceal and carry.

However, it is also clear that one officer disarmed Pretti before another officer opens fire on Pretti.

Opens fire – from point blank range – into the back of his head.

Obviously resisting the police is not a great idea, and if an officer feels their lives or the lives of others are under threat, I do not think there are many reasonable people who would say that the officer is not within their bounds to open fire.

Alex Pretti was disarmed and his back was turned to them.

10 shots in 5 seconds.

Video was later released of Pretti spitting at ICE officers and kicking out the lights of one of their vehicles a few days earlier. I think obviously that is not okay and if he had been arrested and charged, that would have been perfectly reasonable.

That does not permit a public execution.

Being disrespectful of law enforcement, employing civil disobedience, or resisting arrest does not merit a death sentence.

Taking a gun to a protest does not mean that officers get to shoot someone in the back of the head.

I have been told for years now that the reason we tolerate teachers and children being shot and killed in American schools is because, we have to safeguard the Second Amendment as our last deterrent against an overreaching tyrannical government.

Apparently, this doesn’t fit the bill.

After all, the people whose rights are being violated are brown people. The people being executed are “radical leftists.”

Finally, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were not the first people to be shot by ICE.

Renee Good and Alex Pretti were the first white people shot.

2025

• Genry Ruiz-Guillen
  Age 29 — Died in detention — January 23, 2025

• Lorth Sim
  Age 59 — Died in detention — February 23, 2025

• Ruben Ray Martinez
  Age 23 — Shot and killed — March 15, 2025

• Silverio Villegas Gonzalez
  Age 38 — Shot and killed — September 12, 2025

• Isaias Sanchez Barboza
  Age 31 — Shot and killed — December 11, 2025

• Keith Porter Jr.
  Age 43 — Shot and killed — December 31, 2025

2026

• Geraldo Lunas Campos
  Age 55 — Died in detention — January 3, 2026

• Victor Manuel Diaz
  Age 36 — Died in detention — January 14, 2026

It is not enough to say that the deaths of Good and Pretti are heart-rending. We must also confront that in the public consciousness of America, the deaths of these people of color were not as noteworthy.

Brown people are shot and killed all the time in the United States of America.

“Necessary Pain” – A Convenient Theology

During the election, I remember having a conversation with someone about Trump’s promise of mass deportation.

I expressed the fact that I had Hispanic students who were incredibly worried about deportation. They were born in the US, but they were worried over threats to get rid of birthright citizenship.

What struck me the most was I had two female students, both very intelligent, who were discussing if it was a good idea to find a random person online to marry so that they could gain citizenship if the government revoked birthright citizenship.

These two girls were 16 at the time.

While the person I was speaking to was sympathetic to my students and not cruel, they essentially responded that the whole border was a mess, that the Trump administration would only focus on criminals, and that while mass deportation would result in some “necessary pain” that it wouldn’t be as bad as people made it out to be.

I’ve heard this argument in other places.

This person then instructed me that America could not solve the poverty of all of the nations on Earth. That God gives instructions to individuals within the church, but not to society on how to run a government.

This is an incredibly convenient theology.

The idea that people believe that Jesus told us all to love each other as we love ourselves, but that does not include the government we all individually vote for is, to me, a way to sidestep guilt for not wanting to take care of the weakest among us.

In this theology mass deportation and the ensuing agony is acceptable to maintain status and order, which is of course contrary to the teachings of Christ.

This is at the same time that new laws are forcing Christian Nationalism down the throat of those who disagree.

Glorifying the sanctity of life cannot allow tolerating the suffering of others.

The US can deport criminals under the existing system. If there is a conversation to be had about changes that need to be made to that system that is fine, let’s have that conversation. A conversation about if the justice system moves too slowly or needs more checks and balances is a conversation worthy of a great nation.

A country that is arguing about the proper definition of a concentration camp is a society that has chosen to commit spiritual suicide.

It is also completely avoidable.

When untrained, unfettered, and unprofessional individuals are let loose onto the streets we will witness carnage.

When officers wear masks, and purposefully do not have badges, or identifying markers, chaos reigns.

When ICE agents are ignoring things like due process, when people are being detained indefinitely, deported without trial, unable to argue whether they are citizens or not, authority loses its legitimacy.

When a government agent, with no identifying markers, tells a woman, “Get the fuck out of the car” – while another officer gives her contradictory statements – she panics.

When officers – who are not trained to deescalate – try to force a car open. When these officers have been told they have unchecked immunity…

Renee Good was shot in the face.

Her partner has lost a spouse.

Her child is now an orphan.

That is a part of “necessary pain.”

These tactics are targeting the marginalized, creating more orphans, and creating more widows.

The corruption and lack of any form of compassion or deftness are causing situations like the one with Renee Good to happen.

In Christ we are one body, made of many members, each dependent on the other. Lately it feels as though we are severing parts of ourselves in the name of purity or protection. A body cannot thrive by cutting away its own flesh.

It will only grow weaker.

Ephesians 4:32

Charlie Kirk should not have been killed.

Renee Good should not have been killed.

Alex Pretti should not have been killed.

None of the individuals who have been killed — none of the families that have been ripped apart — should have gone through any of this. Everyone involved bore the Image of God.

Neither Kirk nor Good are angels or demons. They were both people, made in the Image of God.

If our politics teaches us to grieve selectively, then it is not the Gospel shaping our hearts and minds.

When a nation decides that some lives are an acceptable sacrifice to the god of order, it has already chosen empire over mercy.

And while Jesus wept, empire applauds.

Love you all, be safe.

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What if You Were a Canaanite?

This is the question posed to Cliff and Stuart Knechtle by Alex O’Connor on O’Connor’s podcast ‘Within Reason'.

I will say before I get into it, I like everyone in this video.

Alex O’Connor is a well known agnostic who typically hosts discussions (and sometimes debates) with Christian Apologists. I appreciate him because he is incredibly well researched, articulate, calm in tone, and he rarely resorts to hyperbole.

Cliff and Stuart Knechtle are well known Christian apologists. I’ve actually watched a lot of Cliff’s content. He often visits college campus to discuss (and sometimes debate) students about Christianity and philosophy.

Cliff Knechtle is probably my favorite apologist outside of C.S Lewis. While he does debate he is typically kind and doesn’t seem interested in simply “winning.” He genuinely appears to want to persuade people thoughtfully.

He’s also refreshingly honest…which is something I personally don’t feel from many modern Christian apologists. He takes time with his answers, is willing to say, “I don’t know,” and admits that much of what we “know” of God remains a mystery

Full episode is right here. The conversation I’m focusing on begins at the 1:41:56 mark.

Here’s the question that O’Connor poses:

“…suppose you woke up tomorrow and you were a Canaanite, you just sort of woke up in someone else’s body, you traveled back in time, you’re a Canaanite. Now you live in that community you’re surrounded by temptations and you’re a sinful man, you give into some of them. Then the Israelites come marching in and start attacking you they start trying to kill you and your family. Would you fight back?”

O’Connor is referencing the genocide of the Canaanites, and other peoples, that God commands of the Israelites to carry out in the Old Testament

This question cuts into so several difficult and fascinating issues:

• Biblical Inerrancy

• The morality of God

• The omnipotence of God

The idea of not fighting back is almost unfathomable. Of course we would fight back if someone was invaded our home to kill us and our families.

When most of us read the Bible, we instinctively read ourselves into the Israelites — into David, the apostles, even into Jesus. O’Connor is asking us to do the opposite. Instead read ourselves into the people being killed at God’s command.

That shift is deeply uncomfortable.

If we’re honest and say we would fight back, then we are forced to confront what it means for God to command genocide — or if the biblical authors invoked God’s name to justify ethnic cleansing.

Which if you think there is any justification for genocide — Yuck.

O’Connor presses further:

“…suppose that you go back now and you retain the knowledge you have…you’re like, ‘I’ve been put, here this is a test. God is testing me somehow I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m a Canaanite now and the the armies of of Moses are coming towards you. And you know that they’re the Israelites, you know that they’ve got God on their side, do you still fight back?”

Cliff then shifts gears and attempts to provide a just cause for genocide.

Cliff’s basic argument is that modern genocide is not the equivalent to divine judgement. God, he argues, has the authority to judge nations and enact punishment. He also notes, accurately, similar judgements later fall upon Israel itself.

Throughout the exchange O’Connor presses back: genocide — anyone, anywhere, for any reason — is morally indefensible.

While I find Cliff’s answers disappointing, I still appreciate his humility. He openly admits he struggles with the Old Testament wars and with the torture and crucifixion of Christ. He doesn’t pretend these are easy questions.

We don’t have to agree with one another to maintain respect.

Why it Matters?

And this is where the conversation moves beyond Bronze Age conquest. O’Connor’s question is not just historical — it’s a warning for Christianity in our present age.

White Christian Nationalism subscribes to the idea that America carries divine moral authority. Once you believe God authorizes one nation to conquer another, it becomes far easier to imagine that we carry that same mandate.

We are the Israelites, never the Canaanites.

Political victories become spiritual victories. Opponents are not merely wrong; they are resisting God. When God is a co-signer on national power, faith turns into a sword to wield against our “enemies.”

But, Jesus has already told us what happens to those who live by the sword.

The Canaanite question forces us to confront how dangerous the marriage of moral certainty and political power can be.

If God is always on our side, then almost anything can be justified.

I haven’t listened to the rest of the podcast yet, but I would imagine it is worth the time. All of the participants are intelligent and articulate.

Happy Wednesday friends.

Love you all, stay safe.

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I thought I’d write something a little lighter this week. Instead of analysis over the intersection of religion, politics, and history. I give you the weirdest – and one of the most philosophically insightful songs I’ve ever heard: The King Beetle and the Coconut Estate by mewithoutyou.

Right upfront, I love music, although I’m certainly no musician. I messed around with drums and bass as a kid. I can belt it in the shower. But I have always loved lyrics. I love songs that make you react when you hear it.

This song certainly does that.

I first heard this song in high school. My English teacher had us analyze songs as a study of poetry. One classmate picked this song, and at first I thought he was joking.

The vocals were spoken-word and off kilter. The layers of almost-out-of-tune strings and flutes. The ascent from a whisper to a fury.

It was like listening to potato chips. I did not want to stop.

I’ve used this song in numerous classes. I’ve used it as an example of how to look for deeper meaning, on how to explain complicated ideas in an understandable medium. Students either think it’s brilliant or deranged.

Both reactions are correct.

A Little Background

This is maybe the most fun I’ve had researching an article. I think I found about fifty new article ideas.

Mewithoutyou was formed in Philadelphia and has been more or less recording music and touring since the late 2000s. A lot of their earlier stuff is typical alternative-punk-grunge rock music. However, they eventually began composing songs focusing on spoken words from their lead singer and experimental, more…unhinged compositions.

Two of the main members of the band are brothers Aaron and Michael Weiss, the lead vocalist and guitar player respectively. They were raised in a Sufi Muslim household; their mother converted from Christianity and their father from Judaism.

I would pay all of the money in my pockets to go to that Thanksgiving Dinner.

Before I go any further, researching these brothers and their family background and influences has been some of the most fun research I’ve ever done.

Their lyrics frequently explore Abrahamic themes, Sufi mysticism, and the teachings of the Sufi teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (who is going to get his own article soon). In fact, “The King Beetle” is based on one of Muhaiyaddeen’s parables. So what we’re hearing is essentially a musical retelling of a Sufi story—with some added layers.

And Shrek my boy, there are layers.

The Great Mystery

The song opens on nearly a whisper, as the lyrics quickly start the story. There is a soft guitar, maybe a mandolin.

As the Moon rose and the hour grew late
The day help on a Coconut estate
Raked up the dry leaves that fell dead from the Trees
Which they burned in a pile by the lake

The Beetle King summoned his men,
From the top of a Rhododendron stem:
Said, calling all volunteers!

Who can carry it back here,

The Great Mystery has been lit once again.

A community of beetles is observing a brush fire and are drawn to the “Great Mystery” of the flame. This fire is mesmerizing to the beetles, beautiful and dangerous.

Above all else the – The King wants to know what it is.

This question drives everything.

The Professor

One Beetle emerged from the crowd
In a fashionable abdomen shroud:
“I’m a Professor, you see, that’s no mystery to me...
I’ll be back soon, successful and proud”

But when the Beetle Professor returned
He crawled on all six, as his wings had been burned
Described to the finest detail all he’d learned
There was neither a light nor a heat in his words

Of course a professor tries first to intellectualize the fire. The Professor is “fashionable” and boasts that the fire is no mystery at all.

He returns burned, wings destroyed. Humble and crawling in defeat.

I think instead the idea is that science can certainly explain why everything is the way it is, but religion or philosophy can help give us a purpose behind that why.

Mystery and the search for spiritual, or scientific, truth can reduce the strongest to the ground.

The Professor is explanation without transformation. He can describe the fire scientifically, but he cannot transmit its power.

This can seem like a dig at science, but I think it is just a simple reality. The Professor can, “describe to the finest detail all he’d learned.” It doesn’t mean his words provided heat or light.

Many people want comfort, but even more than that people want safety. People need light to illuminate their path

You can describe nuclear fission perfectly and it still will not answer why beauty can be terrifying, or why suffering can be purifying.

We need light and heat for survival.

The Professor certainly learned.

But he did not become fire.

The Lieutenant

The deeply dissatisfied King
Climbed the same stem to announce the same thing
But in his second appeal sought to sweeten the deal
With a silver Padparadscha ring.

