It’s equal parts powerful and sad to read a book like that, from nearly 50 years ago now, and see that the New Left movement which has been dead since the early 70s had so many of the same grievances with the system as modern-day progressives, and some of the same prescriptions as well. Take these lines from early in the book, as Gish explores the New Left’s analysis of society:

“The New Left sees the United States as not being concerned with the freedom of people around the world, but caring about markets and trade… For the New Left, the problem is not man, but an evil system that forces men to do evil deeds… The problem of the system is most clearly seen in the centralization of power. More and more power is being centralized in a few large corporations and the federal government. Even the unions no longer represent their constituents. Radicals see centralization as leading to totalitarianism, the destruction of the individual and community decisions.” (Gish, p.26)

That could have been written in 2026 as easily as 1970. One wonders what many of those “New Left radicals” would think of the current government in the United States, and if the disillusionment of the 70s and 80s would have changed their tactics at all.

However, rather than focusing on the political aspect, I wish to focus on Gish’s views of Christian radicalism, which makes up the heart of the book. Gish, as an Anabaptist himself, is obviously sympathetic to their viewpoint; but he makes a compelling case that all Christians, regardless of denominational background, ought to reflect a bit more radicalism in their faithfulness to Christ. In particular, I want to focus on an issue related to my post from last week: the idea of acting on moral principles.

Gish sums it up about as well as anywhere with this paragraph: “Obedience to Christ means that one does not make decisions on the basis of consequences, expediency, or effectiveness. It means that one does what is right regardless of the result. the radical dares to risk failure. It is not wrong to ask the question of whether one’s action will be effective, but it is wrong to use effectiveness as the criterion for action. The important question to ask is, is it right?… It is more important to be faithful than to be effective.” (Gish, p.108)

Effectiveness is the watchword here. It is ingrained in us as Americans in the modern world that what is effective is good, and what is good ought to be effective. But judged by the standard of effective action, many of the greatest moral figures of history were failures. We can praise Dr. King for the progress made on Civil Rights during his lifetime, but in the age of the Roberts Supreme Court overturning so many of the voting rights laws, can we really claim that he was effective in the long term? Was Francis of Assisi effective, even though his Franciscan movement succumbed to the same corruption as every other organization after he was gone? Yet, Dr. King and Francis of Assisi are rightly regarded as paragons of faithfulness, as those who took radical action in their times and places by following the convictions born of their belief in and adherence to Jesus Christ.

This emphasis on faithfulness over effectiveness is especially important in an age of increasing totalitarianism, when direct action feels both increasingly necessary and increasingly useless. When the options presented are “go along to get along,” or “drop out and don’t participate,” it is the true radical who opts for the third option of behaving virtuously in spite of the futility of virtue. Pacifism is the ultimate example of this mentality. Christians throughout history who have understood Jesus’ message of peace and loving enemies to mean that violence is always wrong, are well aware that wars have always existed. Pacifists don’t need to be reminded that their goal is impossible or unrealistic (though we will be, repeatedly). Instead, the pacifist is making a stand for Christ’s vision of the world, a world that does not yet exist in full.

We can extend this idea beyond pacifism and protest, and into our lives as a whole. What would change in your life if you refused the route of compromise in favor of faithful conviction? Perhaps you would vote differently, buy differently, invest differently (or not at all…). But more importantly, perhaps the way you view the world would change. Rather than thinking about the art of the possible, you would begin to envision a world changed by the presence of Christ, a world we call the Kingdom of God. Maybe that world seems a long way off, an impractical dream. But it is the radical’s job to dream, to work for the impossible, until God brings about the very things that once seemed unimaginable.

On the one hand, I totally understand this. It’s a group of incredibly nice people, and nobody wants to be unwelcoming! Nobody wants to gate-keep faith and spirituality, or come across as exclusionary and small-minded. There is a legitimate case to be made that too many Christians have spent too much time defending their specific beliefs, rather than taking time to listen, be a bit less sure of themselves, and having open dialogue with those who disagree.

On the other hand, though, these discussions ultimately wind up feeling a little bit pointless, in that if no one dares to stand on a principle, why even bother discussing things at all? Without any definitive points and counterpoints, we wind up going in an affirmative circle without any actual challenge, and therefore without any real growth.

All of this has led me to ask a big question that I think is at the heart of this conundrum: is it possible to have firmly held beliefs without being unwelcoming or ungracious? It seems that the answer should obviously be yes, and for a few key beliefs this is no problem. For example, if one of my core principles is that everyone should be welcome, then holding fast to that core belief will make me a more welcoming person! Yet even here, we have a small issue: where are the limits of my welcome? Should I welcome those who are unwelcoming in the same way I welcome those who have been excluded? Or does my welcome have boundaries around the behavior and attitudes of others? And if it does, who is to say what attitudes and behaviors ought to be within the boundaries of my welcome, and which ones aren’t?

This only gets more complicated as we examine ideas that are less universally praised than “be welcoming.” For one example, if I believe that Christianity is the true (or truest, at least) religion, what does that say about Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, et al? Am I being inherently exclusionary by making a truth claim about Christianity? And since my truth claim can’t be verified (at least not in this life), is it worth standing on as a foundational principle when to do so may be seen as a negative comment on people of other faiths?

Of course, there are plenty who would argue that the very problem is being too concerned about offending someone, that “political correctness” is the actually detrimental issue here. The past decade has seen the rapid rise of a movement that is openly, even proudly offensive at times, and with that movement in power here in the US and gaining ground elsewhere in the world, it can seem quaint to care so much about offending others. But this is precisely why the question I asked above is so important. If, as a progressive and inclusive Christian, I must compromise or withhold my convictions to avoid offense, then the anti-woke crowd has a point, odious as it may be. So how can I hold fast to my convictions without being inhospitable, closed-minded, offensive?

In the prologue to John’s gospel, John writes twice of Jesus that he was “full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, 17) If Jesus is full of both grace, the forgiving and welcoming spirit that animates progressive inclusivity, and truth, that firm foundation of conviction, then it is to Jesus we must turn to find the way forward. Jesus’ version of hospitality and inclusion, and Jesus’ version of confident conviction, ought to be the model by which we try and live with one another.

So let’s quickly examine what Jesus’ inclusivity and conviction looked like. First, we see throughout the gospels that Jesus welcomed unexpected outsiders into his company often. He was routinely chided by the spiritual leaders of his time for spending time with “sinners and tax collectors.” His inner circle of disciples included uneducated fishermen, a conservative tax collector, a radical zealot, and a man Jesus knew would eventually betray him. On top of that, we get references in the gospels to women disciples, a rarity in those days, and of course there are Jesus’ famous words to “let the little children come to me.” We even have instances of Jesus interacting across cultures, specifically with a broken-hearted centurion and a Phoenician woman, both of whom Jesus eventually commends for their incredible faith.

All of these instances point to Jesus as quite radically welcoming. It seems likely that he must have spent time mediating between (or laughing quietly at) his followers’ varied beliefs about God, the Messiah, Roman politics, and more. No one is ever specifically shunned from Jesus’ company in the gospels, though the Pharisees are on the receiving end of some harsh words at times. But Jesus even welcomed some Pharisees into his company, though most of those are more secret admirers of Jesus like Nicodemus than open followers of him.

So, was Jesus passive and inoffensive in order to welcome such a diverse group of followers? Quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve already mentioned the Pharisees, but it’s worth repeating that Jesus didn’t shy away from critiquing their version of faith quite harshly. Nor was Jesus shy about what it meant to be one of his followers, repeatedly making statements about leaving behind family, home, and comforts, and taking up the cross. It’s often missed today, but Jesus’ repeated message about the “Kingdom of Heaven” or “Kingdom of God” were seen at the time as explicitly political statements that directly challenged the authority of Rome and King Herod.

Maybe the best example of the way Jesus moved through the world with both the conviction of truth and radical grace is the story found in John 8:1-11, in which the Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman caught in adultery. They are trying to trap Jesus, so they give him a test of sorts. “The law says we should stone this woman to death,” they say, “what do you say?” Jesus’ answer is a classic for a reason, avoiding the trap and turning it back on the accusers in one smooth motion. “Let anyone who is without sin throw the first stone.” One by one the accusers walk away, made aware of their own imperfection by Jesus’ simple, convicting truth. When there is no one left but Jesus and the woman, he remarks, “Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” the woman replies, likely still terrified yet hopeful. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus replies, and if the sentence ended there this would be an unquestionable story about grace. Yet Jesus adds, “go now and leave your life of sin.”

Grace, and truth. Jesus is unafraid to name sin as sin, and equally unafraid to welcome the sinner into the community of grace. Did that woman believe she was a sinner? We’ll never know, yet Jesus spoke the truth with conviction anyway. Did that woman deserve grace? Does anyone? Yet Jesus stepped in to put a stop to her execution and very explicitly stated that she was not condemned, but rather given new life through grace.

So what does it mean to follow Jesus’ example today? For me, at least, it means being unafraid to speak what I believe to be the truth, yet making sure that my convictions are not spoken with condemnation. If others find my words harsh, I may need to moderate my tone, or perhaps I just need to accept that some will disagree with my convictions. As long as we can disagree respectfully, then we can both belong to the community of grace together, even if we hold opposing convictions. Isn’t that more welcoming than pretending not to have differences in order to get along?

God has given us an example — not of how to dominate, but of how to liberate; not of how to destroy life, but of how to give it.

- Pope Leo XIV, Maundy Thursday 2026

The Resurrection means life. In no uncertain terms, resurrection is life - it is the raising of Jesus, a dead man - a dead God - to life again. It is a negation of death’s power over humanity, not through abolition of life’s natural cycle but through an undeniable promise that death is not the terrifying bogey we need to fear, because death’s power is gone. It is a promise that sin - the great corrupter of life - has also lost its power over us, that each of us is no longer bound by the mortifying chains of slavery to sin but to the vivifying freedom of grace.

Far too often, we forget that the Christian God is a life-giving, life-filled God - a God who says an emphatic “yes!” to human life, despite our constant inability to achieve perfection. All those who might make God out to be a judgmental, wrath-filled God misunderstand the nature of God’s justice. Perhaps this is because we only know justice as punishment, justice as an immovable scale that weighs us and finds us wanting. But God’s justice is a life-giving force, one full of mercy and grace. Nearly 2000 years on from the first Easter, we still struggle to grasp the significance of that resurrection.

If you need a reminder of how much we struggle to understand it, look no further than the current government here in America. No administration in my lifetime has been this publicly “Christian,” touting their religion at every turn; yet no administration has less understood the resurrection than those in the halls of power now. When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can publicly pray for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy,” it should not be a shock to find that the Christianity espoused by the current US government would be unrecognizable to most Christians throughout history.

But as Pope Leo XIV has reminded us, ours is a God who brings life, not death. God has always frustrated the plans of those who would use God for domination and violence. The Crusades, which Hegseth and those like him would prefer to see as a model, are a perfect example of this point. The medieval popes and kings who called for the early crusades saw nothing but upside - reconquest of the Holy Land, uniting a warring Europe, establishing firmer papal control. Instead, the crusades mostly failed, often spectacularly, and saintly figures like St. Francis of Assisi moved within their lifetimes from tentative support to outright opposition. The kind of Christianity that sought to win wars with weapons was slowly eroded, until it was nothing but a crumbling edifice.

Instead of the halls of power, where death reigns, God is most often found on the margins, where life can sprout. The aforementioned St. Francis looked towards God and saw life in all it’s beautiful forms:

Praised be You, my Lord, with all your creatures; especially Brother Sun, who is the day, and through whom You give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor, and bears a likeness to You, Most High One. Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

- St. Francis, Canticle of the Sun

Or take the mystic Julian of Norwich, who wrote in her first Revelation on Divine Love,

“And in this [sight], he showed a little thing the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand as it seemed to me, and it was as round as any ball. I looked therein with the eye of my understanding, and thought: “What may this be?” And it was answered generally thus: “It is all that is made.” I marveled how it might last, for it seemed to me it might suddenly have fallen into nought for its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: “It lasteth and ever shall, because God loveth it. And so hath all things being by the love of God.”

Throughout the ages, the mystics and saints have known that God is the God of life, not the angel of death. In the 20th century, theologian and author Gustavo Gutierrez gave new voice to an old idea when he wrote his book A Theology of Liberation, in which he wrote of God’s preferential option for the poor, and how God is to be found where there are those yearning to break free from oppression. God is on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressor - this is the message of Gutierrez and many others.

It is the resurrection that makes this so. The crucifixion is pivotal, of course - in it we see that God is willing to suffer alongside us and on our behalf, even the worst kind of suffering - yet even the crucifixion attains its meaning backwards from the resurrection. It is only in the light of resurrection life that we can look with such awe and wonder upon that horrible death and call it “Good Friday;” otherwise it is nothing more than a torturous execution.

What, then, does it mean for us to worship a God who says “yes” to life? To worship a God who looked upon sinful humanity and said - “you are not only worth saving, but I will give you even more abundant life!” Well, first, it means that we are invited to truly live - to make of our lives a bountiful praise to God. How this manifests in your life is up to your interpretation, but I will offer some suggestions - live without fear of judgment; take the side of the oppressed against the oppressor; bring life wherever you go; honor life wherever you find it.

This is why the hyper-conservative brand of Christianity espoused by Hegseth and so many others in the Trump administration is not only bad theology, but damaging to the soul - it is a theology of death, rather than one of life. A Christianity that seeks to dominate and destroy is at such odds with the God we meet in Jesus that it seems almost comically perverse. Those with a mindset like Hegseth’s can only look at the world as something to be dominated - “I am on God’s side, and you are not; therefore, I will destroy you.” Instead, we are encouraged to say “I am beloved of God, and so are you; come know Jesus so that your life can flourish, too.”

As if the donkey thing wasn’t strange enough, we are then told that on the following day Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the back of this young donkey, and there are crowds of people waiting for him. These people are waving palm branches and laying them down for the donkey to walk over. They’re also shouting this word - “Hosanna” - which has a very strange meaning in this context. Where did these people come from? How did they know that Jesus was arriving, and why would they care? And what’s the deal with these palm fronds?

Before we answer any of those questions, it’s worth finishing the story. In Matthew, Mark and Luke’s account of this procession, Jesus finishes the day by going into the temple, and driving out a collection of money changers and vendors who were making a profit off of people’s piety. It is the single instance of “violence” (if we can call it that) in Jesus’ actions on earth, as in some versions of the story he grabs a whip and literally tosses their tables over, driving the offenders out of the temple court altogether. This procession and succeeding drama in the temple courts sets the stage for a week of political intrigue that will lead to Jesus’ betrayal, trial and crucifixion immediately after Passover.

What is happening here? If, like me, you grew up in church hearing this story every year, maybe marching in with palm fronds to your church on Palm Sunday, it’s easy to forget how strange it all seems when you look at it objectively. But there is a key to understanding this story, and it’s one that is often forgotten or conveniently left out of most sermons - Jesus’ actions that day, and the actions of his supporters, are explicitly political, and they are intended to make a political statement about both who Jesus is, and who the Roman Emperor is not.

You see, in the time of Jesus the Roman triumph was becoming a regular part of imperial politics. A triumph was a very specific civil and religious ceremony undertaken to commemorate a great military victory. When an emperor had done something triumph-worthy (or wanted people to think they had), there would be a grand parade in the streets of Rome, with Roman citizens lining the streets and hailing the emperor as a great figure. Often these triumphs would be accompanied by some great public work commissioned by the emperor to commemorate their achievement - a column, arch or the like that bore inscriptions and images detailing the emperor’s great victory.

In almost every way, Jesus’ entry to the city of Jerusalem mimics and mocks the Roman triumph. Jesus rides into town from just outside the city, his procession visible from a distance as he would have descended the Mount of Olives on his way towards Jerusalem. Bethany, where Jesus stayed the night before, is just on the other side of the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem, making it easy for a few eager disciples to let waiting crowds inside the city know he was on his way in the morning. But unlike the Romans, who rode in on a great war horse, Jesus rides a humble donkey. And very specifically, the young colt of a donkey - probably barely strong enough to bear the weight of a grown man, and certainly the opposite in every conceivable way to a magnificent steed.

Let’s pause on the donkey for a moment longer, because it does have one more element of symbolic significance beyond mocking the emperor’s steeds. John and Matthew both quote directly from the Hebrew prophet Zechariah, who wrote,

“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

- Zechariah 9:9

Sometimes, the New Testament’s use of Old Testament prophesies can seem a bit contrived or arbitrary, but it’s pretty hard to overlook this one, since Jesus seems to go out of his way to fulfill these words. We will talk more about the Messianic element of Jesus’ triumphal entry, but even before we get there it’s worth looking at the rest of that prophecy from Zechariah, specifically chapter 9 verse 10,

I will take away the chariots from Ephraim
and the warhorses from Jerusalem,
and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
His rule will extend from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

- Zechariah 9:10

Much like the Roman emperors, who claimed a divine mandate to rule over the known world, Jesus’ choice of a donkey was seen by his disciples as an explicit claim to divine lordship over the whole world - from sea to sea and to the ends of the earth. So while there is a humble element to the donkey, and it is fitting that Jesus’ messianic mission is fulfilled through such an unorthodox choice, Jesus’ message was loud and clear to those on Messiah-watch: I am he.

So let’s talk about the messianic aspect of all this, shall we? Messiah is another word that has been spiritualized so much that we may not understand the full implication of what it meant in Jesus’ day, and the ways in which Jesus both confirms and subverts messianic expectations explains a lot about what was happening on this day, and his whole ministry. While there was a great debate about exactly who and what the messiah would be like, the consensus in Jesus’ day was that the Messiah would be a strong military and political leader, a king in the model of David, who would throw out the Romans and re-establish an independent Jewish kingdom under God’s blessing.

There are numerous explicit references to this idea of the Messiah in Jesus’ procession. The crowds are explicitly calling Jesus the “son of David” throughout, establishing his messianic credentials as one in the line of David, at least spiritually if not literally. They are chanting the word “Hosanna” - a word that does not mean “praise” but “save us!” At the same time, they are waving and laying down palm branches - a nationalist symbol of the formerly independent Jewish kingdom. We have evidence that the palm branch was seen as a Jewish symbol, including the fact that palm trees were printed on Jewish coins during the 2nd century BC. So, looked at with this in mind, a massive crowd was calling out for Jesus to save them while waving around the symbol of their formerly free kingdom. It’s pretty hard to read that as anything other than their hope that Jesus would launch a literal revolution to free Judea from Roman control, and possibly from the Herodian Dynasty, too.

So let’s take a step back and examine everything we’ve said thus far. Jesus, a known wandering teacher who had built up a small but loyal following, is making a public display of his entry into Jerusalem in a deliberate mimicry of a Roman triumph. He has chosen a donkey to ride as both a mockery of the Roman emperor and an implicit signal of his messianic intentions. He is hailed with cries for salvation, and ushered into the city by a crowd waving their symbol of national freedom during a time of occupation. Is it any wonder, then, that the Pharisees are so quick to confront Jesus? Luke reports that some Pharisees in the crowd beg Jesus to rebuke his followers, but Jesus replies that “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” Translation: this is happening, no matter how much you try to stop it.

As mentioned, in Matthew, Mark and Luke the next thing Jesus does is enter the temple courts and drive out the vendors there, saying they had made the house of prayer into a den of robbers. Even this has not only spiritual but political undertones. Without going into the whole story here, it’s worth remembering that the last war of Jewish independence, led by the Maccabees to oust the Greeks, had begun when the Greeks had desecrated the temple, which led the Maccabee family of priests to start a revolution. The culminating act of their successful revolt had been the cleansing of the temple. If one were so inclined, you could read Jesus’ cleansing of the temple courts as a symbolic reenactment of the Maccabean revolt.

So, Jesus’ triumphal entry is full of political symbolism. If anything, it’s hard to see the story as anything but political, once you notice all of the deliberate imagery being used by Jesus and his followers. But, we cannot read all of this without following the story to its conclusion. Jesus’ followers had their hopes dashed, and rather quickly. Within a week of his dramatic political announcement, Jesus was arrested, tried, and executed by collusion between the Jewish religious authorities and the Roman overlords that Jesus was supposed to overthrow. Sure, three days later his followers began proclaiming a strange story about his resurrection from the dead, but no great political revolution followed. It wasn’t until 70 AD that the Jews finally rose up against the Romans, and they were quickly beaten, the temple destroyed, and the Jewish population scattered.

What are we to do with this? Was all of that political symbolism a red herring, a misunderstanding, a mistake? Did Jesus misunderstand his own mission, or perhaps did his followers make something from nothing? There have been many attempts to answer this question, but I’ll give you mine: Jesus knew exactly what he was doing, and what he was doing was redefining the Messiah in a way none of his followers expected. Where his followers expected to defeat the Roman Empire in pitched battle, Jesus said, “actually, I have defeated all of the powers of the world not by strength but by weakness.” Jesus’ defeat was actually his victory - Paul tells us explicitly in 1 Corinthians 15:54-58,

⁵⁴ When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”^[h]

⁵⁵ “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”^[i]

⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷ But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁵⁸ Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

An armed revolt was never going to bring down the mightiest army of the 1st century. Yet through his death and resurrection, Christianity went from a tiny sect to the official religion of Rome within 300 years. More importantly than that, Jesus understood that by his death and resurrection he would become Lord of all in a way he never could be as lord of an earthly, geographical kingdom. The Kingdom of God may not control physical territory, but it is no less a kingdom for all that - it demands our allegiance, asks us to follow its laws (which is the law of grace and love), and expects us to forswear all other allegiances on its behalf. By choosing the path of suffering, Jesus became far more powerful than any Roman emperor could ever have dreamed. By refusing to simply be a Jewish king, Jesus became king of all people. Instead of saving a few who cried hosannah that day, Jesus saved all people by his death and resurrection. This different, higher kind of politics is still counterintuitive and surprising to this day, but it is also glorious enough to make us all cry “Hosanna” to the son of David, the one who saves.

The East belongs to God!
The West belongs to God!
Northern and southern lands
Rest in the peace of his hands.