The Lieutenant stepped out from the line
As he lassoed his thorax with twine, thinking
I’m stronger and braver,
I’ll earn the King’s favor,
One day all he has will be mine!

But for all the Lieutenant’s conceit
He, too, returned singed and admitting defeat:
I had no choice, please believe, but retreat.
It was bright as the sun, but with ten times the heat!
It cracked like the thunder and bloodshot my eyes,
Tho smothered with sticks it advanced undeterred
Carelessly cast an ash cloud to the sky,
my Lord, like a flock of dark ravishing birds.

The King makes the same call, but ups the ante with the promise of treasure.

Quick note about the symbolism of the padparascha ring. Padparascha is an orange-ish sapphire, often seen as a symbol in Asia for a lotus flower (a major symbol of rebirth in Buddhism).

We are then introduced to the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant is ambitious, he doesn’t care about knowledge. He wants wealth, status…power. He seeks to usurp the King and take all that he possesses.

Like the Professor, the Lieutenant is motivated by selfish desire. They are not seeking truth in order to be transformed, but in order to elevate themselves.

This is such an important aspect of serving one another. Nearly all faith traditions call on us to serve each other, especially those on the margins, without any expectation of receiving anything in return.

We are not called to serve one another because God tells us to, or because we may “fix” anyone (at that point the giving is becoming about ourselves and is still self-centered). We’re called to help each other because it transforms us. It changes our way of caring about ourselves and others.

But back to the song…

The Lieutenant is likewise scorched – awed by the fire’s force. His descriptions are vivid, emotional, but still incomplete. The Great Mystery is still a mystery.

If the Professor is intellect, the Lieutenant is ego.

They sought to transform the mystery instead of allowing it to transform them.

Musically the song is fully layered in guitars, mandolins, harps, strings, and even a flute melody until –

We Didn’t Ask What It Seems Like!

The Beetle King slammed down his fist:
“Your flowery description is no better than his!
We sent for the Great Light and you bring us this?
We didn’t ask what it seems like,
We asked what it IS!”
His Majesty’s hour at last has drawn nigh!
The elegant Queen took her leave from his side,
Without understanding but without asking why
Gathered their Kids to come bid their goodbyes

The song detonates, you can feel the sonic blast of a slamming fist. The anger and fear of someone’s reality collapsing.

Drums are crashing and power chords have replaced the strings. The guitar wailing in the background with anguish, but also strange determination.

“We didn’t ask what it seems like,

We asked what it IS!”

That is of course the anguish of faith. Faith is so personal and subjective. We are all uneasy with enigma. We want proof. We don’t want impressions. Data does not provide comfort to us. We want a solid truth that exists beyond our perceptions.

Regardless of your personal theology, I think everyone can at least admit that there is something connecting everyone.

Christians will call this the Holy Spirit.

Others might call it collective energy, or being present and consciousness.

The song itself refuses easy categories

Why Not Be Utterly Changed Into Fire?

The father explained:
You’ve been somewhat deceived...
We’ve all called me your dad,
But your True Dad’s not me
I lay next to your mom
And your forms were conceived
Your Father is the Life within all that you see
He fills up the ponds as He empties the clouds,
Holds without hands and speaks without sounds,
Provides us with the Cow’s waste and coconuts to eat
Giving one that nice salt-taste and the other a sweet,
Sends the black carriage the day Death shows its face
Thinning our numbers with Kindness and Grace

And just as a Flower and its Fragrance are one
So must each of you and your Father become
Now distribute my scepter, my crown and my throne
All we’ve known as ‘wealth’ to the poor and alone...
Without further hesitation, without looking back home
The King flew headlong into the blazing unknown!

And as the Smoke King curled higher and higher,
The troops, flying loops around the telephone wire, said:
Our Beloved’s not dead,
But His Highness instead
Has been utterly changed into Fire!!!

Why not be utterly changed into Fire?

And the walls come crumbling down.

The King and Queen have now revealed their own truth to their children:

The Great Mystery is their true Father.

Not the King.

Their true Father has no face, no voice, no body. He is the Life within everything. He gives and takes. He fills and empties. He nourishes their bodies and thins their numbers “with kindness and grace.”

The fire is not merely danger or beauty -- It is holy

The King in a last desperate, determined attempt distributes his wealth to the poor. Abandoning his status and power he flies directly into the blaze.

A final cry:

“Our Beloved’s not dead, but his Highness instead,

Has been utterly changed into Fire.”

The last line comes from the writings of the Desert Fathers – First Century monks who forsake wealth and possessions in order to seek God in the Egyptian wilderness.

The stories of the Desert Fathers are short and powerful. This particular story goes like this:

Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I do my little fast, I do my little prayer, I live in peace as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “Why not be utterly changed into fire?”

God, or Fire, or Mystery is not something to be managed and placed on a schedule. It is constant. You cannot every fully control a fire. But we can all be consumed by fire.

Let go of your control over your faith and be transformed.

Become Fire.

Final Thoughts

The Professor shows us that pure knowledge is not enough.

The Lieutenant shows that desire corrupts our pursuit.

The King surrenders.

We cannot master our faith. We can allow ourselves to be engulfed by it.

The things we buy or possess will eventually turn into dirt. Our accomplishments will dissolve. Most of our names will be lost to the ages.

Often along the way we try to leverage our faith to bring comfort in death or to acquire power for ourselves.

The King offers a new way: Abdication

Give away your crown.

Relinquish your control.

Drive forward into the unfamiliar.

What remains after is the small miraculous acts of love and compassion we exchange with one another. To be present in those moments with those who are most special to us. Maybe that’s what the fire is?

Maybe the point isn’t to define the mystery, but to step into it.

Be transformed by it and give into it.

Why not be utterly changed into fire?

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Wednesday Whatta Ya Know?

A new thing that I am trying out for subscribers to the Substack is the “Wednesday Whatta Ya Know?” In these (gulps) short articles, I’ll be highlighting different forms of media that I think are noteworthy, but don’t necessarily have the time to give them the attention they deserve.

Censoring Christians

On Monday, February 16th the FCC and CBS censored and refused to air a conversation on a talk show between two Christians. The two Christians discussed their faith in God and how that informs their personal politics. They were censored by the government - suggesting a discomfort with how their faith intersects with politics.

The two in question are the Senate candidate from Texas James Talarico and comedian Stephen Colbert.

Both are controversial within the White Christian Nationalist movement.

Colbert, of course, has infamously been canceled and is finishing out his tenure this year with CBS. This move drew criticism as it seems to be linked to the Trump administration making a deliberate attempt to silence opposition.

James Talarico has been making a name for himself nationally as a red state Democrat who is using Christianity to make inroads with liberal and conservative voters alike. As a Texas State Rep., he famously opposed a bill that would place the Ten Commandments in Texas public schools. He was also one of the state representatives who left the state in order to try to cancel out efforts by Texas Republicans (and the Trump Admin) to gerrymander more House seats from the state.

The whole interview is here: Talarico and Colbert Interview.

You can view Stephen Colbert’s statement on why his interview was blocked from airing by the FCC and CBS here: Colbert’s Statement.

Regardless of political affiliation, censorship on this level from the upper levels of government is inexcusable.

Growing up, I was always told that if something offensive was on TV Democrats would want to cancel the show, but Republicans would just change the channel.

It would appear that the current leadership of the Republican Party no longer holds true to this ideal. Cancel culture and wokeness should be eradicated…unless it is our type of wokeness. Winston Churchill once said, “Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage”

But back to the interview itself. There is so much here to enjoy. Talarico is not a partisan firebrand and not particularly negative of his political opponents. He speaks firmly and sincerely, without resorting to hyperbole. His statements are logical and to the point. He rarely has any fat in his words. Talarico is also very adept at making complicated subjects clearer with his examples and statements.

Those are the same qualities I admire in Abraham Lincoln, who also spoke clearly, eloquently, and logically on heated/emotional subjects. I don’t mean to compare anyone to Lincoln (I think Lincoln is by far the greatest American President), but I do think Talarico may be one of the most effective communicators in either party in the last few years.

Abraham Lincoln was also an incredibly funny individual, and often resorted to self-deprecating humor. Lincoln also had an appreciation for satire and endured brutal satire at his own expense.

Instead of taking it to heart, Lincoln reveled in satire that was directed his way. For Lincoln, in the most blood-soaked days of the Civil War, laughter was medicine. Laughing, even at himself, was a matter of survival.

A president, or any leader, who cannot laugh at himself or herself, is dangerous.

This entire episode suggests we now have a leader who cannot tolerate ridicule — and that should concern anyone who values free expression. What could be more American than criticizing or satirizing the government — especially the president?

The display of not only humility, but also just plain good humor that Lincoln demonstrates is sorely missing in President Trump’s temperament. A good leader doesn’t have to be funny, but it certainly does help.

I tell my seven year old all the time, “don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.” In order to take a joke, you have to at least understand what is funny, and in this case it does not seem like the President thinks anything is funny when he is the butt of it. However, bashing your political opponents? No problem whatsoever.

Critique can be cutting — it can also be a source of growth. Theodore Roosevelt argued that blocking criticism of the president is unpatriotic. Accepting humor — especially when we are the punchline — is a sign of maturity. It is a signal that we understand, accept, and even love ourselves. Laughing at ourselves may be one of the healthiest things we do — both as individuals and as a society.

And in that sense, laughter may not just be medicine — it may be patriotism.

Favorite Quotes and Further Considerations

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from both gentlemen, as well as some other takes on the entire episode.:

• “Stephen, this is the party that ran against cancel culture, and now they are trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. This is the most dangerous type of cancel culture, [the type] that comes from the top.” - James Talarico

• “A threat to any of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights.” - James Talarico

• “For 50 years the religious right political movement…They convinced a lot of our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage. Two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Two issues that Jesus never talked about.” - James Talarico

• “Don’t tell me what you believe. Show me how you treat other people and I’ll tell you what you believe.” - James Talarico

• “Christianity is a simple religion, not an easy one…but a simple one because Jesus gave us two commandments: Love God and love neighbor. There was no exception to that second commandment.” - James Talarico

• “I was told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers that not only could we not have him [James Talarico] on, but that I couldn’t even mention not having him on. And because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.” - Stephen Colbert

• [On Brendan Carr accusing talk shows of being motivated by partisan politics] “You smelt it cause you dealt it. You are Dutch ovening America’s airwaves.” - Stephen Colbert

• “Let’s just call this what it is, Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV.” - Stephen Colbert

• “Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!!! I can’t speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close, and until tonight’s false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media.” - Donald Trump after Trevor Noah made a joke about him at the Grammys

• “Why does ABC Fake News keep Jimmy Kimmel, a man with NO TALENT and VERY POOR TELEVISION RATINGS, on the air? Why do the TV Syndicates put up with it? Also, totally biased coverage. Get the bum off the air!!!” - Donald Trump

• “With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.” - Abraham Lincoln

• “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” - Abraham Lincoln

• Abraham Lincoln’s Humor - A solid article on Lincoln’s humor and use of stories to communicate with others.

• Is Donald Trump Actually Insecure Underneath - Interesting psychological analysis on if the President is more insecure than narcissistic.

• James Talarico Sermon on Christian Nationalism - A fantastic sermon delivered by James Talarico on the subject of Christian Nationalism in the US.

• 1 Texas Democrat vs 20 Undecided Voters - James Talarico does a Jubilee “surrounded” debate with undecided Texas voters. I would highly suggest this video. It demonstrates the logic of Talarico’s rhetoric, but also shows his humility and his kindness towards others (especially those who disagree with him).

• Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper - On Grief - This is a fantastic interview between journalist Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert. They speak on Colbert’s Catholicism, Colbert losing his father and two brothers in the same day, and the nature (and blessing) of grief.

• The Right to Be Wrong - My own article about having compassion and empathy for those we may think are bad people.

Love you all, stay safe.

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I have been thinking a lot lately about Edward R. Murrow. This time of year many American History students are learning about the Cold War, the Second Red Scare of the 1950s, McCarthyism, the Crucible, the good stuff.

I always make it a point to show them the following clip from one of Murrow’s broadcasts. This broadcast, I believe, is about three weeks before Senator McCarthy appeared on Murrow’s program. Many believe this speech and the following interview helped bring down Joseph McCarthy.

I often wonder what Murrow or Walter Cronkite would think about politicians today. It is a fun dream.

There is…so much I respect in this short clip. Above all is the hope, honesty, and self-reflection that too many in the fourth estate no longer can lay claim to.

I also love this quote from a separate broadcast:

“The right of dissent, or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong, is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That’s the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail toward totalitarianism.” – Edward R. Murrow

What is the Right to Be Wrong?

Murrow is describing to his 1950s audience that even something as scary or as foreign as being a communist is not illegal. You can wholeheartedly disagree with someone and what they say/do, but you must also defend their right to say/do it with just as much, if not more zeal.

I think a nation born out of revolution, such as ours, absolutely depends on the Right to Be Wrong. We have the right to debate and to protest. Our debates and arguments can (and must) be passionate. Our protests can (and must) be disruptive and disobedient. We have to be willing to allow this of one another, even on our most fundamental disagreements.

For a country filled with the descendants of revolutionaries, fueled by passionate ideals, and purified by civil disobedience, what could be more fundamental to our country’s survival than the Right to Be Wrong?