He, who alone is just,
Wills what is right for each.
Of his hundred names,
Let this one be highly praised! Amen.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Talismans

In 1936, as the Nazis pushed the world towards war, artist and committed pacifist Käthe Kollwitz turned to Germany’s national poet, Goethe, for wisdom. Kollwitz had been one of Germany’s most renowned visual artists in the time before Hitler’s rise, but in 1933 the Nazis forced her to resign from her positions and banned her work from being displayed. They even tried to use some of her art as pro-Nazi propaganda, despite her stated dislike of the party.

No longer able to display her art publicly, Kollwitz continued to create, if only for herself. Then, in 1936, she and her husband were visited by the Gestapo, who threatened to send them to a concentration camp. Fortunately, her fame was such that this threat was never carried out, but it seems to have affected Kollwitz deeply, as you might imagine. She and her husband made a pact to commit suicide if they thought that the concentration camp might be in their future. And in that same year of 1936, Kollwitz created this bronze piece for her family tomb:

Titled Rest in the Peace of His Hands, it depicts a child sleeping soundly, held by two large, comforting arms. Goethe’s poem is a reminder that the whole world belongs to God - a potent rebuke at a time when many claimed the Christian God to be the “German God;” not unlike today, when the God of the Bible is too frequently seen as the “American God.” Kollwitz chose that poem to represent this image because she encourages us to find our comfort, our rest, in that same universal God. We, too, can rest in the peace of God’s hands, rather than being taken up in the clenched fist of lesser gods and petty tyrants.

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Have there ever been people in history who in their time, like us, had so little ground under their feet, people to whom every possible alternative open to them at the time appeared equally unbearable, senseless, and contrary to life? Have there been those who like us looked for the source of their strength beyond all those available alternatives? Were they looking entirely in what has passed away and in what is yet to come? And nevertheless, without being dreamers, did they await with calm and confidence the successful outcome of their endeavor? Or rather, facing a great historical turning point, did the responsible thinkers of another generation ever feel differently than we do today—precisely because something genuinely new was forming that was not yet apparent in the existing alternatives?

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years1

The life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is in many ways a tragedy: a brilliant young pastor and theologian, committed to the ideals of peace, who found himself ranged against the great evil of Nazism in his home country of Germany. In spite of his own principles, Bonhoeffer eventually concluded that the only way to defeat Hitler would be to assassinate him, and he became part of what was known as the “Officer’s Plot,” which was eventually discovered and thwarted. Because of this, Bonhoeffer spent the final years of his life in the Tegel prison in Berlin, whence he wrote numerous letters and reflections before his execution on April 9, 1945.

“After Ten Years” is an essay Bonhoeffer wrote in January 1943, just before he was arrested, and in it he reflects on life under the Nazi regime, and in particular the way such a life has impacted the souls of those who must endure it. Reading Bonhoeffer’s words, one is struck by their eery applicability to our own times. In an early section of the essay, Bonhoeffer picks apart the various stances people take in response to evil in power at the highest levels, and the way each of them falls short. For today’s article, I thought it worthwhile to simply let Bonhoeffer have his say, and add a few comments as each of us attempts to understand what it could mean to stand firm in times like these.

Who Stands Firm? The huge masquerade of evil has thrown all ethical concepts into confusion. That evil should appear in the form of light, good deeds, historical necessity, social justice is absolutely bewildering for one coming from the world of ethical concepts that we have received. For the Christian who lives by the Bible, it is the very confirmation of the abysmal wickedness of evil.

The failure of “the reasonable ones”—those who think, with the best of intentions and in their naive misreading of reality, that with a bit of reason they can patch up a structure that has come out of joint—is apparent. With their ability to see impaired, they want to do justice to all sides, only to be crushed by the colliding forces without having accomplished anything at all. Disappointed that the world is so unreasonable, they see themselves condemned to unproductiveness; they withdraw in resignation or helplessly fall victim to the stronger.

Has any paragraph ever encapsulated the current Democratic Party leadership better than this one from eighty years ago? Reasonable people in an unreasonable world, they are condemned to failure because they cannot move past reasonableness to actually fight against evil in any meaningful way.

More devastating is the failure of all ethical fanaticism. The fanatic believes that he can meet the power of evil with the purity of a principle. But like the bull in the arena, he attacks the red cape rather than the person carrying it, grows tired, and suffers defeat. He becomes entrapped in nonessentials and is caught in the trap of the cleverer one.

Before progressives get too smug, Bonhoeffer would like a word with you, too. This incisively tears apart the supposed value of “moral outrage” against the actions of an evil regime, for it is only ever chasing after the cape and not the one waving it. In order to successfully resist fascism, we will need more than outrage and principles.

The man of conscience has no one but himself when resisting the superior might of predicaments that demand a decision. But the dimensions of the conflict wherein he must make his choices are such that, counseled and supported by nothing but his very own conscience, he is torn apart. The innumerable respectable and seductive disguises by which evil approaches him make his conscience fearful and unsure until he finally settles for a salved conscience instead of a good conscience, that is, until he deceives his own conscience in order not to despair. That a bad conscience may be stronger and more wholesome than a deceived one is something that the man whose sole support is his conscience can never comprehend.

Here is a difficult word for our times. All of us wishes to feel as though our conscience is clear, yet Bonhoeffer argues that life under fascism always involves some level of moral compromise because there are no clean decisions left to us. If we deceive ourselves into believing we have a clean conscience, we may do more harm than good in the long run.

The reliable path of duty seems to offer the escape from the bewildering plethora of possible decisions. Here, that which has been commanded is clutched as the most certain; the responsibility for what has been commanded lies with the one giving the command rather than the one whocarries it out. However, duty is so circumscribed that there is never any room to venture that which rests wholly in one’s ownresponsibility, the action that alone strikes at the very core of evil and can overcome it. The man of duty will in the end have to do his duty also to the devil.

The surface reading of Bonhoeffer’s words take aim at all those who were simply “following orders,” and of course we all know that is not a moral excuse when orders are evil. But if we take it one step further, we must ask ourselves when and how we allow a sense of “duty” to restrain us from participating fully in resistance to evil?

There is the one who determines to take a stand in the world by acting on his own freedom. He values the necessary action more highly than an untarnished conscience and reputation. He is prepared to sacrifice a barren principle to a fruitful compromise or a barren wisdom of mediocrity to fruitful radicalism. Such a one needs to take care that his freedom does not cause him to stumble. He will condone the bad in order to prevent the worse and in so doing no longer discern that the very thing that he seeks to avoid as worse might well be better. This is where the basic material of tragedy is to be found.

Bonhoeffer’s argument here is quite nuanced. This position might be best exemplified by those who argue for a “lesser of two evils” approach, especially the most radical takes on that idea. We may in fact find Bonhoeffer criticizing himself here, for one might argue that those who attempt to assassinate evil figures are doing just what Bonhoeffer is arguing against here: choosing a bad to avoid a worse, but instead making the world worse in the process.

In flight from public discussion and examination, this or that person may well attain the sanctuary of private virtuousness. But he must close his eyes and mouth to the injustice around him. He can remain undefiled by the consequences of responsible action only by deceiving himself. In everything he does, that which he fails to do will leave him no peace. He will either perish from that restlessness or turn into the most hypocritical of all Pharisees.

On the flip side of the previous paragraph, the one who strives for virtue will necessarily be forced to refrain from actions that contradict one’s virtues, thus leaving much possible good undone and much injustice in place. Bonhoeffer is arguing that there is no perfect virtue for those who live under fascism or its likeness.

What, then are we to do? Seemingly, Bonhoeffer has torn apart every course of action available to the person who wishes to live morally or make any attempt to eradicate fascism. As he wrote in the paragraph which opened this article, “every possible alternative… appear[s] equally unbearable, senseless, and contrary to life.” And so he asks the question again.

Who stands firm? Only the one whose ultimate standard is not his reason, his principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue; only the one who is prepared to sacrifice all of these when, in faith and in relationship to God alone, he is called to obedient and responsible action. Such a person is the responsible one, whose life is to be nothing but a response to God’s question and call. Where are these responsible ones?

There is but one way to stand firm in times like these: obedience to God above all else. As he himself puts it, a person who makes their “entire life nothing but a response to God’s question and call.” How do we do this? Only by putting our entire being at God’s disposal, considering all else as naught compared to the greatness of God’s call. We must become people who pray unceasingly, aware of God in every breath we take; we must become people who treat Christ’s call to “take up your cross and follow” as seriously as if it were spoken directly to us. Bonhoeffer is calling us to the difficult way, the costly discipleship which he wrote so much about. But, in his understanding, this is also the only way to live faithfully in times like these.

This was the situation faced by Ambrose of Milan, the bishop of that ancient city in the late 4th century during the reign of Theodosius I. Ambrose is considered one of the “Doctors” of the early church, the highest honor given by the Catholic church, in part because of his massive influence on Augustine, as well as his contributions to Christian hymnody and preaching. But on top of all that, Ambrose is also honored because he was the first Christian bishop to stand up to the State, and win.

Let us set the scene more specifically. Ambrose, while born a Christian, was perhaps the unlikeliest of bishops, considering he came to Milan not as a priest but as a governor in the civil service. However, when the previous bishop of Milan died in 374, Ambrose was spontaneously acclaimed as bishop by the people, which was the way Milan appointed their bishops in those days. Ambrose tried to refuse, since he hadn’t even been formally baptized yet, but the people persisted, and eventually he took up the position. In a sign of the kind of man he was, Ambrose immediately sold his possessions and gave up his secular titles, choosing a life of austerity he felt appropriate to his role as a spiritual leader.

Theodosius I, on the other hand, was exactly where he belonged. The son of a prominent Roman general, Theodosius was given charge of the eastern half of the Empire in the wake of the sudden defeat and death of the emperor Valens in 379 at the battle of Adrianople. Theodosius quickly proved himself a capable leader, settling disputes with Rome’s enemies and strengthening his position until he ruled the entire empire - the last man to do so.

While you might expect these two men to be at odds, they actually shared some of the same goals. Theodosius was, by all accounts, a devout Christian himself, and a supporter of the Nicene Creed as opposed to the Arian heresy which was rampant at the time. Real Christian history nerds will already be familiar with that debate, and we don’t have time to talk about it here, but suffice to say that Ambrose and Theodosius were on the same side of a very prominent debate within the church. Though we don’t have much evidence of them working directly together often, it is clear that the two men respected each other and wished to work towards common goals.

Which is why what happened in 390 AD was such a pivotal and dramatic moment. Without getting into the finer details, a riot broke out in the city of Thessalonica, modern day Thessaloniki in northern Greece, and during the chaos several Roman agents were killed by the mob. Furious, Theodosius told his highly trained band of Goths (a Germanic people group, not black-clad loners) to crack down on the citizens, hard. It’s impossible at this distance to know just how many Thessalonians were killed, but it was likely hundreds, if not thousands, and not only people who were responsible for the lynching of the Roman authorities.

When Ambrose heard about this, he knew something had to be done. Here, unfortunately, is where the most dramatic accounts and the likely history seem to diverge. In the historical retellings of this event, there is a dramatic showdown at the cathedral door between Ambrose and Theodosius, like I described at the start of this article. In this version, Ambrose bars the emperor from entering his church, forcing Theodosius to perform public penance before he is readmitted to worship. It is a signature, symbolic moment of the power of God over even the powerful of the earth.

The more likely history is less dramatic, though no less important, I believe. In most historian’s estimation, Ambrose was not actually present in Milan when he heard the news about Thessalonica. However, he was still upset about the news, and he wrote a letter to Theodosius telling him that he must perform public penance, or Theodosius would not be allowed to partake in communion. Theodosius complied with this request, appearing at church without his imperial robes and in penitent’s garbs until Christmas, when Ambrose publicly readmitted him to the communion table.

While this version of the story doesn’t have the dramatic confrontation, it still shows us what a Christian with influence can and should do in the face of injustice. Ambrose demanded that Theodosius publicly acknowledge his wrongdoing and pay a price for it, even if it was a price that falls far short of what he actually owed the people of Thessalonica. And Ambrose made it perfectly clear that he did not stand with or condone Theodosius’ actions, instead proving his commitment to the people over the powerful by risking offense to the emperor himself.

Most of us are not in positions as powerful or as influential as Ambrose, but our duty remains the same: to not only speak the truth to power, but do what we can where we can to hold up the standard of God’s justice against the powerful’s injustice. We can make clear, loudly and boldly and riskily, that we do not support or stand with those in power who are committing sinful, unjust actions. Imagine the powerful message that would be sent if Donald Trump was barred from the door of his church until he publicly repented for the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. While that’s unlikely to happen, it is true that most of those in the Trump Administration claim the mantle of Christianity, and perhaps their pastors should consider what it means to say or do nothing when these people are present in their congregation. Each of us, too, should reflect on the ways we can use whatever influence we have, however small, to change the behavior of those around us who have not yet repented from their support of the fascist administration currently in charge of our government.

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From these earliest beginnings, countless Christians have added their gifts of poetry and music to the corpus of sanctified songs throughout the past 2,000 years. What’s even more amazing is that some of the most ancient of these have not only survived to our time, but are still sung in churches around the world! Now, when it comes to ancient and early medieval music, we only have the text of the poems, not the music itself, as scholars have not identified musical notation from that period. Starting in the high medieval era (circa 1000 AD), we begin to have some rudimentary notation that can be read, though this also has not survived for many of the hymns on this list.

Yet, while it’s true that we are likely singing different tunes than our predecessors, the words have remained the same (in translation, of course). The theology behind these words have shaped Christian hearts and minds for nearly as long as passages of Scripture. And in some cases, the melodies we sing are also quite old, even if not the original tune for the hymn. “Be Thou My Vision,” for example, takes the text of an ancient Irish poem, and puts it to an old Irish folk tune. The two were first put together in the early 20th century, but it is only the combination that is new.

So, without further ado, here are 5 ancient and medieval hymns you can proudly sing alongside our siblings in Christ throughout the ages.

1. Hail, Gladdening Light - Originally written in Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament), Phos Hilaron is almost certainly the oldest actual hymn that survives to the present. While maybe less universal than some of the other hymns on this list, it is still sung at evening services in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and some Lutheran churches (and quite probably some others, as well). The words are likely to be set to different melodies depending on what setting you’re in.

2. Of the Father’s Love Begotten - The text is based on the Latin poem Corde Natus by the Roman poet Aurelius Prudentius (348 - c.413 AD), and the common melody is nearly as old - based on the medieval plainchant “Divinum Mysterium” which can be traced back as far as the 10th century.

3. O Sacred Head Now Wounded - Text taken from the Latin poem Salvi Mundi Salutare, which was long attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux but now to Arnulf of Leuven (c.1200-1250). The tune is from a German love song written in 1600, but made famous by it’s use in Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, which was composed in 1727.

4. All Creatures of Our God and King - The text is from Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Brother Sun, perhaps his most famous writing. In the early 20th century, it was translated into English and put to a German tune that dates back to the early 17th century, which is the melody we still use to day.

5. Be Thou My Vision - Based on a middle-Irish text “Rop tu mo baile,” which likely originates in the 10th century, but has long been attributed to Saint Dallan Forgaill, a companion of St. Patrick. It was translated into English in the early 20th century by Mary Elizabeth Byrne, but put into verse and set to music by Elizabeth Hull. The most famous tune used with the lyrics is “Slane,” an Irish folk tune that stretches back centuries, though it is difficult to say how old exactly.

In an age when much church music comes and goes in the course of a few years, never to be heard again, it is valuable to remember that we don’t just sing with our local congregation, but with the whole Church around the world and throughout time. These 5 songs represent just some of the beauty to be found in the historic Christian hymnody. Next time you sing one of these hymns in church, may we remember that we sing along with the saints of God.

And so put us in jail, and we will go in with humble smiles on our faces, still loving you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that we are not fit morally, culturally, and otherwise for integration. And we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours, and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half dead, and we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And one day we will win our freedom, but not only will we win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process. And our victory will be a double victory. This seems to me the only answer and the only way to make our nation a new nation and our world a new world. Love is the absolute power.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in a sermon delivered in Detroit on March 7, 1961

Numerous times over his preaching career, Dr. King delivered a version of a sermon on Matthew 5:43-45, the famous words of Jesus that read, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Each time he preached this sermon, he would add new reflections and examples from his reading, his ministry, and his political life. For example, the quote that opened this article was only added in 1961, and not present in previous versions of this sermon. It wasn’t until after King had spent time in jail, received death threats, been propagandized against, and seen many of his fellow civil rights leaders lynched, that he included this poignant passage. Dr. King made sure his sermon on loving enemies bore the mark of authenticity.

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Americans face a nation in crisis, a crisis of hatred and division that would not look all that unfamiliar to King and his allies. The murder of a seemingly innocent woman, an American citizen, by an ICE agent who seemed to act with far greater violence than was necessary, has sparked outrage against ICE, whose supposed job of deportation enforcement has seemingly ballooned into threatening anyone who disagrees with President Trump and his policies. ICE agents have spent the past year being deployed into various American cities, sometimes alongside the National Guard, ostensibly to round up illegal immigrants, but often harassing or arresting American citizens in the process. These agents have taken to wearing masks to hide their identities, and the spending bill passed last year by Congress has ensured that ICE as an agency is over-funded and growing rapidly. I imagine most people have seen the commercials for ICE playing during sporting events that offer student loan forgiveness and generous signing bonus, which must surely be enticing to all sorts of people regardless of their qualifications or temperament.

Since the death of Renee Good less than two weeks ago, protests have erupted around the country, especially in Minneapolis where the killing occurred. Sadly, this administration has declined to investigate the agent who committed the killing, instead opting to threaten an investigation into the victim and her widow. ICE agents have been caught on video numerous times in the aftermath saying things like “Didn’t you learn your lesson,” and other frightening statements that appear to show them emboldened by the lack of accountability and seeming support they have received from the government.

I recount all of this because while the specifics are different, the broad strokes are remarkably similar to events in the Civil Rights era. Replace ICE agents with segregationists or klansmen, Renee Good with Emmett Till (or, more accurately, any of the countless unknown black Americans who faced lynching for simply being black in America), and anti-ICE protests with Civil Rights marches, and it doesn’t look all that different. While fascism writ large, and in the greatest halls of power, is a new phenomenon in America, fascistic terror inflicted on American citizens is absolutely not new, as any Civil Rights activist could tell you.

When I see the videos of ICE agents threatening people, breaking windows and pulling American citizens from their cars, or holding people at gunpoint without cause, or making implicit threats, I am filled with rage. When I think about what happened to Renee Good, what the Trump administration did to Kilmar Abrego Garcia and others like him who they sent to a Central American prison without due process, my natural reaction is towards hatred. It is so easy, so natural, for meto hate Donald Trump, to hate Stephen Miller, to hate those ICE agents out there terrorizing people.

And yet, today of all days, I must be reminded that this hatred is ultimately both useless and harmful towards myself. It will in fact be love, not hatred, that will win the day in the end. Saying that feels so impractical, so unrealistic, so idealistic, that it is easy to brush it off. I know I certainly have felt that the only way to defeat Donald Trump’s ideology of hate is to beat it down, to destroy it. But let’s look at what Dr. King had to say about Jesus’ message to love our enemies:

But we have come to see today that, far from being the impractical idealist, Jesus is the practical realist, and the words of this text stand before us with new urgency. And far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, love is the key to the solution of the problems of our world, love even for enemies. Since this is a basic Christian command and a basic Christian responsibility, it is both fitting and proper that we stop from time to time to analyze the meaning of these arresting words. And so we may well begin by raising the practical “how”—How do we go about loving our enemies?

Dr. King offers us three practical answers to that question. First, he says, is developing the capacity to forgive. The second is to recognize that the evil deed of another person does not represent all that they are, but rather to see the image of God found within each human being. The third is the hardest, which is to always seek understanding rather than seeking to defeat someone. I’m trying not to simply quote the entire sermon, but King himself says it best, “For in the final analysis, love means understanding goodwill for all men and a refusal to defeat any individual. And so somehow love makes it possible for you to place your vision and to center your activity on the evil system and not the individual enemy who may be caught up in that system. And so you set out to defeat segregation and not the segregationist.”

After offering these three practical ways to love our enemies, Dr. King goes on to explain why Jesus gives us this commandment, and it is this section of the sermon that truly sings with Dr. King’s incredible insight. Another quote:

I would say the first reason, and I’m sure Jesus had this in mind, we should love our enemies is this: to return evil for evil only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. And somewhere along the way of life, somebody must have sense enough, somebody must have morality enough, somebody must have religion enough, to cut off the chain of hate and evil. And this can only be done by meeting hate with love. For you see in a real sense, if we return hate for hate, violence for violence, and all of that, it just ends up destroying everybody. And nobody wins in the long run. And it is the strong man who stands up in the midst of violence and refuses to return it. It is the strong man, not the weak man, who stands up in the midst of hate and returns love.

This, this right here, is why love will always defeat hate, however ridiculous it seems. For all their efforts to project strength with their guns, their masks, their tank-like vehicles in the streets, hatred is ultimately weak. True strength, a strength that can overcome any violence, is the strength not to return hatred for hatred. To respond with love is to defang hatred entirely. This was the great insight of Dr. King’s movement, the one that we have seemingly forgotten in the decades since.

But there are even more reasons to love our enemies. One is for us, the other is for them. Hatred, Dr. King argues, does just as much if not more damage to the hater as the one hated. Hatred disrupts and damages the soul, which means that the one who hates will never be happy, even if they destroy the ones they hate, for they will have destroyed themselves in the process. That is for us: don’t give in to hate, for it will destroy you, even if your hate may seem justified.

The final reason to love our enemies is for them: love has transformative qualities, redemptive powers that can change the hearts of the ones who hate us. This was the part of the sermon where I pulled the quote that began this article, in which Dr. King says emphatically, “And one day we will win our freedom, but not only will we win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process. And our victory will be a double victory.” We’re not going to hate our way out of this crisis; the only solution will be a radical love in action that not only preserves our souls but may even save those of the ones who hate us.