We can disagree with one another. We can look at one another’s principles and daily activities saying, “I think you are one hundred percent wrong” – and still see the other person as a human. Intelligence and dissimilarities do not need to make us feel insecure. We can give one another the Right to Be Wrong.

That is grace. That is mercy. That is love.

This article is going to focus on the public murder of Charlie Kirk.

My next flagship article will focus on Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and all of the individuals who have been murdered over the last few months. While I have very differing opinions on all of these individuals’ words and actions, I hold hard that none of them should have been killed. Life is sacred, and the loss of all of these people is a tragedy.

So regardless of political or religious ideology, regardless of if you thought some of these people were scum of the Earth, or doing God’s work…please let’s give each other the Right to Be Wrong.

I’ll give you that right, please give me that right (I desperately need it).

Let’s give Charlie Kirk, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and everyone else the Right to Be Wrong. People are wrong all the time. It is one of our most human and important qualities.

Let me explain…

The Assassination of Charlie Kirk

I heard about Charlie Kirk’s assassination while I was at work. I was walking students back from an assembly and another teacher in the hallway told me Kirk had been shot at a college.

I immediately experienced a feeling of dread. I spent much of the rest of the day monitoring Kirk’s status before he passed.

I purposely have not watched the video of Kirk’s death. I believe there is such a thing as knowing or learning too much. Some things are better left unfamiliar; I do not need to see someone’s life end.

I did see Kirk’s last words, answering a question about gun violence, starting to hint at gang violence in his answer. Those last words are haunting for so many reasons.

Like most people, my emotions ran in a million different directions.

I was heartbroken to learn that Kirk’s murder happened in front of his wife and child. No one deserves to be killed in front of their family. No spouse or child should ever have to witness that. As a teacher, I think about getting shot at work a lot. I worry about my wife, who is also a teacher, getting shot. I worry about my two girls who are in school getting shot.

Kirk’s murder is literally the nightmare scenario for my wife and I. Upon learning of his death, I prayed for Kirk’s soul, prayed for his family, and prayed for everyone to turn to compassion for one another in order to heal.

I was also scared of how this situation would cause more violence. I was genuinely terrified that Kirk’s death would be used to escalate some of the violence that was being seen in the US, particularly with the Trump Administration’s use of ICE against immigrants or political dissenters.

There are so many examples in history of movements, particularly authoritarian movements, using the death of a supporter to galvanize their base and lash out.

My wife and I took the time to speak to our 12-year-old, we explained what happened and that she may hear about it at school tomorrow. Being 12 she asked, “Was he a good person? Do we like him?”

As a rule, we try to be apolitical with our kids. That does not mean we don’t share our thoughts with them. If they ask about things in the world, we will explain it to them, although through a moral viewpoint, not necessarily a political one. We will share opinions and be critical of people or things if they ask, but we try not to tell them, “This is the political party we support.”

We told her that it does not matter if he was a good person or if we liked him. No one deserves to die because of his or her beliefs.

After that, I monitored social media to see what was happening. Everything was disturbing.

Almost immediately following Kirk’s death, social media was flooded with a variety of different reactions. Some people expressed their condolences for Kirk. Some felt personal anguish at Kirk’s passing and for what he meant to their beliefs. Some were relieved or even mocking at Kirk being killed.

This is where, probably to nobody’s surprise, I will say that I did not agree with Charlie Kirk’s views on really anything.

I think Kirk’s rhetoric on Christian Nationalism, racism/civil rights, gay rights, and numerous other things are extremely harmful. I think Charlie Kirk inflicted a whole lot of unnecessary pain to the world. I think Charlie Kirk is ultimately responsible for turning more people away from Christ than toward Christ.

If you disagree with any of that, that is fine. We both have the Right to Be Wrong.

Also worth saying: Nothing I just said means that Charlie Kirk deserved to die.

Charlie Kirk was a commentator and was perfectly within his rights to do what he was doing. Kirk, like all of us, has the First Amendment protecting his speech and religion. No one deserves to die for what they say or for what they believe. Nothing I say or any critiques I may have of Kirk and his rhetoric warrant any kind of death sentence.

I want to emphasize this, because I mean it, and because there have been numerous reports of people criticizing Kirk after his death, who have then lost their jobs. That is also wrong and I have a sneaking suspicion that Kirk himself would not have supported that.

We can be critical of someone after their death without mocking or reveling in the despair of others. That is as much a message to the left as it is the right. Analyzing and evaluating individuals or groups after they have died is literally one of the main jobs of every historian.

I refuse to demonize Charlie Kirk. However, I will not sanctify him either. He deserves neither, he was a human being made in the image of God, who calls for us to love and have compassion and grace for one another. Especially those who oppose us.

We can have empathy for people who we think did bad things.

Charlie Kirk was not a demonic entity. He was not a martyr either. He was a human being. That is enough.

Empathy for Those I Disagree With

I am not going to try to dissuade anyone who was a fan or respected Kirk from agreeing with him. That is not the point of this article. If you felt deeply affected by Kirk’s death, or who agreed with him on many of his viewpoints I’m not going to try to tell you that your feelings and opinions are wrong.

We can save that for another article (joking).

I saw many people who essentially felt that an MLK figure was gone from our lives. That a bastion of freedom had been shattered. That Kirk’s political and religious movement should spread to others. Like an all-consuming fire.

Again, if you find yourself in that camp, that is fine. I am not here to chastise you or debate with you. We can do that at another time or place. I’ll bring snacks.

I bring this up because what has become very clear after Kirk’s death is this:

We are a deeply unfeeling country and have little empathy in our society today.

We do not have to agree on our opinions of Charlie Kirk to have empathy for the loss of his life, or for his wife and children. Nevertheless, we can have empathy and compassion for those we do not understand.

We can also have empathy for and feel bad for the people who think that losing Charlie Kirk was akin to the loss of someone like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, even if we disagree.

Someone might then ask, “Jaxon, how can you feel bad for someone who said incredibly racist and homophobic things for years? How can you have empathy for people who agree with his message?”

First, I do not have a monopoly on morality.

I can make decisions on the values I want to live by and I can try to influence others to understand my point of view, but that is about it. My morals and values are not the only way to live a healthy and fulfilling life. There is more than one way to practice Christianity and follow Jesus.

Second, Charlie Kirk (like all of us) was suffering and did not understand why.

Of course everyone suffers, what exactly is causing each of us to suffer is incredibly complex and personal. Many of us suffer from our egos or our fear. Many of us are conditioned from childhood to suffer in some way. So many people suffer from some sort of existential crisis. Nearly everyone has suffering that is caused by a mixture of all of these things.

I am sure Charlie Kirk was no different from any of us in that regard.

Faith is a wonderful tool for combating against all of these dimensions of suffering. It is maybe one of the best things about having a faith in a higher power. It is also true that faith can cause many of these dimensions of suffering and bring terrible grief on others or ourselves.

This particularly happens when we do not understand why we are suffering.

Not understanding our suffering is a fundamental issue with all of us, including myself. Charlie Kirk did not understand his suffering, and in doing so tried to lash out and alleviate his suffering at the expense of others. Again, I do this all the time. This is a basic human behavior that all of us have reverted to at one point or another. I try to spend a lot of time understanding my suffering and I hardly ever fully understand it.

Does that excuse what Kirk said or did, no. Many of us do not make a career out of pursuing agony in others in order to ease our own suffering. However, understanding is one-step closer to compassion and mercy. All human beings worthy of love and respect. All of us suffer, and how we try to ease that suffering looks different person to person.

In addition, if you feel that I am being unfair towards Mr. Kirk, in the last two paragraphs replace every time I said “Charlie Kirk” with “Jaxon Roberts” and that would also be a factual statement. I am no better than anyone else is.

It is also important to remember, that those with prejudice are often victims of their own prejudice as well. White supremacists are a part of a larger system that creates animosity in others. Systems do what they are designed to do.

If we live in a society that creates White Supremacy, that is what that system is designed to do. It doesn’t excuse anything, but it explains why people are filled with so much pain and think that “white pride” or hate will heal that pain. Ours is a society where pride as seen as the opposite of shame, when in reality pride is the source of shame.

The Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish Jew who was a victim of the Holocaust and actively spoke out on racism in the 1960s. In his 1963 address aptly titled ‘Religion and Race’ Rabbi Heschel expresses the same concerns:

”Some are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the public climate of opinion, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption”

The world we live in today is full of people who are ready-made by the public climate of opinion. Some melded through hate. Some through shame. Others through despair. These conditionings lead to the suffering of self and of others.

Charlie Kirk alone is responsible for the values that guided his life, the goodness and pain he loosed on others. This is a fact.

It is also a fact that Charlie Kirk is a symptom, not a cause of society’s corruption.

Empathy for Those Who Hated Charlie Kirk

We can also have empathy for and feel bad for the people who would celebrate his death. To celebrate any death is a horrific thing to do. It is deeply disturbing to watch. Especially because many of the people and influencers I saw celebrating his death are probably people with whom I probably agree with on many issues on life and our culture. That’s enough to make you question yourself and your “in” group.

Again, many of those people are suffering and trying to ease that suffering. I may wholeheartedly disagree with the way many are doing that, but I can at least empathize with them as another human being. We all have the Right to Be Wrong.

I also remember seeing and hearing many people who were in the queer community breathing a sigh of relief. Kirk was someone who at nearly every turn went to bat against the LGBTQ community, inflicting harm to them through his words.

I am very privileged. I am a straight white cis-gender man. Aside from not harboring hatred toward gay people and believing black people are fully capable of flying airplanes, I do not belong to any group that Kirk routinely targeted. I can sit here and say I empathize with him, but if someone, who is in the queer community cannot find it in them to forgive Kirk. If someone in the queer community feels more relief than sorrow at his death. That is not my place to scold; I cannot control how others feel. I can only control myself.

I have heard some people say that Kirk never treated them with human dignity, so why should they return it.

Again, my privilege gives me space to disagree, and if others who don’t have that privilege cannot find it in their hearts to treat Kirk with dignity after his death…that is unfortunate, but also not my place to judge.

What Now?

The short answer is we keep living our lives and try to make the lives of others better through small inconsequential actions.

In the months since, Kirk has been mourned and lionized. Erika Kirk is filling her late husband’s role, and we will see how that goes. Too soon to tell.

Like any of these types of events, our immediate focus as a society was not compassion or self-reflection on how we all contributed to an act of violence. Our immediate focus was: What political party did the shooter belong to? How can we assign blame to another group we hate?

It was not surprising when the FBI rushed to politicize the tragedy by spinning the narrative that the ammo casings the shooter used contained “trans ideology.” It was also completely predictable when that statement was proven false. The Trump Administration is hardly the first group of politicians who rush to politicize a tragedy; both parties do this all the time. However, taking a tragedy and turning it into an “us vs them” situation does nothing to seek or provide justice. It almost always leads to a moral fallout and harsher division between people.

Building walls between groups of people is a common tactic in politics. But the radical love of Jesus, His grace, and mercy is the dynamite that blows apart those walls.

Therefore, the argument that Democrats also rush to politicize tragedies (which of course is true) doesn’t hold a ton of water for me. Our argument cannot be, “Well the bar is already so low.” That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be any bar at all.

It is still not entirely clear what the motivation of the shooter has been. The FBI has released text messages between the shooter and his queer roommate. However, many people on both sides of the political spectrum are skeptical of these exchanges. There is a growing consensus that the shooter was a part of online/gaming groups that revolve around “performative violence” and meme culture. The lack of feeling that could permeate a group of people to see violence as performative or entertaining is deeply disconcerting. Remembering the previous words of Rabbi Heschel, the social conditioning that creates such lack of caring for one another should be something we all deeply reflect on. Some are guilty, but all are responsible.

Evidence will become more apparent with time, but at the end of the day, the political ideologies of the shooter do not matter. Violence at this level reflects a profound moral and spiritual breakdown. I think violence like this is a signal that we are removing our shared humanity from one another.

Dehumanization is the root for a lot of this violence. We hate each other so much that the other person is no longer a person. Regardless of ideologies, if you are a Christian Nationalist or an Anarchist Communist, you are a person and so are the people who disagree with you. It is so easy today to dehumanize one another, especially online with social media. It baffles me the amount of people who say things to one another that they obviously would never say to someone’s face. This has led to a very unfeeling society. We have removed the Right to Be Wrong, and removed love for others from our culture.

Moreover, dehumanization can find a comfortable home in any political movement.

This is great for political parties and for billionaires though. Political parties, Democrats and Republicans, love fractured politics. Online debates can be completely dehumanizing, with the goal not being actually learning and having a conversation about ideas, but about winning. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk love when these things happen. Think of all the extra traffic these sites receive in the midst of tragedy and horror.

To be honest, whenever I do engage with people online and it becomes obvious that they are trying to win an argument instead of refining new ideas, I no longer take that person seriously and I stop engaging on them on a serious level. We can give one another the Right to Be Wrong, but we can also draw boundaries with whom we want to spend our energies (positive or negative) on.

Hard Hearts and Reflections

The problem is not with our minds, despite what some may tell you we are living through one of the most educated times in human history (look up literacy rates from one hundred years ago and compare them to now). It is difficult to process what information is true and false for so many reasons, but mostly because there is so much new information every single day.

The internet is all gas and no brakes. Politics is no longer a place to come together, but a place to win at all costs.

Government at the end of the day is how we give our children more than we have had. It is how we keep them safe.