What does this kind of radical love look like today? How do we love our enemies when they are masked ICE agents terrorizing our neighbors? We must take our cues from those who’ve gone before, and do our best to adapt them to the present situation. The Civil Rights movement in America made their greatest strides by putting their suffering on display and not fighting back against aggression. Will such a tactic work in a world where our shared reality has splintered into a million micro-realities online? Perhaps those of us not on the front lines will be required to love our enemies by sitting down with people who we generally dislike and trying to break down the walls between their algorithm and ours. Maybe it will be speaking the truth calmly and lovingly to those who are unaware. Perhaps it will require greater sacrifice, being so obviously peaceful and defenseless that if violence should be committed against us, there can be no argument that it was justified.

I’m not sure I have all the answers; in fact, I know I don’t. If you have ideas about how to resist evil with love in the 21st century, please put them in the comments, as I’d love to respond and grow our shared toolkit for this moment. It’s also clear from reading Dr. King’s sermons that he didn’t have all the answers for his own time, either; instead, he kept returning to the same ideas, the same guiding principles found in Scripture, and brought his new experiences to it to try and make sense of his world and his struggle against oppression. If we learn anything from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy today, maybe that should be it: hold love at the center of all we do, and never give up on finding new ways to love our enemies and save them from their own destructive hatred.

Here is another link to the full text of Dr. King’s sermon, from which I quoted extensively in this article.

Located at the conjunction of the Rhone and the Saone rivers, with majestic overlooks and steep, winding roads, Lyon is a city of hills and rivers. I was staying in La Croix-Rousse, a charming neighborhood at the top of one of the hills overlooking the city center. The only English-language bookshop in the city, as far as I could find, was located down the hill and across the Rhone. So, I wound my way down the steep staircases and cobblestoned streets towards the 1st arrondissement, the center of town which is located on a narrow peninsula between the two rivers. As I made my way down the hill, I could see the muddy water of the Saone on my right, and across it the old city of Lyon, where the medieval cathedral and Roman ruins were to be found. To my left was the clear-flowing Rhone, beyond which sat the more modern part of town where my destination lay.

That destination was Damn Fine Bookstore, a small shop painted royal purple with a delightful sign outside reading, “Books - helping introverts avoid conversation since 1454.” If ever there has been a more inviting sign for someone like me, I haven’t seen it. In I went, with a very specific book in mind. Lyon has a long, rich history, but the most famous author from the city is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who wrote the children’s classic Le Petit Prince, or The Little Prince. de Saint-Exupéry lived in the first half of the twentieth century, and aside from writing he was also a pilot. His life was cut tragically short when his plane crashed while flying a reconnaissance mission during World War II, but he left behind several novels and shorter writings, the most famous of which is The Little Prince.

If you did not grow up with The Little Prince, it tells the story of a pilot who has crash-landed in the desert, only to encounter a young boy who claims to be a prince from a small asteroid the size of a house. To describe the plot of the novel would almost be superfluous, because reading it isn’t really about what happens, as much as it is the prince’s delightful descriptions of where he comes from and those he has met upon his journeys. It is, after all, a book for children; yet the story is also a direct call for adults to experience more childlike wonder. The narrator, so focused on fixing his plane in order to survive, is constantly called back from this seriousness by the prince’s fantastical descriptions and reminded of the creativity and joy he felt as a child.

I picked up The Little Prince at a time when my own journey in foreign lands was still getting underway, and it was a vital reminder to me to see each new place as truly new and fresh, to take it in with childlike wonder. For all the encouragement of the sign outside the shop, and my own natural inclination, I tried to be a bit more like the little prince and make friends wherever I found them. A children’s book it may be, but The Little Prince was exactly the book I needed to hold on to that perspective, and whenever I think of it or remember my time in Lyon, it reminds me to be just a little more childlike, to try and see the place I’m in with the eyes of one who is far from home, but not lost.

With that painful, horrible reality thrust upon us, there comes the challenge of living through what will hopefully be a temporary period in our history. Part of living through it is doing whatever we can to make sure it is in fact only temporary, but it will also involve a lot of simply surviving, and a lot of tough choices about when and how to speak or act. This struggle will be doubled for those of us who claim the mantle of Christians, because the administration and its followers have so coopted and corrupted the very name of Christianity that we must reject both the regime’s politics and its theology, while also doing our best to represent the true Christ to a skeptical world that will now identify Christianity even more with the oppressors than it already does.

Fascist states require resisting from all corners, and so not everyone who does meaningful work will be Christian; but those of us who are Christians have a duty to reject and repudiate the regime’s version of our faith boldly, loudly, and convincingly. Thankfully, there have been many brave, faithful followers of Jesus in the past who have done their part to show what it means to fight fascism not with guns but with the cross. And so, whenever I can, I want to share lessons from history for those who wish to resist, but do so in the name of Christ.

Lesson One: “Love thy neighbor” requires us to stand beside and stand for the people in our community who are targeted by the state.

For our first lesson, I’m reprinting a story I wrote in the spring of 2024 about Metropolitan Kiril of Sofia, Bulgaria, who teaches us what it means to put Christ-like love into action for the marginalized. May Kiril’s story inspire us to boldly stand with immigrants or whoever this regime decides to make their target victim.

In March 1941, Bulgaria officially aligned with the Axis powers, after Germany threatened to invade unless they allowed the German army to pass through Bulgaria. While Bulgaria’s king and prime minister were fans of Hitler, Bulgaria was a reluctant partner in the conflict, due to their relative lack of military strength and unwillingness to partake in warfare against fellow communists in Russia.

As a consequence of their new alignment, Hitler expected the Bulgarians to begin the process of rounding up their Jewish populations for deportation to concentration camps. While the Bulgarian government initially complied and began deporting Jews in the neighboring territories they conquered with Axis help, they hit a snag when it came time to round up the Jews of Bulgaria proper.

In March of 1943, soldiers began to prepare boxcars to hold up to 20,000 Jews and take them from Sofia and Plovdiv, the two biggest cities in Bulgaria, to the Treblinka concentration camp. Protests broke out across Bulgaria at the targeting of their fellow citizens. Sympathetic members of the government were able to delay the deportation, but not for long.

On March 10, roughly 8,500 Jews were loaded onto the boxcars in Sofia, including Jews from Plovdiv and the rest of the country. All hope appeared lost, until Metropolitan Kiril (Cyril) arrived with 300 of his church members. A metropolitan in the Orthodox Church is somewhat equivalent to a bishop or archbishop in the Catholic Church - the highest-ranking clergyman in the city. Kiril was the Metropolitan of Plovdiv, and he would not stand by and see 1,500 people from his city shipped off to torture and death.

According to witnesses (though some of these details cannot be verified), Kiril pushed his way authoritatively through the guards and attempted to open the boxcar doors. Some accounts say that he shouted out a quote from the book of Ruth: “Wherever you go, I will go! Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people, and your God, my God!” When SS officers prevented him from opening the doors of the boxcars, he walked in front of the train and stood on the tracks, declaring that he would lay down on the tracks if they tried to move the train. In other words: over his dead body.

Metropolitan Stephan of Sofia supported Kiril’s act of protest, and quickly rallied other churchmen to stand by the Jews of Bulgaria. Kiril’s act inspired politicians and local leaders to rebel, and the next day the Jews were freed and allowed to return to their homes.

This was not the final attempt by the Bulgarian government to appease Hitler and remove their Jewish population, but now the Bulgarian Orthodox Church stood united in strong opposition. When King Boris attempted to round up the Jews again in May, Stephan wrote a letter to Boris which included these words: “Do not persecute, so that you, yourself, will not be persecuted. The measure you give will be the measure returned to you. I know, Boris, that God in heaven is keeping watch over your actions.”

By September of 1943, Boris was dead (possibly poisoned by Hitler for not deporting the Jews and generally dragging his feet as an ally), and the attempts to round up Bulgaria’s Jews came to an end. Bulgaria had roughly 48,000 Jews before WWII; there were 50,000 at the end, the only country aligned with or occupied by Germany not to send their Jews to the concentration camps.

Of late, however, our cultural attachment to Progress has not seemed to result in many net benefits for humanity; instead, advances in technology are being used only to enrich a small number of tech billionaires, or to aid repressive governments in surveilling their populace. Think about it for a moment: when was the last time an advancement in technology greatly improved your life, assuming you are not a tech billionaire or an autocratic ruler? Before I risk being labeled a fundamentalist, conservative, or luddite, let me say that I am no enemy of Progress as an ideal. But what I intend to argue is that our current attachment to Progress has lost sight of the telos with which it began; and perhaps no longer has a telos for which it is aiming at all. And that is a very dangerous state, indeed.

To understand what I mean, let’s use the example of a violin. One could theoretically use a violin for many purposes: it could be displayed on a wall as a piece of art, or used as a doorstop, or treated like a hammer. But we instinctively know that none of these things are the real purpose of a violin. It was meant to be played, to be used as a musical instrument. And what’s more, we know the difference between good violin playing and poor violin playing. A beginner student must learn the proper technique with which to hold the instrument, bow the strings, and so on. Within that, there is of course great freedom: an expert fiddler and a concert violinist are both using the instrument well, even if the concert violinist might technically be closer to the original intended use of the violin. Ultimately, though, we can say that the telos of a violin is to be played by a master violinist, regardless of their particular style. This is not just about utility (how is it most useful), but even more so about something deeper: the purpose for which that instrument was created.

Ancient Greek philosophy and Christian theology makes telos arguments about humanity, as well. Aristotle argues in the Nicomachean Ethics, perhaps the most fundamental text in virtue ethics, that the telos of human existence is a state of eudaimonia, often translated “happiness” or “flourishing,” and that the virtues are the way humans reach this state. Humanity, Aristotle argues, is most happy when they are virtuous, and therefore to be virtuous is to be happy. He then goes on to explain different categories of virtue: a person will not be happy nor virtuous if they are either cowardly or foolhardy; therefore, to be virtuous is to find the golden mean of bravery without tipping to either side.

Christianity takes this virtue ethics one step further: rather than setting up eudaimonia as the purpose of humanity, we are instead creatures made in the image of God, and therefore our purpose is to be in harmony with our creator. In this model the telos of humanity is Godliness as embodied by Jesus Christ, and thus what it means to be virtuous is shaped by Jesus: the virtue of bravery is defined in relation to Jesus’ bravery; peacefulness in relation to Jesus’ peacefulness; and so on.

But Christianity makes one further argument: the end, the telos, of the entire universe is already written. Because of Jesus Christ, the whole world shall be redeemed, and a new heaven and a new earth shall one day exist where sin and death are banished forever. Humanity will no longer have barriers between us and God, but will live in God’s presence at all times. In this vision for the world, there isn’t just a telos that we should strive for individually, but one for the entire world. And in fact, this end, this telos, is pulling us towards itself. In Christian theology, time does not simply move from the past toward the future; there is a future that is pulling history forward, as well, because there is an ending already written. We may not know how things will go, but we can see what the ending will be, and it is a happy ending for humanity and the world.

Now obviously I don’t expect 21st century tech billionaires to share my understanding of God’s telos for humanity. But something that differentiates the current drivers of “progress” from those of the past is a seeming lack of any telos whatsoever. When questioned about the purpose or end goal of AI, many of the same CEOs who are pushing the envelope fastest have no real answer about why or to what end they must advance this technology. There has been no real attempt to argue that the philosophical ideal of human flourishing, the theoretical goal behind most technological progress since Aristotle’s day, is behind the AI race. When Peter Thiel, tech billionaire and CEO of Palantir, was asked if he believed humanity should survive, his response was a very long pause, rather than a full-throated “yes.” So if human flourishing, or even human survival, is not the telos for AI or other tech innovation today, we must ask: what is?

It seems to me that the answer is simple: the only true telos that AI is being given right now is to line the pockets of technology company CEOs and shareholders, at the expense of anyone and everyone else. It’s true that AI can and does have some practical uses in certain fields, but I’m not here to argue against AI in and of itself. That would be like arguing that violins shouldn’t exist simply because they’re being played wrong. Rather, my argument is with those who created AI, and therefore gave it it’s purpose: if a violin’s telos is to be played by a virtuoso, it seems that AI’s telos is to extract wealth from others and put it in the pockets of tech billionaires.

Sadly, this seems to be the driving telos behind so many of our tech innovations these days. Streaming services, be it for music, television, or anything else, promise us unlimited access, but instead extract our dollars in subscription fees while underpaying artists and making content unavailable almost at random. Seemingly every household device or valuable resource, even cars, come with subscriptions or paywalled features. This state of affairs is not necessary; it is not a law of nature that technology should be owned by the few and merely rented out to the rest of us at a fee. Instead, we must recognize that there is a different telos underlying the actions of those at the forefront of technological “progress” than the one that had existed before, and that most of humanity believes ought to guide our progress.

As human beings, and especially for my Christian readers, it is incumbent upon us to push for changes in our society that will require these CEOs and drivers of so-called “progress” to align the telos of their creations with the shared telos of the rest of society. We must force them to answer the question: “to what end are you making this thing?” Is it for the benefit of humankind? Or simply the benefit of your bottom line? Once upon a time, those two things were not always at odds; I am under no illusion that the great inventors or tech giants of the past were purely altruistic in intention. That is why we must put in the work to shape a world in which our progress in technology and society move us toward a shared telos, so that we may flourish.

On the one hand, 2025 was a great year for the music I love: alt-country is having its moment in the sun, and I couldn’t be happier. On the other hand, I’ve never felt more distanced from the pop charts than I do right now, which is probably just a sign of getting older. I’m not sure I could name more than 2-3 of the biggest hits of the year, where normally I would least be aware of most of them whether I liked them or not. Anyway, the point is that my top 5 is just mine, and probably no one else’s. If you dig old-school indie folk or americana, you’ll find some stuff to love in here. With that caveat, let’s dive in!

Honorable Mentions

Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow

Josh Ritter - I Believe in You, My Honeydew

Big Thief - Double Infinity

Snocaps - Snocaps

5. Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band - New Threats from the Soul

A real series of texts from my friend Will when I sent him “The Simple Joy,” my favorite song from this album:

“I’m listening to that song you sent now.” “lol this is wild.” “I like it.” “wait this is a long-ass song.” “dig it.”

I think that just about sums it up, really. 7 songs but an hour long, New Threats from the Soul is alt-country seen through a fun-house mirror, but peppered with incredible lyrics like “I learned that time is not my friend or my foe, more like one of the guys from work.”

4. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Phantom Island

2025 was the Year of the Gizz for me (as I wrote about here). It’s hard to separate this album out from my overall feelings about discovering the band, but I do think Phantom Island holds up on its own as a really solid album. Officially their “orchestral rock” album, the orchestra is only really prominent on a few of the songs, but adds a lot to the arrangements when present. “Deadstick” is a classic-rock style banger in the best way possible, while a few of the ballads throughout use the orchestra to great effect.

3. The Beths - Straight Line Was a Lie

The Beths never fail. They’re 4 for 4 on great albums thus far in their decade-long career, and it’s all built on the strength of songwriting from lead singer Elizabeth Stokes. She combines amazing lyricism with sticky hooks and great riffs over and over again, as demonstrated on a song like “No Joy.” The difference this time, though, is the larger share of ballads and downtempo numbers compared to previous albums. While I wouldn’t want a whole album of just ballads, songs like “Mother Pray for Me” are proof positive that the Beths can do it just as well as their usual upbeat rockers.

2. Bon Iver - Sable, Fable

Look, I’m a simple millenial. I was in college when “Skinny Love” dominated the indie world. When Bon Iver puts music out, I’m gonna love it. For a while there, it seemed like Justin Vernon was done with the Bon Iver name altogether, but I’m so glad he had one more in him. This project is a bit of a strange one, as the first few songs were released separately as an EP title Sable back in 2024. The sound was reminiscent of his first songs, very acoustic-guitar forward, and “Speyside” quickly became a new favorite. But when the full album dropped, it turned out the rest of the material was wildly different: a sort of pop, R&B sound that somehow still felt of a piece with Bon Iver’s other work. “Everything is Peaceful Love” and “Day One” are probably the most uplifting songs in the band’s entire catalogue, while “There’s a Rhythmn” takes the cake for best overall track, in my opinion.

1. Fust - Big Ugly

It’s getting rarer and rarer these days for a new artist to take the top spot in my album rankings, but Fust’s Big Ugly is everything I want an alt-country album to be: lyrically brilliant, catchy without being too poppy, melancholy and hopeful in just the right places. The music has just enough rock edge that you won’t mistake it for “real” country, but more than enough country not to confuse it for anything else. And more than anything else, the songs are simply incredible and unforgettable: “Spangled” starts off with a wallop, while “Mountain Language” has one of the best choruses of the year plus a kick-ass solo.

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Unlike my other top 5 lists this week, I won’t be limiting myself to books originally published in 2025, mostly because I rarely wind up reading many books from that year in a given year. Instead, this will be the 5 best books I read in 2025, regardless of when they were published. If you’re an insanely literate person who keeps up with modern fiction more than me, then many of these will be familiar to you already. If you’re not one of those people, then just consider this in the spirit which it was written: as a way to introduce some more folks to some books I really loved this year. And so, without further ado, here’s my list:

Honorable Mentions

Trust - Hernan Diaz

Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda

5. French Exit - Patrick deWitt

There are basically no redeemable characters. They do not have relatable problems. The story hardly even feels tethered to real life, it’s so cartoonish. So how was this one of the most human, hilarious books I read all year? I suspect the answer comes down mostly to DeWitt’s impressive style and cutting humor, both of which are on full display here. One of the rare books I would genuinely describe as “un-put-down-able,” in the best and strangest way.

4. Us Against You - Fredrick Backman

I didn’t know that this book is technically a sequel when I picked it up (Beartown is the preceding novel), but it didn’t hinder the power of the story or these characters in any way that I could tell. If you think the story of a small-town hockey team in northern Sweden would only be interesting to sports fans, think again. This book manages to weave together the trials, triumphs and longings of an entire town as they face down multiple crises in a way that will have you empathizing with every single character, even the ones you think you never could.

3. The Hummingbird’s Daughter - Luis Alberto Urrea

Is it magical realism, or a true story? Urrea mines his own family history, real research with native healers, and a knack for likable characters to create a moving portrait of Mexico in the days before the Revolution, one that features true stories from Mexico’s history and Urrea’s family enlivened by his inimitable prose. Urrea does not shy away from the flaws of his family while reflecting on questions of identity, faith, devotion, and freedom. An epic in the best sense.

2. The Physics of Sorrow - Georgi Gospodinov

I don’t know if I understood everything in this book, but no other novel has stuck with me this year in the same way this one has. Gospodinov is a Bulgarian author, and the Physics of Sorrow is both a personal story, a story about Soviet and post-Soviet Bulgaria, and a retelling of the Greek minotaur myth. If that sounds like a lot, well... it definitely is, and that’s before we get to the central conceit that the author has the capacity to inhabit other beings in order to fully experience their emotions. It’s strange, it’s sad, but it’s deeply impressive and deeply moving, and I found myself drawn ever further into the labyrinth Gospodinov was constructing with every page.

1. Glorious Exploits - Ferdia Lennon

An absolute crowning achievement in both idea and execution, bar none. What sounds at first like a humorous little romp - imagine if a couple of losers in ancient Syracuse tried to get Athenian prisoners to put on a Greek tragedy - is somehow the saddest, funniest, truest novel I’ve read in a long time. The writing is impeccable - Lennon doesn’t try to make his characters sound “Syracusan” at all, instead opting for some anachronistic modern Irish dialogue that lets his characters feel real and recognizable. The blend of humor, pathos, creativity and excellent prose is really something else, and if you only read one book on this list let it be this one.

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Compared to the past few years, my movie viewing stats were way down in 2025. I think I went to the theater less than 10 times total last year, which might be a record low for me. However, I saw just enough movies to fill out a top 5, and I think there were a few real gems amongst the filler. 2025 was the year of theater closures here in San Diego - not only did the Landmark, one of SD’s last independent theaters, close down, but so did the chain theater in the Clairemont square, the site of so many of my movie-going experiences as a young person. In honor of the theater-going experience, I’ve limited my top 5 to movies I watched in theaters, not stuff I saw on streaming at home. Some of those movies have made the honorable mentions list.

Honorable Mentions

K-Pop Demon Hunters

The Naked Gun

Thunderbolts*

5. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

It’s impossible for me to give an unbiased take on this movie, as a longtime Bruce Springsteen obsessive, but I found it to be affecting in the way it focused on Springsteen’s struggles with mental health. The decision to focus on one specific, strange moment in his career (the making of Nebraska) as opposed to the standard biopic tropes gave it a stronger identity as a film, and Jeremy Allen White gives an incredible performance as the Boss. If you’re not into Springsteen at all, you can probably skip this; but if you have a passing interest in his music or even just the way mental health and creativity overlap, then it’s worth your time.

4. Superman

If you want to roll your eyes at a superhero film making my top 5 in 2025, I can’t blame you. They’ve been done to death, resurrected, then done to death again over the last two decades. But that’s actually part of what made this particular Superman film so special: the way it actively avoided, even implicitly criticized, the bulk of comic book movies from recent years. The film goes out of its way to show Superman care for all living things, when most superhero films seem to revel in offscreen destruction and implied deaths. Superman is portrayed here is first and foremost a good person, and it is the commitment to Superman’s virtuous nature that makes him stand apart far more than his superpowers.

3. The Phoenician Scheme

Probably my favorite Wes Anderson since The Grand Budapest Hotel, and in part for the same reasons: like that earlier film, The Phoenician Scheme has real movement to it, a zippy plot aided by interesting characters and a solid dose of humor. By now, most people know what they’re getting with a Wes Anderson movie, but this one eschews some of the elaborate layers of recent movies to just focus on one exciting, quirky story, and it’s all the better for it.

2. One Battle After Another

Were it not for the late entrant that made #1 on this list, this would have been the runaway choice for movie of the year, for me. Leonardo DiCaprio leads a stellar cast through a fast-paced tale of disillusionment and paranoia that feels like it was being made while 2025 happened, somehow. Paul Thomas Anderson has a lot to say about our current moment, whether it be the strange evil of a white supremacist government (presented here in the ridiculous garb of the “Christmas Adventurers Club”), ICE raids (Benicio Del Toro’s amazing turn as a local dojo instructor who leads his community in the face of deportation roundups), or the fragility of modern liberalism (an incredibly funny sequence when DiCaprio’s Bob is stymied by a young rebel who seems more interested in policing Bob’s language than helping him). The whole movie projects both the disillusionment of post-Obama politics and also the value of continuing the fight, because the battles never stop coming whether we look for them or not.