It is where we make sure we take care of our neighbor, even if they are a crazy liberal communist. Even if they are a flat Earth Christian Nationalists. Even if they are immigrants who don’t speak our language, come here legally, or worship our gods.

Our neighbors need to be able to draw a breath in order to be free. If we are to love each other as we love ourselves, we must use politics and use government to help one another keep breathing.

It is that loss of love, the hard-heartedness that resulted in the death of Charlie Kirk. The polarization thereafter and the use of this tragedy by both political parties to bring people together, against a common enemy. As the President has said, “The enemy within…”

Although, the people who take advantage of these moments did not create these issues, they have merely exploited them. The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

The current Administration is using the name of Christ not to spread love and peace, but to enact force and righteous vengeance on others. They do this in order to accumulate power.

Look at any authoritarian government in history, an authoritarian/nationalists movement always needs an “other” group to use in order to ratchet up fear, and then in the name of safety tighten the reins of power over others. The use of our own fears and prejudices is manipulated by the powerful in order to get us to hate one another instead of love. Those in power are eager whenever influential people are murdered in broad daylight; it is an excellent chance for them to purge love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Authoritarians relish fear and despise love.

It is also that loss of love, that hard-heartedness, which has resulted in the recent ICE raids and the murders of Kevin Porter, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and so many people of color. Victims of hatred, who like Charlie Kirk, did not deserve to die.

In closing, I will leave you with the words of another American President. Words spoken at a moment in which our hard-heartedness, hatred, and dehumanization resulted in untold bloodshed.

Because of love, grace, and mercy we are saved. By eventually affording one another the Right to Be Wrong, we may be able to extend that salvation to one another.

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1861

Goodnight and good luck.

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I am not a huge fan of conspiracy theories. I have no doubt we landed on the moon. I think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating JFK. The Earth is very nearly as round as I am.

However, the revelation of the Epstein Files has me questioning if I should give some of these conspiracy theories a second chance

I remember hearing about Pizzagate a few years ago, about a global cabal of pedophile/cannibal elites that were organized through some sort of pizza chain or restaurant in Washington DC. I thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever heard. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that this theory has some merit within the Epstein Files that are now public.

This is, in my opinion, the biggest political scandal and cover up in American history. I do not say that lightly. It spans decades, multiple presidencies, both major parties, and directly implicates at least two different Presidents in wrongdoing.

It would be remiss not to acknowledge the significance of this story and its potential landing spot as a lynchpin moment in US history.

Let me explain…

What We Know So Far

According to the Federal Government, this is the end of the Epstein Files. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said as much the other day. However, according to the Guardian, “The DOJ said it identified over 6 million [documents] but is releasing only about 3.5 million.” The explanations of why these documents are yet to be released have ranged from they were made right before the 2020 election and unfounded, or they are repeats/copies, or they contain images of abuse.

All of this is very possible, although it is also incredibly convenient.

California Congressman Ro Khanna has asked if lawmakers may view these documents without releasing them publicly. So far as I know this has not been granted. Ro Khanna also added in another interview, “This raises questions as to why the rest [of the documents] are being withheld. Failing to release these files only shields the powerful individuals who were involved and hurts the public’s trust in our institutions.”

I could not agree more.

It is also important to remember how we got to this point. Trump and many serving in his administrations campaigned on releasing the Epstein Files. I feel like this is one of the few things that the President said that found near universal agreement. Please and thank you.

However, the actions of the administration since taking office is what drew scrutiny. This has not been a witch-hunt by any means. The current actions and words of the President do not portray the conscience of an innocent person.

At every turn, the President has tried to cover-up, distract, or obstruct any notion of transparency. The government shutdown, we kidnapped a foreign president, several US citizens were publicly executed. The level of such an intense attempt at diversion has even driven some of the most extreme figures of the Presidents own party turned on him.

I’m a big fan of courage and there are so many reprehensible things that have been said or done by Representatives Massey, Greene, Mace, and Boebert. That being said…courage is courage and if justice is realized because these individuals stood against the powerful, especially the power in their own party, I think there is something supremely admirable there. I do not have to agree with everything someone does to find at least one commendable quality.

Accusations

The accusations against the President are numerous and disturbing on so many levels. It is worth saying that many of these are anonymous tips and unproven statements. Tom Blanche also noted that many of these were reported to authorities’ right before the 2020 election and the goal of these was to smear the President. This is very possible and none of that is substantial enough to warrant a criminal conviction.

It is also worth saying, that just a few years ago, even the accusation of some of the things mentioned here would be enough to end a political career in disgrace. The bar used to be SO HIGH. I mean, Richard Nixon was absolutely going to be impeached and convicted, because he lied about using his office to find dirt on his political opponents.

That is….so tame compared to what Trump is doing and has done.

The bar used to be SO high.

It is hard to know which accusations against the President hold any water and which may be fiction. There are some things I have read so far in the Epstein Files, about a multitude of people, which I find unconvincing. On the other hand, there is a lot of stuff in there that not only sounds likely, but also seems definitive.

Bill Clinton definitely had a very familiar relationship with Epstein. This has been known, but every picture that comes out makes them look more cozier and cozier.

Larry Summers, who was the Treasury Secretary under Clinton AND worked on Obama’s World Economic Council, appears to have been friends with Epstein years after Epstein was known to be a pedophile. To the point that Summers has been caught exchanging emails asking Epstein for…relationship advice. He has since resigned from many of his public obligations and from his professorship at Harvard.

(Quick side note, Larry Summers is, in my opinion, a hack. Here is a wonderful video of Jon Stewart absolutely humiliating Summers over inflation during/after the pandemic. Enjoy!

Bill Gates of course has numerous allegations of associating with Epstein that which is undeniable at this point. However, this latest batch of emails reveals many disturbing and gross allegations.

Woody Allen is in the Epstein Files. If you don’t know who Woody Allen is…this is the least surprising find in these files. Google him, he’s gross.

Current Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick was revealed to be neighbors with Jeffery Epstein in the early 2000s. Here is a video where Lutnick explains that Epstein creeped him out and that he only met him once, never to associate with Epstein ever again.

Predictably, several email exchanges demonstrate that Lutnick had a regular correspondence with and still got together with Epstein, including at Epstein’s Island, well after Epstein was found to be a known pedophile.

Elon Musk, the darling of Libertarians just a few months ago (who we are now “finding out” probably did more damage to our country in just a few months than the last 100 years of bad government), has an avalanche of emails between him and Epstein.

Most notably an email where Musk told Epstein that he needed to “cut loose and party”. He sent this to Epstein in 2012. On Christmas Day. At 6:07 AM. I really don’t feel I need to add anything for everyone to agree that is repugnant.

The Accusations of President Trump

Donald Trump is mentioned almost more than anyone else was in the Epstein Files. He is absolutely a major character in this story.

I will say that accusations do not mean they are true. I have no doubt that not all of these stories are one hundred percent factual.

However, and I mean this as a genuine question to anyone who may support the President:

How much more smoke is needed before we agree that something is on fire?

The President has had numerous wives and affairs, he has spoke openly about objectifying women, he has bragged about sexually assaulting women, he has been accused of sexual assault or rape by at least 28 women, he was found liable of sexually abusing E. Jean Carrol by a jury of his peers.

The accusations that stand out the most to me are Epstein’s emails that seem to confirm details that were in the 2016 rape allegations against Trump. I will go into more detail in a future article, but the anonymous woman alleged that Donald Trump raped her, when she was 13 years old, at a party (where Epstein was in attendance) in the 1990s. She dropped the suit after Trump’s 2016 election. Like I said, I won’t go into a ton of details, but some specifics in the files closely match her original allegations.

There is literally a Wikipedia page just for Donald Trump’s Sexual Assault Accusations

So far he has been mentioned more than 38,000 times in the Epstein Files.

Donald Trump’s name appears more times by name in the Epstein Files than Harry Potter was mentioned by name in ALL of the Harry Potter novels. If you weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter as a kid, that is also more times than Jesus’s name is in the Bible.

Furthermore, that’s just the unredacted mentions, who knows how many other times the President (or many others) appear.

This is literally all of the smoke. Something is burning.

Now What?

So with all of the information that is public, where do we go from here on an individual level and as a country? The problem is there is no historical precedence for this. I think people need to understand that this is a catastrophic problem. This is not just a political scandal. This goes to the root of global elites, money, and a few incredibly powerful people doing unspeakable things.

Quick aside, the number one question I’ve seen in regards to questioning the validity of these documents has been, “Well if this is true why didn’t Biden release it before the election?”

The explanation that has always made sense to me was because a lot of this was still an open investigation, until the early part of the Second Trump Administration.

However, I think the obvious answer now is because many people who worked with, for, or supported the Biden Administration are in those files.

This is not a Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal issue. This is not a debate over the overreach of government verses our own individual civil rights or liberties. There is no big vs small government argument here.

This is a question of human decency and the power of evil men. It is also a question of good people allowing malevolent crimes to happen, or enacting justice.

As a government, legally, I don’t really know where we go from this to be honest. I do not say it lightly that I think impeachment and conviction really should be an open and shut case (which almost definitely means it will not be *puts on cynical hat*).

Every member of the administration who it seems is actively covering this up should face impeachment if they will not resign. Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Howard Lutnick, and Todd Blanche should be purged and the FBI and DOJ drastically reformed.

What that looks like or the process for doing that looks like…I don’t even have the slightest.

Then there needs to be, at the very least, Senate hearings subpoenaing Bill Clinton, different members of his cabinet/senior staff, possible higher ups in the FBI/intelligence community from that time, agents who were actually taking these complaints. Then following this, possible grand jury indictments and criminal charges.

It is a massive undertaking and to make matters more complicated, probably needs repeated for the W. Bush, Obama, Biden, and first/second Trump Administrations. Following all that, there needs to be a serious examination and reform process of laws dealing with transparency, corruption, and scaling back the power of the Executive Branch.

That is…literally years of hearings. This much change may require literal Constitutional Convention levels of transformation in our laws. I’m not sure about the legality of any of it, because again I have no basis for this. There may be a case study in countries that have carried our revolutions or regime changes, but there is no such example in American history.

I’m not sure if any of this is the answer, but it is an interesting thought exercise, so maybe I’ll flesh out this idea in a future article. But I don’t even know if I need a compass or GPS, so naming which direction we should all go in is problematic, to say the least.

However, something does need to happen.

These are the kinds of tragedies that erode any sort of public trust in not just government, but ANY type of legitimacy for the American System. If all of the influential and powerful people are going to protect pedophiles, why would anyone consent to be governed under that type of system? It is a big deal and is going to have some unforeseen consequences if government, and the people, remain passive.

I’ll close it out by saying this should be an issue in which party absolutely does not matter. If my favorite leftist is in those files and is implicated in Epstein’s schemes in any way, they should absolutely be investigated and tried.

This can’t be a thing where people refuse to play ball because it will help or hurt their favorite political team or favorite politician. These are serious allegations and if anyone is accused of these things we as a society should take it seriously.

Your thought to that may be, “Allegations should not result in someone being canceled or removed from office.” To which I would say the following:

If you or I were accused of any of those things, we would be locked up within the hour. The President is not above us. No President EVER is above us.

So now what? We keep voting, regardless of party we vote for people who will hold people accountable, even if it is powerful members of their own party.

If that doesn’t happen, take part in local activism. Make it clear that we will absolutely lean on and make life exhausting for any elected official who is willing to protect pedophiles because it is politically inconvenient not to do so.

Some of you might feel like you’re not capable of any of that. I do not judge you. Your silent protest may be to try to raise empathetic and thoughtful children, despite current circumstances.

Raising loving children in an unloving world may be the most revolutionary thing any of us ever do.

This is a very rare moment in history where there are very clear bad guys and good guys. Few generations get a chance to make such a clear distinction. Few of us get to pick if we would operate the Underground Railroad or help catch fugitive slaves. Few people get to pick if they would help Jews or sell out their neighbors to the Nazis.

We do. This is one of those moments. This is such an opportunity for us to do the right thing, completely united and together, in the face of vast power. We must do this, but above all else, we CAN do this.

We are a people who have split the atom, conquered flight, and fought intensely for the marginalized. We. Can. Do. This.

Stay informed and keep your ear to the grindstone.

Love you all, be safe.

Next Topic (2/13): The Right to Be Wrong – Reflections on the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

Alright, so I have a new schedule I’m going to use to release content.

Mostly cause my brain is so spazzy that I absolutely need a schedule. Most importantly though, because I have a family and I would like to spend time with them and not become burnt out doing this.

I’m a teacher so I’m always on and using my brain at work, which means when I get home I don’t have a ton of idea/creative juices flowing. I also don’t want to take money for this, primarily because I don’t want this to be something where I depend on this for an income, so I have to find ways to generate clicks. Typically that is by publishing bad news or making people mad.

Despite what many may think, that is not the goal of this substack.

So my new schedule is as follows:

Every two weeks I’ll be releasing larger articles that will go in depth and be very critical. These take time to research so they require quite a bit of work.

On the other two weeks of each month I’ll be releasing a smaller essay or review about a topic that requires less research.

These could be breaking stories that need more evidence as time goes on, book/film reviews, sermon/speech analysis, ect. All of the stuff that my brain finds fascinating, but a normal brain would say, “What is wrong with this person?”

February Preview

2/5 - Brief analysis of the Epstein Files

2/13 - The Right to Be Wrong: Reflections on the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

2/20 - An examination of significant civil rights anniversaries for February

2/27 - Jesus Wept, Empire Applauds: The Public Executions by ICE…So Far

Will Jaxon actually meet any of these deadlines?!?! Too soon to tell, but we will see!