1. Wake Up, Dead Man

I already wrote a longer piece on what I think is the best movie of the year, and certainly the best movie about ministry I’ve ever seen. The fact that such a nuanced take on faith, religion, and what it means to be a pastor is found within a murder mystery is already wild enough; that the mystery is compelling, the characters hilarious and relatable, and the conclusion satisfying on top of all that, is a marvel.

There is a moment halfway or so through Wake Up Dead Man, the third installment in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out movie series, that stopped me in my tracks and nearly brought tears to my eyes. Without spoiling too much: the main character of the film, Father Jud Duplenticy, who has been accused of murder, is on the phone attempting to uncover some potentially important information about the murder. Standing next to him is Detective Benoit Blanc, the recurring lead character of the Knives Out movies - Blanc is not a man of faith, but an avowed rationalist, and the dynamic between Blanc and Father Jud is central to the film.

But in this moment of the story, they are both impatiently attempting to solve the mystery, and the woman on the other end of the phone is driving both of them insane with her rambling and inability to get to the point. Johnson does an incredible job of making the audience feel the antsy energy of both Jud and Blanc as they try to remain patient and get to the point; it is a scene that is played for laughs, with the unwitting and hapless woman on the other end of the phone creating a comedic roadblock to the mystery moving forward.

And then suddenly, in a moment, it all shifts. Just as we think we’re about the finish the scene with this woman on the phone, she slows down, becomes apprehensive. After a moment’s hesitation, she sheepishly asks Father Jud if he will pray for her. There is a beat of silence, as Blanc and Jud exchange a glance - Blanc clearly impatient to move on. But something in Father Jud’s countenance shifts, and he patiently begins to do the work of ministering to this woman who he does not know. We watch as he moves from amateur detective back to priest, his voice becoming gentle and caring rather than impatient and hurried. After a few moments, he steps into another room, leaving Blanc staring incredulously at the empty space. For Father Jud, at least, the mystery must wait - he must step into his true calling to comfort a grieving soul.

I found this scene incredibly moving for a couple of reasons. First, it’s remarkably well acted by all involved. With each character, including the voice of the woman who mostly works off-screen, we can see, hear and feel the shifts in tone and mood that all feel very natural. Second, and perhaps more niche, is that it is a remarkably accurate portrayal of life in ministry. Regardless of people’s religious faith or lack thereof, simply stating that I work in ministry is often enough to encourage people to either tell me everything they believe about faith, or pour out their stories the way the woman did in the movie. Being in ministry means being a lighting rod for people’s burdens, their concerns, and their complaints about God. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another movie or tv show demonstrate that reality with such honesty and grace.

But this is far from the only reason that Wake Up Dead Man is worth celebrating. In my experience, most movies that touch on organized religion make one of two errors: they focus on the darkness and hypocrisy of the church to the exclusion of any of its positive qualities, or (more rarely) they lionize the church and pastors as bastions of morality or community without reckoning with the darker aspects of modern Christianity. Rian Johnson avoids both of these traps by making the movie explicitly about the dichotomy of modern Christianity: the thundering, bullying Monsignor Wicks on one side; the gentle, welcoming Father Jud on the other.

In both cases, they are portrayed as heightened versions, the platonic ideal if you will, of the two warring sides of modern American Christianity. Wicks is the inflated ideal of a certain kind of militant, conservative Christianity that unfortunately represents a good portion of the Christianity people outside the church see today. He rails against the culture that is chipping away at Christian values, sidelining the faith and making room for “feminist, marxist whores,” as he so neatly puts it. In another pivotal scene, Wicks makes his beliefs painfully and viscerally clear: the world is beating the church down; are we going to fight back?

Father Jud, on the other hand, represents the kind of Christianity that seeks to care for the world, rather than dominate it. Several times in the film Jud says this directly, stating that Christ came to serve the world, not rule it. In what is perhaps the thesis of the film, Father Jud (a former boxer) is told that the church needs more “this (open hands, as if for a hug) and less of this (fists up, in a fighter’s pose.)

This debate between two visions of the Church is further complicated when it comes into contact with Benoit Blanc, the idealized unbeliever. Blanc is not vicious, but we do get some hints that there is religious trauma in his past. We mostly see Blanc engage with faith in his conversations with Father Jud, and the two of them are in many ways kindred spirits. These conversations and differences (like the scene I detailed earlier) make for some of the best parts of the movie. On the flip side, Blanc and the forces of Wicks’ brand of Christianity barely engage with questions of faith together; they show a mutual disdain for one another that colors the mystery as well as their relationship to him as an outsider seeking to solve the case.

In the end, Rian Johnson makes no real attempt to hide which version of the church he finds more compelling. If you’re looking for a movie that leaves that debate unsolved, this is not your film. However, even without knowing Johnson’s faith background or current beliefs, I give him major kudos for finding ways to write such nuanced conversations about church, faith and religion in a fully secular murder mystery story. Johnson engages these questions better than a lot of churches, if I’m being honest. Too many churches are unwilling to face up to the fact that there is a growing divide, a tale of two churches, happening across America. Even in the Christian world, we are separating and spending less time interacting with our ostensible brothers and sisters in faith who fall into the other camp. Let us heed Rian Johnson’s willingness to engage this debate and do the same ourselves, lest the Christianity of the open arms and that of the raised fists should eventually become unrecognizable to one another.

However, this past Thursday I was reminded of how strange, even controversial, Christ’s death can be. I was taking part in a small young adult group, and this conversation arose regarding the cross: why, if Jesus had to die, did he have to die upon a cross? It’s a worthwhile question, because even though we are all overly familiar with the cross as the defining symbol of Christianity, it did not necessarily have to be that way. In fact, it took a very particular set of circumstances for Jesus to even wind up crucified in the first place.

Something we often overlook in the story of Jesus’ trial and execution is role of the State (in this case, the Roman Empire). Again, if you grew up in church, you might not be able to comprehend the story without Pontius Pilate washing his hands, and offering the crowd a choice between Jesus and Barabbas the criminal. Yet, there was no definitive need for the Pharisees to bring Jesus to Pilate in the first place; on the surface, his crime (as they claimed) was a purely religious one. Jesus was accused of blasphemy, of misusing the name of God and even claiming to be God. If the religious leaders had felt confident in themselves, they could have simply taken Jesus to the city gates and had him stoned to death - this would have been the normal punishment for blasphemy, and the Romans wouldn’t have to be involved at all. Romans normally let their subjects obey local customs as much as possible, and we see elsewhere in the New Testament that the Pharisees and other religious leaders were capable of stoning people to death without taking them before the civil authorities. So why didn’t they do that with Jesus?

The surface-level reason that the religious leaders take Jesus to Pilate is because of his popularity with the people; they fear that if they tried to take Jesus and stone him to death, not enough people would be willing to cast their stones. If anything, they might spark violence against themselves for doing violence to such a popular figure. So, they drum up the charges against Jesus, accusing him of fomenting rebellion against Rome and claiming to be the Messiah. (It is worth noting that “Messiah” would have been understood in a very political way in the first century; everyone, including Jesus’ disciples, thought the Messiah was going to be a king in the mold of David, who would drive out the Romans and reestablish an independent Jewish kingdom.)

When the Jewish leaders first bring Jesus to Pilate, he sees no reason to execute Jesus. However, after Jesus is taken before Herod and then brought back again, Pilate gives in to the demands of the people (stirred up by the religious leaders) and agrees to have him crucified. Notice that in his gospel, Luke goes out of his way to show all the facets of power in first-century Israel touching Jesus’ execution: the chief priests, obviously, but also Herod, who was the vassal king of the region, and Pilate, representing the long arm of Roman power. Each of these three powers play their part in Jesus’ death: the religious leaders have their sights set on Jesus, Herod at first seems curious about Jesus but mocks him when he doesn’t get what he wants, and Rome acquiesces to the people’s wish and uses its violence to quash a potential threat, however minor they perceive it to be. Crucifixion was a uniquely Roman form of punishment, reserved mostly for violent or political criminals. So for Jesus to wind up on a cross as his method of execution required the local authorities to join forces with the powerful, distant Roman government.

All of this, though, is the explanation for how Jesus winds up on a cross; but why did it happen this way? Is there a deeper meaning or symbolism we might find in the fact that Jesus was crucified? I’ll offer a few thoughts in closing that help us reflect on Jesus’ particular form of kingship.

First, Jesus dying on a cross meant that his resurrection was not simply a spiritual victory over sin, or a physical victory over death, but a political victory over the “principalities and powers” of this world (as St. Paul would call them). Jesus is truly “king of kings” and “lord of lords,” because all the kings and lords of his day played their part in his death, and so it is a rebuke to them all that he did not remain dead. Are we meant to obey Rome (or our modern equivalent), or Jesus? Christ’s death and resurrection on a cross, a Roman device of all things, gives us the answer to that question.

Second, Jesus’ trial and death on a cross were very public events - this was not some disappearance or an obscure death far from the view of others. There is no sense in any recounting of Jesus’ story, whether from the gospel writers or from non-Christian writers in the early centuries, that Jesus’ death was somehow faked, staged, or incomplete. (Certainly, some have made these claims in later years; but it is not a claim you will find much, if at all, in the earliest sources about Jesus. You are far more likely to find claims that Jesus resurrection was faked or staged, as opposed to his crucifixion). The public nature of Christ’s execution only adds to the magnificence of his resurrection as a rebuke of both the earthly and satanic powers that put him to death.

Finally, crucifixion is a particularly painful form of death, one that usually took hours if not days to be completed. As a few people in that young adult small group pointed out, the choice of the cross as an execution method reveals that Jesus was willing to go through anything - even the worst form of punishment - on our behalf. Christ the king is not a distant lord who rules over us with an iron fist, but a sacrificial, loving king who is willing to go through hell (literally) for us. So while we can be encouraged by the truth that Jesus has defeated the powers of sin and death, and we can be emboldened by the knowledge that Jesus has rebuked and overcome the earthly powers that hold us down, we can be comforted most of all by the reality that Jesus was and is willing to go to any lengths on our behalf; a truly noble and beautiful sacrifice that ought to make us unendingly grateful to the King who rules over us with such grace and sacrificial love.

But that’s all changed now. In fact, I think I’ve stumbled on the mother of all bands to get obsessive with; a band with a catalog so expansive, so eclectic, so overwhelming, that it’s almost impossible to imagine getting through it all, let alone really digesting it. This is a band whose name I knew (I mean, once you’ve heard it once you’ll never forget about it), but whose music I was entirely unfamiliar with. I imagined them as maybe a jam band, possibly a metal band, definitely psychedelic; and it turns out they are all those things and then some. I am, of course, speaking of the one and only King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

If you, like me once upon a time, see that name and are already overwhelmed and a little turned off, hear me out before you click away! I want to give you a few places to start, because it turns out the biggest secret being hidden behind their crazy name and their crazy artwork is that they are, in fact, crazy good. But before I do that, let me tell you how and why King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (who are often abbreviated as KGATLW, but I refuse to do that here because it’s too much fun to say King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard) became my latest musical obsession.