Love you all, stay safe.

Before we get into everything, it has been a long while since I have written an article. Actually, I have not posted a whole lot of political content on my Facebook in a while. Really since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I have been processing more than anything else. I recognize that the ability to take a break from the news is an extraordinary privilege that not everyone has. In that regard I feel like an explanation is necessary.

After, and honestly before, Charlie Kirk was murdered, I was feeling so burnt out. Part of it was work, which is normal for teachers I am used to it. Part of it was the amount of time I was spending on social media and consuming the news. Anyone who is deeply empathetic can vouch for me, to see so much sorrow and suffering is mentally debilitating. I saw individuals on social media, left and right, who were living online. I do not want to live online; I do not want to be consumed by arguments on social media. I do not want the first thing I do in the event of human tragedy is to go on social media and fight others. That is a fetish I do not wish to take part in.

Additionally, I also try to go out of my way online to communicate with people that I am not coming at them from a place of hatred or condemnation. This is hard to do through written word, but I do not want anyone to feel like I am dismissing their beliefs. I go out of my way to not diminish others. I want to educate people, not belittle them.

It has been impossible to do that though. Repeatedly I have tried to be genuine and sincere to people on social media (all of whom I know out in the real world) for them to accuse me of being judgmental, of not having a genuine faith, of being stupid or uneducated about something that is literally my job. I take those things to heart and it is difficult to hear these accusations (especially by people who accuse others of being snowflakes, but also have such brittle ears). The amount of people who have talked or punched down on me in the name of Jesus leaves me with an anger that is hard to put away at times. It is not a yoke I want to carry.

So many conversations where individuals are saying that the values I am trying to live by are breaking their hearts, only for them not to realize I am feeling the same way, but about them. I am more than willing to hear a new idea, but I am now having the distinct impression that the other person is not listening in return. I had to take a break and take a mental rest.

Additionally, I have some things that I am working on and I am currently in therapy. Nothing crazy or concerning, just trying to be the best version of myself. It is unbelievably hard to be deeply reflective on myself and to try to dissect what is happening in the world. That is hard enough to do when you are devoting one hundred percent of your attention to a particular topic, so I decided to focus on my own mental health. Happy to report that this is one of the best rounds of therapy I have ever taken part.

Finally, my faith is shifting in significant ways. In the past few months, I have accepted a lot of very different potential truths and viewpoints about my faith. They are significant shifts and have honestly been a lot to grapple with mentally and emotionally. I hold my faith in high regard, so for me I did not want to write about faith and religion without knowing where I stood on the subject. I want to be as authentic and honest as possible. As for the particulars, I’m not quite ready to share that. I am still processing and I and still unsure as how to explain where I am currently being lead in my faith journey.

So yeah, lots of rest and self-reflection in the last few months. During that time there has also been a lot of unrest…

Open Your Mouth for the Mute…

I keep thinking of the story about the man in a hole…

One day a man fell into a hole that he could not climb out of. Some time went by and a doctor passed by the hole.

The man shouted, “Hey! Doctor, please save me!” The doctor wrote a man a prescription and then threw it into the hole, and then left.

Some time went by again and a priest walked by the hole.

The man shouted, “Hey! Father, please save me!” The priest wrote down a prayer and then threw it into the hole, and then left.

Even more time went by and then a friend of the man walked by the hole.

The man shouted, “Hey! Joe! Please get someone! Please save me!”

Joe instead jumped into the hole, joining the man.

The Man said, “What are you doing? Now, were both stuck down here.”

To which his friend replied, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.”

I am not some wise sage who knows all about the world. I struggle with arrogance as much as the next person, but I try to be humble. I try to say, “I don’t know,” when I genuinely don’t know.

However, when someone studies history you can see comparisons, you can see patterns, you can learn from the people who came before us.

We can listen to the ghosts of the past give us their cautions and benedictions.

My words and knowledge are not infallible; I get things wrong all the time. However, I suppose this substack is meant to be a place where I can chart my spiritual journey as well as what I am seeing being done in the world in Christs name. The good and the bad.

I am far from an expert, but it does seem like we as a people, as a country, have fallen into a hole and do not know how to get out.

The Hole

I am not a huge fan of quoting random scripture out of context. The Bible can support anything if you cherry pick the right verses. However, sometimes we have to listen to Ancient Wisdom when it calls out:

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed“ 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

I am going to describe many bad things, but no matter how bad it is, we must not succumb to doom. To cry that everything is awful and evil is exactly what those who love pain in others want to happen. Hope and love are the two most important weapons we have in a world filled with fear and pain. We will not be set ablaze.

Let me explain…

It is impossible to look at the news right now and not have some sort of emotional heavy feeling with what is happening in our world. In our nation.

It seems incredibly likely that our President, at the very least, had some sort of knowledge of the going on and sexual abuse of children at the hands of Jeffery Epstein. That is also the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that our President is an accomplice in such torture, which would be a tragedy for so many reasons. At the time of this writing, the President has not been formally charged with any crime and I genuinely pray that there will not be a reason to do so. I do not want President Trump to be in the Epstein Files.

However, it seems increasingly unlikely that he did not know anything at all…which is also disgusting and reprehensible.

The political violence that resulted in the assassination of Charlie Kirk is deeply disturbing on so many levels. Regardless of my personal feelings of Kirk or his rhetoric, his death is a loss of life, which is a tragedy.

Since September 2025, ICE has shot 11 people. Some of those people include American citizens such as Keith Porter Jr, Renee Good, and as of yesterday Alex Pretti.

You can disagree with these people and the way they reacted in different scenarios, that is fine… but none of them deserved to die. Fleeing a scene does not deserve a death sentence, recording officers does not deserve a death sentence; resisting arrest should not result in a public execution.

What is happening in the streets is reminiscent of slave hunters from the 1850s. Legally trying to find escaped slaves, complying with the laws outline by the Fugitive Slave Act. It’s reminiscent of many different forms of secret police used by a variety of authoritarian dictators.

Some may argue that ICE is not secret police. I would then ask why they do not have to identify themselves with badges, name tags, or hide their faces. Why do they get to operate outside of the laws of the Constitution? Why do they get kill without accountability?

The President is currently moving forward with a takeover of Venezuela and potentially a takeover of Greenland. Not only are both of these moves unwise from a logistical and foreign policy stand point (and that is putting it lightly). These methods are also reminiscent of other times in American history where we have taken property and rights from other people (Native Americans, Filipinos, Africans kidnapped and brought to the US).

It is also eerily reminiscent of other moments in history where authoritarian leaders, in an attempt to cement their own bases of power, have used their military might as a show of strength.

What we are seeing now is a moment in which the deciders who have power and influence are ignorant of history. They have no respect for history. They do not know or respect the teachings of Jesus, and it is leading us down an incredibly dark place.

When one does not have love or respect, they use force. They use force to make you do what the deciders have decided you must do.

Nevertheless, if we know the way out, we can try to help one another.

It has been a lot, but as followers of Christ, God calls us to strive for justice, and to reach out with compassion to the persecuted, as well as the persecutors. I think that is what I am trying to do here.

Watch out for your neighbor, call your leaders and hold them accountable, walk humbly, and sacrifice for one another.

Reach out to anyone feeling persecuted, as well as people who may be on the opposite side of those people.

Take the time to study the world and study history. Perhaps we can learn something about others and ourselves.

I hope that we can use our knowledge and love to look at each other and say:

We have been here before, and we know the way out.

Love you all, be safe.

Next Article’s Subject Line: What I Have Learned from the Death of Charlie Kirk

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· This whole article is about the White Christian Nationalist movement. However, that is a lot to type out. I will refer to this movement, but I will also use terms such as White Evangelicals, the Christian Right, WCN and etc. So when you see these terms I’m typically talking about the same group. This is not to say ALL white Evangelicals or ALL people who are conservative Christians are a part of a racist nationalist movement. However, all of the people in the White Christian Nationalist movement are typically white Evangelicals and would consider themselves conservative Christians.

So if I refer to a group you identify with, but you disagree with my framing of that group, I am probably not talking about you.

· Many of the topics discussed in this article are worthy of their own fleshed out articles, full of details and nuance. I’ll hopefully get there eventually. For now, this is kind of an introduction/preview.

· The goal of this article is not to make anyone feel guilty, but rather observational. I am very interested in the White Christian Nationalist movement that seems to have taken over an outsized portion of American churches, as well as at least one major political party. If you belong to a church (or political party) that reflects some of the things I’m going to highlight in this article my goal is not to cause guilt, but to educate. If you have issue with anything I’ve said, please, respectfully, contact me and I promise I am always willing to hear people out, consider new information, and take many different points of view very seriously.

And lastly, I know for a fact I will be accused of being a Democratic shill or a socialists or what have you. However, despite the fact that I grew up in the Republican Party and have left that party, I don’t think being a Republican is a bad thing or makes you a bad Christian. I would make a strong argument that the Republican Party I grew up in, of limited government, common sense solutions, and fiscal responsibility, is gone.

White Christian Nationalists have seized the party’s heart.

…but anyways.

What is Happening?

Of all of the political movements that are taking center stage in America in 2025 – Democratic Socialism, Oligarchism, Corporatism – by far the movement that I find most concerning is White Christian Nationalism.

Now, until just a while back I had never heard of the term White Christian Nationalism. However, the more I researched and reflected I was struck by a few conclusions. 1.) White Christian Nationalism is heavily entrenched in mainstream American culture. 2.) There is a long history of White Christian Nationalism that goes back beyond the United States. And 3.) I was deeply indoctrinated in this theology without even realizing it. And to be honest, I think most people who are in the midst of this movement would not consider themselves in it, most churches would not even understand the idea that they are a part of a White Christian Nationalist movement. So if you are reading this and thinking, ‘I’m a typical American Christian and I wouldn’t consider myself a part of a nationalist movement, let alone a WHITE nationalist movement.’ I can only say, I would have answered the same way. And I don’t think this was done maliciously or with any type of intent. I just think those were the waters that I was swimming in culturally, as were the people immediately around me. Does a fish know it’s underwater?

Before looking at the history, it’s helpful to define what in the world I’m talking about. This definition is from the 2022 book by Stephen Wolfe (that is very much in favor of White Christian Nationalism) titled A Case for Christian Nationalism:

“Christian nationalism is a totality of national action, consisting of civil laws and social customs, conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation, in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.”

- Stephen Wolfe, 2022

On the whole that is not the most alarming statement on the planet. People have long proclaimed the United States a Christian nation, and I would concede that many (although certainly not all) of our laws, which were designed by Christians, and are sometimes rooted in Christian morality. As far as “…a totality of national action…” which I would interpret as meaning that as a nation we promote laws as well as social norms that support Christianity in the United States. We have and we haven’t had that in the US….but more on that later.

Wolfe goes further however:

“Choosing similar people over dissimilar people is not a result of falseness, but is natural to man as man….Indeed, one ought to prefer and to love more those who are more similar to him, and much good would result in the world if we all preferred our own and minded our own business. Furthermore, since shared culture is necessary for living well, nations have a right of exclusion in the interest of cultural preservation.”

- Stephen Wolfe, 2022

And now closer to the heart of what White Christian Nationalism is. Essentially, that we should chose, “similar people over dissimilar people.” And that if others do not share in our culture, in this case “whiteness” and Christianity, then, “…nations have a right of exclusion in the interest of cultural preservation.”

Finally, many of you may be skeptical and saying, ‘I am a conservative American Christian, but I would never advocate for excluding groups of people from being able to take part in American life. Especially on a basis of race or creed.’ I believe you, but allow me to lay out the following evidence and argument, and then you can make up your own mind. That argument being that White Christian Nationalism has swallowed the Republican Party whole and does already exclude “dissimilar people” from taking part in our democracy.

Let me explain…

What Do White Christian Nationalists Worship?

Many of the altars White Christian Nationalists worship at are very common to American culture and not that unusual within the mainstream American Capitalists principles. However, these are elements of human nature that much of scripture argues in opposition to, especially when reading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. These idols of worship are not unique at all to WCN, in fact they are fairly common of any nationalist group. This is not an end all be all list, but this the pantheon of gods that I have observed that WCN tend to worship.

The Python Has Swallowed the Crocodile: A Brief History Lesson

Social power is often where White Christian Nationalism is found in its purest form. This movement’s ancestor is rooted in the system of slavery that infected much of American history and then clung to life with the Jim Crow movement following Reconstruction. For the most part this movement was a part of the Democratic Party, however following the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the fracturing of the Democratic Party in the 1960s the White Christian Nationalists movement was without a home in modern American politics. The WCN moved onward and coopted the Republican Party in the mid-1970s. The Republican Party up to that point did not have a lot of social issues that distinguished it from the Democrats. However, following the adoption of the Southern Strategy by Richard Nixon the social issues long favored by WCN would gain a foothold in a new political party. One of Nixon’s primary advisors put it in the following terms in an interview in 1970:

“From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

Eventually this movement would find its natural companion in the Libertarianism of Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s brand of Republicanism called for a small federal government and more direct government by individual states. White Christian Nationalists had long seen the federal government (rightly) as the ultimate tidal wave forcing integration to crash down around them. So as Ronald Reagan assumed the Presidency in 1981, beating out Jimmy Carter (who was a deacon and Sunday school teacher in the Baptist church), White Christian Nationalists gained their most powerful position in government since probably Woodrow Wilson.

(On a side note, Woodrow Wilson is by far my least favorite President. The guy is terrible on so many levels).

Reagan’s small government/low economic intervention found a new social policy in White Christian Nationalism. And this is really where we can start to see America moving towards, “…love more those who are more similar” or exercising the, “…right of exclusion in the interest of cultural preservation…” that Stephen Wolfe calls for in his affirmation of Christian Nationalism.

President Donald Trump put it in more simple terms on the campaign trail in 2024, “I really believe it’s the biggest thing missing from this country, the biggest thing missing. We have to bring back our religion. We have to bring back Christianity in this country.”

“Our religion.” Ignoring the fact that in 2024 Pew Research center published that about 62% of Americans identify as Christian (which should raise the question…how is Christianity missing from this country?). What does our religion, the religion of the White conservative nationalist American, what exactly does our religion look like?

You Cannot Worship God and Money

For a group that has claimed to reject Darwin and all of his teachings on evolution to the fires of hell Conservative American Christians seem to really love Darwinism. Chiefly the notions of Social Darwinism, particularly survival of the fittest. When applied to individuals and groups Social Darwinism is a perfect defense of American Capitalism. There are winners and losers. Those who are successful (rich) have achieved it because they are superior to those who live in poverty (who should just make better decisions and work harder).

This is the bribe that Christian Nationalists accepted from small government advocates. The Christian right will wholesale encourage the slashing of any programs that benefit the poor. Welfare, WIC, SNAP/Food Stamps, Medicaid, etc. Christian Nationalists will work themselves into a frenzy at the idea of taking food out of the mouths of the poor and putting it into their own.

That being said, this is not because (most) Christian Nationalists are inherently greedier than any other group of people. On the contrary, many of the most conservative people I’ve met are incredibly generous and caring individuals. The argument that Christian Nationalists (and fiscal conservatives) often use is that when the government is taking care of people then they have no incentive to change their living/financial situation. And when that is the case is it at all fair to pay the bill for people to essentially do nothing for a living?

To any Conservative Christians whom this resonates with: I hear you. I disagree with you on a fundamental level, but I hear you. And there is zero doubt this does happen to some capacity. I remember when I was younger I heard a saying that went along the lines of, “Republicans would rather 100 people starve rather than feed 4 people who don’t need it.” I used to thing that was ludicrous. However, that is the honest result of conservative policies that basically tell people to fend for themselves.

These policies have a body count.

And while there is a lot of warranted conversation to have about waste and fraud within the American welfare system the bottom line for me personally is this:

There is not an amount of money saved that would justify a casualty rate.

When conservative politicians or economists talk about policies that may result in necessary “pain” it’s really important to note that pain often results in actual death. Christians, if we are really prolife then any policy that might result in actual harm or potential loss of life is a nonstarter.

However, these policies also put money back in the pockets of the privileged. The top 1% are the obvious benefactors, however many Christians are bribed by these politicians and oligarchs at the thought of not having to pay taxes in order to help people that they feel probably just need to work harder. That is the lie and the bribe given to them. That is the payment the Pharisees offered Judas. And as Christ told us to see Him everywhere we see the hungry, the neglected, the hurt, whenever Christian Nationalists convince people to vote against helping those who cannot always help themselves we are crucifying Him again and again.

…Neither Shall They Learn War Anymore

Calling for America to be the world’s foremost military power, with the ability to conquer essentially anyone, is maybe the most unsurprising god that Christian Nationalists worship.

It should be noted, I have many members of my family who have faithfully served in the US military in a number of different manners. They are amazing people and absolutely deserve respect for their service to others. I am not writing this to bash anyone serving in the military. I am not against having a formal military whose primary goal is defense of ourselves and others.

But it should also be noted that defense is not the primary function of the US military in the federal government or in the hearts of Christian Nationalists.

America is a unique country in its relationship to war, especially industrialized warfare. We’ve waged wars to protect ourselves and others, sure. However, we have also many times waged war in the name of ideology, conquest, greed, and yes, God.

If you don’t believe me then I would ask you to look at the Korean War, The Vietnam War, or the totality of the Cold War. Yes, the ideology of communism (which will get its own article *laughs menacingly in communist*) is the main reason we engaged in those wars. However, a major component we were fighting against was the anti-religious notion of communism. Famously during the Cold War the words “under God” were added to the pledge of allegiance. Defense of Christian ideals was certainly one of the ingredients that Americans spilt the blood of others and ourselves.

For my generation the most obvious example of this is in the Iraq War. The fears of 9/11 and the heightened anxiety of global terrorism was used to go to invade a country that outside of having a terrible and brutal dictator (who was a monster, no doubt). Growing up in America during this time was incredible. I was nine when the 9/11 attacks happened and I was eleven when we went into Iraq. And as a kid I will say that I was completely unaware of the world’s horror at America destabilizing the Middle East. America is always the good guy.

But I was absolutely aware of who we were fighting. Who carried out the 9/11 attacks. Muslims. Who were behind the anthrax letters and countless other bombings? Muslims. Who wanted Americans dead? Muslims. That was the line sold to me as a kid. Again, this was not given to me with malicious or evil intent. This was just the environment of pretty much everyone around me. Again, there were so many ingredients in play when it came to the Iraq War and the War on Terror. However, it would be disingenuous to not recognize that protecting western Christianity was at the forefront of a lot of Christians during this time. It’s also not an accident that many of the loudest Christian Nationalists in the media ratcheted these fears up to a virtual nationwide panic attack of xenophobia and bigotry against our Muslim brothers and sisters.

The rhetoric of America being the Army of the Lord Almighty is deeply entrenched in the mythos of American history. This very much reaches a fever pitch before and during the American Civil War. However, one of the largest benefactors in the modern Christian Nationalist movement has been the country of Israel. For many people on the Christian right the only explanation for the support of Israel has been, “They are God’s chosen people.”

And in response to that I direct you to literally ANY of the Old Testament prophets, particularly before the Jewish exile to Babylon. The main focus of almost all of these prophets is that Israel and Judah have neglected the poor and the desolate and forgotten their Covenant with God.

The Jewish people are indeed God’s chosen people. And it should also be noted that antisemitism is very real and should not be tolerated, my critique is of Israel’s government, not the Jewish people as a whole. That does not mean that they get to commit genocide without repercussion. However, many within the White Christian Nationalist will, at best, turn a blind eye to the carnage in Gaza, or at worst, deem it the Will of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. That the sins of Hamas, the violence that they wrought, shall be exacted onto every living person in Gaza. That is simply the cost of doing war. That’s (allegedly) the God of the Old Testament. So, of course we should financially and politically support it.

Jesus teaches nonviolence at every turn in each of the gospels, most famously in the Sermon on the Mount. Isaiah said that the Lords will was for us to turn our swords into ploughshares. Paul tells us that we cannot overcome evil with evil, but with good. James tells us that justice is what bears the fruit of peace. So many times I have heard Christians say that we are not to be a part of this world, we are not sovereign to the ways of the Earth. I would agree, this is why we should no longer declare war. Few things are more human, or of the world, than warfare. If we are truly to be a Christian Nation then this is the logical first step.

Furthermore, America is one of the largest producers and contractors of weapons in the world. We have an economic incentive to be inclined towards violence. However, the same Conservatives will say that we have to reduce funding for programs for the poor, we have to reduce funding for education, for PBS.

But according to Christian Nationalists we cannot ever reduce the amount of money that we spend on weapons of war - ensuring that the blood of God’s people all over the world, made in the image of God, will flow up to the horses bridle.

I’m not anti-military, I absolutely respect the sacrifices made by our military service members. Having a military that is truly in the interest of defending ourselves and others is worthy of our time and efforts as Americans and as Christians.

But unrestricted war in the name of American conquest, or to try to fulfill religious prophecy. That is not worthy of people who strive to be Children of God and true brothers and sisters to the Prince of Peace.

Those Who Exalt Themselves

”To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

¹⁴ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” – Luke 18:9-11

By far the idol that White Christian Nationalists most often offer thanksgiving to is themselves. Anyone who does not fit the conventional mold of American whiteness is a threat to them. The tenants of this aspect of Christian Nationalism is seen in many overlapping areas, some of which I’ve already delved into in certain respects, exclusion, white supremacy, nativism, homophobia, fear of leftists and education, victimhood/persecution complex, and so many more. It should also be noted that money is what buys this comfortable vanity. Because white people often live in less poverty than other ethnic groups, this allows them many different ways in which they can exclude others. It’s no accident that white people often call poor white people trash.

Exclusion is the favorite tool of the Evangelical Right. We love to talk about being “woke” and cancel culture today. And while there are nuanced conversations to be had about the pros and cons of cancel culture, the Christian Nationalists movement is just as loud and frothing at the mouth as their woke counterparts. It should be noted here also, the people who are often accused of being woke are often arguing for including various different cultural groups to participate in democracy or culture, or against people who are trying to exclude others. For Christian Nationalists the opposite is often true.

We often see this in backlash against anything having to do with upholding black culture, or fighting back against white privilege, or in promoting aspects of queer culture. Many Christian Nationalists will fight against this as “reverse racism” or trying to promote a certain woke ideology. To work against white privilege or celebrate queer peoples is inherently anti-American to a Christian Nationalists. This is a tell that White Christian Nationalists see themselves as the self-fulfilling prophecy of what it means to be an American, and that those who feel that they are also American, but maybe have different cultural values, are not truly American.

If you won’t take my word for it, tell a Christian Nationalists that you think Juneteenth should be a federal holiday. Note their reaction and then ponder why they are so against it.

Part of this is also because racism has taken away the cultural identity of white people. This is often seen in arguments in opposition to phrases like “Black Power” or “Gay Pride.” Why can you not say “White Power” or have “Straight Pride”? This is because the first black people brought to this country had their original cultures stolen from them. Since then African Americans have had to pick up the pieces and form their own culture, primarily because they were excluded from participation in American democracy or culture. Meanwhile white people have forgotten the culture of their ancestors from Europe. So white people have built up the idea that being an American is adjacent to themselves. However, for a majority of our countries history (from 1776 to roughly 1965 if we’re being very generous) being American has been based on a racial hierarchy. In recent decades Americans of all backgrounds and ancestry have tried fighting back against this, but slavery and the fight for Civil Rights is still incredibly recent history that we are working through today. If white Americans could forge an identity that accepted this reality, and then worked to heal those wounds through governmental, educational, and economic means then we could forge an actual American identity minus a racial and economic social caste.

A racial and economic social caste are also what Christian Nationalists use to persecute immigrants. Immigrants live in ways that are decidedly Un-American which is revolting to the Christian Right. We see this over and over in political conversations about immigrants assimilating or not assimilating into American culture, in conversations about immigrants learning English or not learning English, should we provide economic relief to poor immigrants/refugees while there are poor Americans (i.e poor white Americans). This is one of the biggest hypocrisies working to expose the White Christian Nationalist movement. There are so many poor, brown, Christians fleeing with their families. However, politicians have enflamed fears over cartels and that these people will replace white Christians, the Christian Right has decided to not just reject these people, but to use the power of the federal government to oppress them.

The party that for years have warned against a tyrannical government overreach that is working to take away our rights is now using that same government to take away the rights of a group of “others.” They are doing what they have always feared, hunting Christians.

These same components of exclusion are also seen in the way Evangelicals try to exert control over LGTBQ peoples. Without getting into theology a simple truth is this: If consenting adults are in relationship built on mutual love for each other, then NOBODY has any right whatsoever to tell them how to conduct that relationship. There is no argument against this that is not rooted in bigotry or ignorance. They also see queer relationships as a critique. To many Evangelicals there is only one objective way to do anything (that’s its own article). That’s why there has been such backlash to queer relationships or a breaking down of traditional gender roles. To White Evangelicals who come from straight relationships or have traditional gender roles in the household, anything else is reproach, instead of just being one of the many ways God has given us to live and find love. This is also the reason we hear White Christian Evangelicals be the loudest voice accusing secularism in government as a modern day persecution of Christians. This is why many on the Christian Right are the quickest to blame being woke for male insecurity and fragility.

There is no objective way to have a family, we are all made in the Image of God. Your family, and I’m speaking directly to anyone reading this regardless of your religious or political background, is God’s family. No amount of fear or hate or ignorance changes that.

But this is a substack about politics and religion, let’s get into theology. A quick note, LGTBQ people have always existed in many different forms throughout human history. It would be folly to say that the authors of the Old Testament would be affirming of queer people. However, this is where translations, the study of history and culture are central to understanding. The Bible is a complex book of theology, history, and philosophy. It’s also ancient.

So when we have conversations about the verses that are specific to gay people in the Bible it’s important to remember we are talking about a book in which the Old Testament was primarily written in ancient Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Ancient Greek. We have dates in which we know spaces in between words were written…it was after all of these books were written. Historians know when the question mark was invented…it was after these books were written. Marriages, relationships, and queerness have changed so significantly in the last 2,000 years, so maybe the books that specifically mention gay people should be taken with literally all of the salt.

I will have a whole article about LGTBQ people, so I don’t want to use everything up here, but the bottom line is this: Jesus argued against legalism and fidelity to the letter of the law and instead gave us two simple commandments that fulfilled the Torah, love God and love people. There is no sub clause that says to hate their sin, it says to love them. It is not the Christians job to condemn people for what they perceive as sin. That is Original Sin. Our job is to love God and love each other, God will take care of the rest of it. So when Evangelicals sit themselves upon the Throne of God and tell others, “Sin no more!” They are telling you exactly whom they actually revere.

Woe to Those Who Destroy and Scatter the Sheep…

President Donald Trump is the personification of White Christian Nationalism.

He is not an evil man, he is made in the image of God, and because of that Christians should not hate, but love Donald Trump. He is an inherently broken person, as we all are.

He is also the President, and he is doing more to make America less Christian than any president in history. To go a step further: Donald Trump and the White Christian Nationalist movement are making more atheists now than any religious/political movement in modern history. Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and the Christian Nationalists are acting as an anti-Christ, someone who is driving people away from God, not towards Him.

In the last few years I have met many people who have “deconstructed” from American Christianity. The amount of them who grew up in conservative evangelical households are staggering. Another common point for many of us who are no longer WCN is that a tipping point was the 2016 election. We saw a man who is obviously a conman, who obviously loves himself more than anyone else claim to be a Christian. A man who obviously sees women and others as objects to use. We had been raised to ask “What Would Jesus Do?” And many of us, correctly, saw that someone who called leftists “vermin”, said that immigrants were “…poisoning the blood of our country,” or who promised “retribution” against others was not trying to love like Jesus. Christ does not see others as vermin or poison. Retribution is not Christ-like.

And so we started asking questions that the church could not, or would not, answer.

We found that there is more than one way to be a Christian, there is more than one way to be an American and that we are ALL made in the image of God. Period. Conservatives, liberals. Americans, immigrants. Straight, queer. There is neither Greek, nor Jew. We are all Children of God, no one is above anyone else.

The President and the Christian Nationalist movement he represents love power, money, and themselves at the expense of all others. The President’s brand is in fighting back and calling out standard cookie cutter politicians. I can honestly understand the appeal. But calling for justice and dehumanizing others is clear line in the sand.

The culture wars the President and this group fight, the economic policies they favor, the political institutions they seek to tear down are all in an effort to accumulate power and to worship themselves. To become God.

There are plenty of nuanced and worthy conversations and debates to have over the problems facing America today. Debates over the environment, over abortion, over guns, over economic inequality. And I have no problem with people putting their religious preferences into these debate, I do that on almost every topic. However, the key difference is I do not want to exclude anyone from participating in the democratic process to decide these issues or from taking part in society. Everyone can and should participate in this life that God has blessed us all to have.

But the moment we tell others that not only do we disagree with their politics or religion, but that they are not worthy to be Americans, they are not worthy to be people…then we have fallen short of Christ’s two commandments. Love God and love people. How do we show God we love him? By loving other people. That is Christ-like. I’m no saint, I fall short of those ideals too. I feel hatred in my heart, I feel anger towards those who are not like me, and I dehumanize people. But I try not to, and I will call myself out for that. I will repent and try to do better.

And I will try my best to speak out against those who are doing the same, regardless of political party. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that America needed to have a “revolution of values.” Christian Nationalists want people to know so badly that we are a Christian nation. People will not think we are a Christian nation when we’ve ended abortion, or have the strongest military, or make the most money, or have the most secure borders, or when we have the 10 Commandments in every classroom. They will not think we are Christians when we choose similar people over dissimilar people, when we love those who are more similar, or when we use our right of exclusions to benefit ourselves.

The world will know we are a Christian nation when we embody the Fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

They will know that we are Christians when we love like Jesus.

Finding and Breaking My Faith

To make an already long story shorter, my family and I eventually moved to Southeast Kansas. My wife, who is an amazing, patient, loving saint of a woman, became a teacher as well. By this point I was a father to two girls and we found a local church that we loved. My faith had been renewed in the last few years, the church we found was incredible and I felt like it was the final step in the rebirth of my faith. I found mentorship there and it was a place where my family felt like we had a genuine church home for really the first time. I was baptized again, as a symbol of the regaining of my faith after so many years.

But problems persisted, problems with my own thoughts and faith. One of the biggest sticking points for me came with Christian attitudes towards LGBTQ people.

I had met a lot of LGBTQ Christians who were raising kids in the faith and loved Jesus. Why would God not want these people to be with him in the end? They were faithful believers and in a lot of regards followed His word better than I did.

I was also constantly grappling with questions of science, especially evolution. Growing up I remember watching Ken Ham videos in Sunday school (If you know you know). But the more I looked at science the more it was pretty much impossible to refute that evolution was responsible for the creation of life. I chalked this up to the classic line that God created the world, but evolution was the answer to how and not the answer to why.

I was still wrestling with how much stake I could put into that though. The Bible is God’s literal word. His word says six days of work, one day of rest. And while there are limited mentions of being queer in the Bible, there are some verses that explain a sexual ethic that is opposed to being gay. I was raised in a Lutheran church. One of the guiding principals is Sola Scriptura – Scripture Alone. I was constantly debating these issues and trying to analyze scripture, just on the face value of the text alone. The text claimed one thing, but in my heart I felt something was not right.

There was also the fact that all around me I saw that a lot of Christians had intense feelings on the End Times, including myself. When I was a young child, maybe seven, I remember the idea of eternity being absolutely terrifying. I couldn’t grasp it and I had an intense anxiety over the whole prospect of forever. When my wife and I were dating we had gone to a revival play were they did a production of what the End Times looked like. Complete with a government take over and people being shot. This production took place in a church.

These questions and fears led me to The Bible Project, a YouTube channel in which the creators (a Bible scholar and a team of animators) provide illustrations to help explain Biblical books. They had two videos just on the book of Revelations. In the video they explain the symbolic and historical metaphors that the author of Revelations uses to explain to Christians in the first century the persecution they were experiencing, as well as the nature of Christ. Not as a secret code for the End Times. Revelations was probably the book I was most fascinated with and that I had read the most as a child. But I had never heard an explanation of it like this, and it made complete sense, no mental gymnastics needed whatsoever.

It is very hard for me not to type, “It was a Revelation!” I have dad humor, but resistance to cliché is difficult.

I soon viewed all of these videos. I began rereading scripture from a historical viewpoint (which I’ve been trained to do, but had never applied to the Bible). I also began reading scripture from a literary viewpoint, trying to understand the literary genre of each book as well as the written structure of each book, which is often vital in being able to understand the viewpoint of the Biblical authors. I had never known about the literary construct of Hebrew poetry in Genesis, which explains the creation story and also makes it obvious that the story is…not literally 6 days.

I also learned about the prophets of the Old Testament, many of whom cried out against Israel for having lost her way. That the people of Israel cared about being rich, about their military strength, about being like the countries around them, and this disgusted God. He did not care about their worship, but He cared about what they did to and for one another, especially the least of them.

I felt attacked as an American who felt that the value of our country was found in our economic and military strength. So many times I had proudly said, “America is the richest and most powerful nation in history.” I think that is now a curse, rather than a boast.

And as I really dug into the words of Jesus I felt that I had little doubt that America today was repeating what Ancient Israel had done (history doesn’t always repeat, but it does rhyme). The Kingdom that Jesus is constantly proclaiming is completely backwards and upside down by societal standards. America is a very typical empire and has never been what Jesus asked us to be, at least in my opinion.

Jesus’s Kingdom is completely different from worldly values (which is a very Evangelical thing to say is, but good Lord not in the way they mean). Jesus’s Kingdom celebrates weakness and casts down strength. It celebrates humility and casts down pride. It celebrates love and casts down vengeance. It celebrates justice and casts down condemnation.

Its foundation is love, and it is the bane of hate.

I felt called out…the gloves were off.

Deconstructing and Reconstructing

I had…all of the questions. Is the Bible actually perfect? Is it actually the Word of God? How should I read the Bible? Does God actually favor “Godly” countries? What does a Christian nation actually look like? Is God all powerful? Is God actually a loving God? What is sin? Why did God create hell if he was willing to die to save us, BECAUSE he loves us so much?

I had started deconstructing my faith. I had never heard this term before, deconstruction. I had actually already began the process before I had ever heard the term. Essentially, for my personal experience, it means reevaluating my faith, how I was taught, and if that fits with the character of God and the Love of Jesus. A lot of it is looking at typical Christian teachings and beliefs and asking “Why?”

I spend a lot of my work day talking about history, government, and politics with high school students. One of the things I always try to stress is an idea I heard in the movie Dogma (definitely not kid appropriate, but very funny and surprisingly smart).

Essentially the quote is, “It’s better to have ideas than beliefs. You can always change an idea, beliefs are trickier. People will kill over a belief.”

Now, whenever I say this to students I am always talking about politics. But I feel like this applies to most everything. I know there are a lot of well-meaning people who will say, “Well, if you don’t believe in anything then you really don’t have a faith.” While I understand where they are coming from I have to respectfully disagree.

Faith doesn’t mean I know beyond a shadow of a doubt. Otherwise it wouldn’t be faith, it would be facts. Objective and measurable. Faith is not measurable. Faith is a collection of ideas that I have acquired about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the world around us.

Sometimes ideas change, which means faith changes.

I took my concerns, specifically on LGBTQ people to my main mentor at the church. And while we had a good conversation, and he agreed with me on how many people have misconceptions on the few mentions of being queer in the Bible, he still felt they were damned to hell. This made zero sense to me. I was heartbroken and tearfully, we said goodbye to that church. This was a low moment, we had such a spiritual tether to this church. But it was the right decision in the end.

I do want to reiterate, this is a good church with good loving Christians. I cannot commend these amazing people enough.

But it no longer represented the type of love that I felt Jesus had used to heal my own life and soul. I was still considered worthy, despite the choices I had made in my life that were based on ignorance and selfishness. So why would someone, who believes in and loves Jesus, be damned to hell for something that they had absolutely no choice in?

I began to pour into classic Christian teachings on basically every topic. I wanted to hear from progressive and conservative scholars alike. I spoke to everyone running the gambit on faith, from fundamentalist Christians to agnostic Christian mystics.

What I’ve found is that a lot of “traditional” teachings on the Bible are rooted in a modernist approach to scripture, and would be pretty foreign to Christians in the early church. A modernist approach essentially positions that scripture is objective and measurable, therefore God and the Holy Spirit are objective and measurable. That’s not faith. The vast majority of what encompasses the character of God, I think, is largely a mystery. My go to answer for a lot of questions about God is, “I don’t know.” And that is completely fine to me. My faith tells me to trust in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

To put it in other terms: For several decades we have, as a church collectively, taught kids to have a really strong faith in the Bible, at the expense of a strong faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we, as a church collectively, analyze why so many young people are leaving the church…I think this is a paramount reason that is largely overlooked.

So here are a few of the big ways my faith has changed. Also, these are all ideas, they change. I’m sure that in 10 years (or 10 months) some of these may change. That is the nature of ideas. But here are some of the ideas that have informed and dominated my thinking as of late:

I no longer find the Bible inerrant, I don’t think every single book is the literal Word of God. I think the Words are largely “God-breathed” as Timothy puts it. The idea there is that if scripture is a sailboat, God is the wind that moves the boat. I certainly feel that scripture is inspired by God. But the Bible is a library, and so many books in the Bible encompass a large variety of different literary styles, not all of which are meant, even by the original authors, to be literal events. (Although I still think it is the most important collection of texts in human existence, and for Christians it should be the primary source of knowledge and instruction).

I don’t think all of the Old Testament is literal, mostly Genesis, some of the Exodus story, Jonah, and Job. I don’t think that God orders the genocide of the many groups the Israelites fight in the Old Testament, although if you read the Bible scripture states as much. I think it much more likely that those authors are feeling that God is in their actions, and that they have mischaracterized God. This still happens all the time and there is a solid chance that it is being done right at this moment *que laughter* (I still think these are all vital stories to understanding the character of God and the nature of Christ, and are essential for Christians to study).

I don’t think that many of the laws or sins that are laid down by Moses or Paul apply to modern day life and consist of “sin.” The Bible is not a rule book, the entirety of scripture leads us to Christ. Many of the laws laid down in the Bible are relevant and influenced by the time in which those peoples lived and many of them change and are contradicted in the Bible itself. Conservatives and progressives alike love to cherry pick which Biblical laws still apply to modern life, I will admit I’ve been guilty of that myself, although I’m trying to do better. (That doesn’t mean that everything is a free for all and we can all do whatever we want. Sin obviously exists and we should meditate on what actions are sinful and which actions are not).

And even more distressing:

I don’t think a lot of traditional American values are very Christian at all. As a matter of fact, I think those “values” are the very things that the ancient prophets warned people as being disgusting to God.

Jesus gives us two commands: Love God and love people, who are made in the image of God.

Is worship a good way to show God our love? Sure! But worship is also largely for people. It’s a connection point with the Holy Spirit, which I’m all for.

But I think a much more powerful way we show God how much we love Him is by loving other people, especially by subjugating ourselves, making sacrifices for our neighbors, and making ourselves weak in order to love others. In an American culture that worships power and money those values are not compatible with the Love of Christ.

I have a simple image that I’ve heard a pastor use to summarize my faith journey. Previously I had called it (and still do from time to time) my Walk with Christ. I now prefer the term “floating.”

If you are stranded in the ocean on a small rubber raft how do you survive? Do you stand up on top of the raft, risk falling overboard in a frantic attempt to take direct control of the raft? Or do you lay on your back and trust that the waves will take you where you are meant to be?

My faith is in God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. The Bible is inspired by God, but it is not God.

Theology, structured religion, societal values…those are all things I trust God will guide me towards, and not the other way around.

What this Substack Is and Is Not

I am not a Biblical scholar. I do not study scripture for a living, although I do try to study it quite a bit. I am a lay man, and there are many, many, many, many, many other people (some of whom would probably say I’m crazy) who are more qualified when it comes to Biblical scholarship. So, whenever I write on the Bible I will include citations to show I’m not just pulling these things out of my pocket.

I am a high school history teacher. Yes, I study history for a living. Would I consider myself an Ivy League scholar? Yikes. So whenever I write on history I will try to include historical citations to show I’m not just pulling things out of my other pocket.

Most of my political philosophies lean to the left, but please understand that the Democratic party in America is just as guilty of abandoning the American people (and rejecting Christian values) as the Republican party. So please know that while I am not impartial on this substack, I will always try to have citations to back up my political ideas. I would make another pocket joke, but that is an obnoxious amount of pockets.

Above all, this is not a place for dehumanization. I will disagree with people, I will show outrage and anger. However, everyone is made in the image of God and deserves dignity and respect. I will not dehumanize those who I disagree with. I will always strive for compassion, especially for those I don’t understand. Regardless of what many in the Evangelical space are saying today, empathy is not a sin. And my sense of empathy is something I refuse to abandon.

If I write anything that offends you personally or you feel attacked…that is not what I am trying to do. Please reach out to me in that case. I always try to carefully consider my words, but if they need to be reconsidered and amended I am always willing to take a second (or third, or fourth) glance at them.

Finally, this substack will not be a place of doom, but hope. I will highlight and call out injustice wherever it appears, but I will also try to call attention to those who are fighting against injustice. There are dark forces in the world today who worship power and money. And their power is built on the fears and anxieties of very good and normal people. These forces feed on hatred, dehumanization, and division. They love when people call out “DOOM!” to others. I will do my best not to feed into that narrative here.

I want to talk about evils that are happening, but above all I want to talk to people through this substack. People who, like me, grew up thinking there was only one way of thinking, believing, worshiping, and showing love. Who, maybe now, need some validation? That the world of faith and politics are complex and rarely have an easier answer that satisfies everyone. But that many of these differences can be solved through the radical and all-encompassing love of Christ. I hope to start conversations about where we may be falling short, but how ultimately we as a society can live up to Jesus’s simple commandment: Love God and love people.

“In nothing be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:6-7

This substack will be a place for my prayers and petitions.

Love you all, stay safe.

What is Happening?

One of my favorite shows is its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is to put it mildly, absurd. Often times the characters in any given episode get into absolutely insane situations and utter, “What is happening?”

I often feel that same sentiment in my life.

I live a very typical life. I am the epitome of born and raised in the Midwest. Grew up in a medium size city, grew up in the church, raised in a typical republican family, went to Cardinals games in the summer.

As an adult I still fit the prototype of a typical husband and dad living in the Midwest. I am a high school social studies teacher, living in a small town, my kids play youth sports, we still go to church.

However, at the risk of sounding dramatic, my beliefs make me feel utterly alien.

In some ways I am the antithesis of how I was raised as far as politics and theology. However, I would prefer to think that this is exactly how I was raised to act and think and have nothing but gratitude to my family, teachers, and early church leaders. While the particulars of my faith and values may differ, all of these people taught me about graciousness, love, empathy, being levelheaded, and how to be kind. There may be disagreements about how and why I’m still trying to live out those ideals, but I’d like to think that this is the continuation of those ideals.

Let me explain.

Growing up in the Bible Belt

I grew up in Joplin, Missouri. Population of about 50,000 people give or take. Everyone who has ever lived in Joplin felt like it was a very small town, and in a lot of ways it is. My father owned a sports retail store and my mother was a college professor. We were a typical upper middle class family, we didn’t have enough money to get everything we wanted, but we had enough that I never remember us having to worry about getting anything we needed. We were incredibly comfortable.

I really thought that most people lived like us. We lived in a neighborhood that was essentially a suburb, but not really. It was a fairly well-to-do neighborhood and to me that was normal. I didn’t know my parents were as well off as we were (more on that later).

Honestly, I grew up in a great environment and could not have had a better upbringing. To this day have never really heard my parents have a major argument or even yell at each other. I never went hungry or felt like I didn’t have enough clothing. I went to public school, but my teachers were awesome. I think I may have been the last generation where my parents let me walk outside as a child and roam the neighborhood.

I also have realized now that not everyone had that growing up.

Growing up in a Traditional Protestant Church

I grew up in the Lutheran Church in the Missouri-Synod. I was baptized as an infant and attended church basically until I was a young adult in this setting. If you had asked me a few years ago I would have said we were a faithful family, but not one of those families that revolves solely around a church. Looking back I’m not so sure. Because, oh my goodness were we raised in the church! We went to Sunday school, had impeccable attendance on Sundays, my two siblings and I all went to Midweek and were confirmed in the Church, all of us were heavily involved in the church youth group.

There are a lot of people who have absolute horror stories about the churches they grew up in and have very real and serious church trauma. I am very fortunate to not have any. I think that the primary reason is because our church was ran by decent people who cared about others. Pretty simple. At the same time it’s important to also acknowledge that as a straight white male, I have a whole lot of privilege that affords me comfort. That’s not a slam on my original church that just is kind of the reality of much of our society (and unfortunately it’s the reality in a lot of our churches in America, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, the privilege is there). I was the demographic group with the least amount of obstacles.

I also have to mention my amazing youth pastor, Jason. Jason came to my church as a DCE (Director of Christian Education) when I was probably a freshman or sophomore, and immediately took me under his wing. Jason very much is a father figure. He cared so deeply about doing right by all of the kids in our youth group. I used to go with him to district retreats as kind of his assistant. I still remember we would stop for junior breakfast burritos from Sonic. I am incredibly indebted to Jason. I really strayed from what he taught me after I left for college. He would encourage me, but also give me tough love. He eventually became Godfather to my oldest child. Because of Jason I felt a very deep connection to God and strongly considered going to college to become a Director of Christian Education at a Lutheran church, just like him. I cannot express how much I appreciate Jason, because that has never left. I think I became a teacher in part because of the work I saw him doing with youth group kids, and that connection to teaching others about Christ has never left me. I don’t know if we’d still agree on everything on a theological level, but I honestly believe my faith would not be what it is today without him.

Growing up in a Typical Conservative Home

First and foremost, my parents deserve freaking Sainthood. I can only imagine how insane it was to raise me. My mom and dad are awesome, and I really am grateful for the life and upbringing they gave me, including my faith.

So growing up in the Midwest the cliché is that you are usually Protestant and vote Republican. It’s also largely true outside of the major cities, and that’s how I grew up. We went to church every Sunday, and if I went on road trips with my dad we listened to Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, or Sean Hannity on the radio. Bill O’Riley was a common occupant of our living room, although my parents to their credit also watched a lot of mainstream news (if you live in the Midwest and vote republican the word “mainstream news” is code for liberal).

This was also the typical experience of most of my friends. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a good example that when you swim in these waters all of your life this is what your conditioned to think of as “normal” or even the majority opinion of all “normal” people. The same is true for people who grow up with parents who vote Democrat and their folks watch Rachel Maddow every week (God help those poor kids).

This means you also hear a lot of things people say that you assume are normal growing up. My memory is not wonderful, some of these things I’m sure are a mixture of things I heard from my family, my friends, and random Fox News segments. All of these I have said at various points in my life.

“Homelessness is a choice”

“The Bible says, ‘God helps those who help themselves”

“A lot of people on welfare are lazy.”

“If you are gay, you are going to hell.”

“Democrats want people to depend on the government and not work.”

“America is a Christian nation”

Honestly all of those are topics that could get their own article in the future (and probably will). But again, I assumed all people (who were educated and “normal”) felt this way. As I’ve grown older I’ve learned this is not the case with politics or life. I’ve also learned there are a lot of things regarding Christianity that I also assumed, “Well, all true Christians believe this.”

I’ve also since learned that this is not the case. Not in the slightest.

That being said, my childhood was not traumatic. My parents and church leaders are amazing people and not monsters. I’m not ashamed of any of them. However, I definitely deterred from them as I left home and left my church for college. And largely, I would ignore pretty much everything they taught me about being a good Christian. I engaged in a lot of unhealthy addictive behaviors that followed me for years. I never really engaged in any healthy relationship habits, physically or emotionally. I was a pretty self-destructive person. A lot of people would say I was a typical college student, which is true, but is also kind of the problem. I was conditioned by society to think that what I was doing was largely normal. Regardless of if that is normal it was incredibly harmful to myself and others. I created a large gap between God and myself.

Marriage and Teaching

When I was 24 I married the love of my life, Gabby. It is by far the best decision either of us has ever made. Gabby is my best friend and the best thing to happen to me. It was the best because…

….holy crap being married is hard. When someone expects things of you, you have to deliver. I had a lot of destructive behaviors engrained into me whenever Gabby and I decided to get married. I’ve done a whole lot of counseling/therapy, had so many hard talks with the person I love most in this world, and had to reconcile what a Christ like life really looks like that.

Now, before I get ahead of myself, I have so much farther to go as a husband and a father. I am hardly a model person. Thankfully I’ve been sober for close to a decade (March of 2026). However, like a lot of people I still sometimes get complacent, get lazy, focus on what would make me feel comfortable at the sake of others.

About the time I made the decision to get sober I also made the decision to be saved.

I know that term means a lot of things to a lot of different people, religious or not. I look on that point as the moment I tried to really focus on being in the presence of God. I hadn’t tried to focus on Him and a long time. This began my Walk with Jesus as an adult, finding my way back to him as I was starting a family.

What being married has led me to is a new definition (for me) of faithfulness to my wife and children. Being faithful looks like complete unadulterated honesty. Focusing on being unselfish, in not having an ego, or pride that makes me dig in stubbornly. Christ (of course) is the model for this. It’s about loving my family more than I love myself. I want to be willing to sacrifice my own comforts or desires for what is best for my family. Again, I’m far from perfect in this regard, but I am trying.

The other event that led to a shift in my beliefs was teaching. I began teaching in 2017 at a very small school in rural Kansas. This was, to use a cliché, completely eye opening.

By this point I would still have considered myself a Republican, although I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with political beliefs I had been raised on. I felt like climate change was something that Republicans were not being honest about, I was starting to realize that Fox News was just as bad as the liberal mainstream media (and maybe worse). Donald Trump was obviously the antithesis of a Christian, yet conservatives and Christians were tripping over themselves to worship this guy as the leader of our movement.

But what really started to change my mind was two things: Trying to raise a family, and my students.

We lived in a small community that we absolutely loved. However, we were further away from any of our family and effectively on our own. We all made it work, but it was hard. Gabby and I were both working full time and could not afford healthcare. We had to get a healthcare plan through Obamacare and the healthcare.gov marketplace. And I have to be honest, when we did that I was absolutely ashamed. I felt like we were absolutely a blight on the system. I knew we weren’t lazy, but only the worst people went on welfare (even if it was just to get health insurance). Gradually, a lot of preconceived notions I had about families who needed public assistance started to shift.

I also met students who absolutely had no support outside of school. I had some absolutely amazing 7^th grade students my first few years teaching. I soon realized something that was absolutely shocking. I feel so damn naive now looking back, but I think due to where I grew up and how privileged my upbringing was it really was shocking to me when I realized a simple truth: A lot of my students who were in upper middle class socio-economic families (like I was) just glided through school. That’s not to say school wasn’t a challenge, but the educational system was obviously tailored to them. My students who lived in poverty, and there was A LOT of them, struggled with an assortment of issues. And finally I realized that’s because…public education despite our best efforts as educators, most school districts are not designed for marginalized students.

One of my favorite sayings is, ‘systems do what they are designed to do.’

If a school system has disproportionate of students from low socioeconomic families who aren’t reading at grade level, then that is how the system is set up. Systems do what they are designed to do.

I had one student in particular who I was struggling with. This student had severe anger issues, learning disabilities, came from a deeply poverty stricken family. When I asked my vice principal what to do he told me to look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Without getting too Ed theory, Maslow’s Hierarchy is basically that for people to learn they have to have certain basic needs met first. Consistent access to shelter/home, clothing, food, etc. So like a lot of teachers I started trying to provide what I could. I bought this student jeans. Gave him my number to reach me if he needed a place to crash or dinner. Our relationship completely changed and despite being a first year teacher I had veteran teachers asking how I had such a good rapport with this student.

This made me really reflect on if the people on welfare really were lazy and undeserving of my hard earned money. Or if providing for the less fortunate, particularly children, was the answer all along. Some people may argue, ‘Well their parents should make better decisions.’ I don’t disagree, but the person who is suffering is the student.

I had heard that Republicans would rather allow one hundred people to starve, on the chance that seven of those people may be scamming the government. I had always thought that wasn’t true.

But systems do what they are designed to do. And there were a lot of poor hungry kids in my classes that had absolutely zero support.

My political thoughts really began shifting as I thought about a very simple question: Would a lot of my students have an easier time learning Geography if they just had a consistent food source?

And more importantly, what would Jesus tell me to do about all of it? Well, have compassion of course. Help them, which I tried to do.

But systems do what they are designed to do. And I started to realize I was voting to keep this system going.

I was very comfortable, at the cost of others staying in a state of perpetual suffering and poverty.

What would Jesus tell me to do about that?

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