In late July, the Gizz became the latest band to pull their music off of Spotify. I’ve never written about it here, but anyone who has met me in real life has probably heard my anti-Spotify ranting and raving. I have about a hundred reasons why I think Spotify is bad, but the reason King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard gave for leaving the platform was a good one. To quote them directly: “A PSA to those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology.” That’s an extremely good, cool reason to not support Ek’s platform! And while a lot of artists can’t really afford to leave Spotify, since that’s where almost everyone would discover their music, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard can do so because they have a robust, faithful following for their tours, and release their music independently.

When I read about that news, I was definitely interested in learning more. But then, KGATLW (I did, in fact, get tired of typing out the whole name) did something even cooler: they made all of their music “Name Your Price” on Bandcamp so that it remained accessible to everyone who wanted it, without having to go on Spotify. If you’re unfamiliar with Bandcamp, it is a music distribution site where bands can sell their music digitally and physically, with a lot of control over how they make use of it. Almost every month since the pandemic began, Bandcamp has run a “Bandcamp Friday” on the first Friday of every month, where they waive their own fees so that even more money goes to the artists you are buying from. If you buy physical music or digital downloads at all and you’re not making use of Bandcamp Friday, you really should consider it.

But to get back to the main point: here was a band who was taking a stand I fully supported, and who were making their music as accessible as it was ever going to be. I finally decided, “if not now, when?” If I ever wanted to get a taste of the KGATLW experience, there was never going to be a better opportunity. But, as previously mentioned, their catalog is extensive. They have released 27(!) studio albums since 2010, not to mention a whole bunch of live shows, demo compilations, etc. Everything I read about them said their music is so varied and unpredictable that you can’t simply listen to one album to get a real sense of who the band is. There are so many options to choose from that a fan literally built a website (getintogizz.com) to help newcomers find their way through this massive discography.

Now while I certainly recommend you check out that site (it helped me get started), if I have persuaded you to check out this wild band at all, allow me to recommend a few albums and individual songs as starting points for your journey into the Gizzverse (which is a real thing, by the way). Admittedly, I’ve only listened to about 10 of their albums so far, which might feel like a lot until you remember that there are 27 of them. So I’m undoubtedly going to miss things that real Gizz-heads would recommend, but if you’re reading this far I’m hoping you trust me enough to provide a glimpse into how this band has taken over my brain.

Album: I’m In Your Mind Fuzz

This is the album that getintogizz.com recommends people start with, and it’s where I started, and now I’m writing all these words, so there’s something to it, right? Here’s the thing: on the one hand, this is a great album, and it gives you some idea of their creative ability (the first four songs are a continuous piece of music that just keeps barreling along, and it’s great). On the other hand, though, if you’re not into psychedelic rock or the kind of modern garage-rock style, you may not find much to love here. I happen to be into that stuff, so this worked as my entry point. It may not for you.

Song: “The River,” from Quarters!

The album Quarters! is another example of the band’s creative drive, and just a great example of how creativity comes from placing self-imposed limits on yourself. The album is four songs, all of which are exactly 10 minutes and 10 seconds long. The first song on the album, “The River,” is easily the best on the album, and a great representation of another side of the band: their jazzy side. The whole thing is way, way smoother and more pleasantly melodic than anything on Mind Fuzz, and they really show off their chops with time signature changes and jammy sections that all feel well thought out and structured.

Album: Nonagon Infinity

The album most recommended as a starting point when I did my own research, this album is quite literally non-stop action: the whole thing is designed as an infinite loop, each song bleeding into the next one. That includes the last song back into the first, so if you do give this a listen be sure to turn on your “repeat” option so that the album starts over when it ends. Like I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, the album is pretty heavy on rockers and uptempo, psychedelic-inflected guitars, but the quality of songwriting here, and the conceptual brilliance of the album, make it a classic.

Song: “Nuclear Fusion,” from Flying Microtonal Banana

Yes, you read the name of the album correctly. And yes, the entire album is based around microtonal music (that is, music using notes that are between the notes of the traditional Western music scale). But don’t let that scare you too much. Sure, some of it sound weird, but “Nuclear Fusion” in particular shows just how catchy, groovy, and almost normal it can sound, while still being some of the craziest and most complicated music you’ve heard in a while. This song also hints at something present on a lot of Gizzard albums: they are super groovy. Some of their albums are straight-up boogie (see Fishing for Fishies as an example), and plenty more lean hard into groove more than just pounding hard rock (though they do plenty of that).

So there you have it, an entire 1,500 words on my latest musical obsession. I hope I’ve convinced some of you to join me in exploring this wild, unpredictable band who are taking a big moral stand, and doing right by their fans in the process. If not now, when?

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Almost immediately after the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday, as everyone was still coming to terms with the latest incident of political violence in our nation, I became aware of a reaction to Kirk’s death that I didn’t expect. I’m not on social media anymore (and boy, has that been good for my mental health; get off social media, everyone!), so I didn’t have to see everyone’s takes as they cropped up, but I know enough about people to know what most of the reactions were going to be. Most people would express horror and sadness at the event; some crazy people on the left would callously say they’re glad he’s dead; some crazy people on the right would immediately blame Democrats despite knowing nothing about his killer yet; the President would sadly be one of those crazy people on the right.

Thanks to friends and family who are still on social media and share their horrified reactions with me in the real world, I was made aware of a certain response that I could not let stand without comment: the idea that Charlie Kirk is a Christian martyr. In the eyes of those who make this claim, Kirk’s Christian faith was central to his politics and his work as a conservative activist, and thus his assassination was the killing of a man for his Christian beliefs. Unsaid but implied in this statement, of course, is that those responsible for Kirk’s death (both the individual shooter and the greater social forces that lead to his action) are working to persecute and/or eradicate Christianity in the United States.

I am not here to question Charlie Kirk’s faith. I have no doubt that he was a devout believer, even if he and I would probably not attend the same church or agree on much of anything about what our shared faith means in the world of action. I’m also not here to debate Kirk’s political views. You don’t need to dig too far into my writing here or elsewhere to guess that he and I wouldn’t see eye to eye on politics. No, what I’m here to argue today is that calling Charlie Kirk a Christian martyr is both a lie that obfuscates Kirk’s real work and goals, and an affront to the multitude of men and women throughout history who have been true Christian martyrs.

Let’s start with Kirk himself and his work. Charlie Kirk was the founder of Turning Points, USA, an organization that helped rally, organize and strengthen young conservatives, especially on college campuses. Charlie Kirk was famous for going across the country to debate and hold town halls in typically more liberal-leaning spaces, and he hosted a very popular podcast. All of that is explicitly political work, even if Kirk was not a politician himself. I’m sure Charlie Kirk himself, and many of his fans and followers, would claim that his Christianity was central to his politics, but he was explicitly not working in the sphere of religion. Unless I’m missing something in his resume, Charlie Kirk was not out in the world attempting to convert people to the Christian faith as much as he was trying to win converts to conservative social and political ideas.

In a deeply ironic way, if Kirk is to be seen as a publicly Christian figure, it would be in the same societal role played by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights movement. Dr. King was more explicitly religious, given his origins as a preacher and pastor before becoming a political figure, but once in the public eye King’s role was definitely a political one. Again, King was clear that his Christianity drove his politics and social ideas, but his organizing was not about converting people to Christianity: it was about improving the lot of black people in America via social and political change. When King was assassinated, it was an act of political violence, not an act of religious violence. King was a martyr for a cause, but the primary things for which he was known (and for which he was killed) were his political and social views, not specifically his religion. Thus, if Charlie Kirk’s supporters want Kirk to be remembered as a Christian martyr, they must grant the same to Dr. King, which is ironic given that Charlie Kirk quite famously had some less-than-flattering thoughts on King.1

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By contrast, those who we hold up as Christian martyrs across the centuries are those who very specifically died on behalf of Christ. The word martyr literally means “witness,” and the word was applied to those who died for their faith because they both acted as witnesses to Christ’s death, and made witnesses out of those who saw their deaths and the way they behaved. Famously, the early Christian martyrs were persecuted by Roman authorities who mostly just wanted them to declare the validity of the Roman pantheon in order to avoid public nuisance. Many of the early Roman attempts at persecution offered the condemned an easy out: you don’t even have to fully renounce your God, just say a few words in support of the emperor and Jupiter, and off you go to keep being a weirdo on your own time and out of the public eye. Yet these early Christians refused to bend their principles, and stood loudly to declare that Yahweh was the only God, and Jesus Christ his one true son and God incarnate.

One famous story is that of Perpetua and Felicity, two women of faith who were martyred in the early 3rd century in Carthage. Perpetua was the daughter of a nobleman and a Roman citizen, recently married and with an infant child, while Felicity was a pregnant slave woman. Perpetua’s father begged her to recant, a simple move that would have saved her life. Most likely, had she chosen to, she could have saved Felicity’s life as well, given their familial clout. However, both women refused, proudly declaring that God was above all, even their familial ties. Perpetua defied her father, her husband, and even her motherly duties in order to stay true to her faith, and Felicity sacrificed the life of her unborn child rather than recant. In dying together, these women also renounced the class differences between them, dying as equal martyrs and remembered as saints together.

What the story of Perpetua and Felicity tells us about Christian martyrs is this: they sacrificed everything on behalf of Christ, and it was their faith alone which led to their suffering and death. The story of these two women has resounded across the centuries because their dedication to the truth of Christ was greater than all the strongest societal forces of their day: filial piety, class distinctions, motherly duty, and more. But they did not die to liberate women; there is no sense that their decision was based on rebelliousness or political consciousness. Rather, it was dedication to Christ which led to this martyrdom.

The very first martyr, Stephen, is recorded as uttering a final prayer for forgiveness towards those who were stoning him to death. From Stephen to the present, whether the persecution was happening at the hands of the Roman government, ancient Jewish religious authorities, medieval Islamic armies, fascist or communist governments in the 20th century, or anyone else, martyrs unfailingly pointed others back to Christ by not just their lives but especially by their deaths.

This is why, no matter what you think of him or his political views, Charlie Kirk was not a Christian martyr. In his final moments, though he didn’t know they would be his final moments, Charlie Kirk was giving a political answer to a political question. The martyrs unfailingly died with Christ on their lips; Charlie Kirk was killed with politics on his.

I believe things have changed in the decade-plus since, but back in 2014 my research only turned up one viable option for a lefty store: Southpaw Guitars in Houston, Texas. And so, somewhat on a whim and with a distinct mission, I decided to take a road trip from San Diego to Houston to get myself a guitar. I reached out to a few friends, and two college buddies of mine tagged along for the ride in what became an annual tradition for the three of us.

I could tell so, so many crazy stories about that first road trip. We visited Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, and Phoenix while making it to and from San Diego in eight days, which is nuts when I think back on it now. And that doesn't include the fact that we got a flat tire on the very first day of the trip, which forced us to drive from the middle of New Mexico to El Paso at 55mph on the spare tire. By day six of that trip we were road-weary and more than a little loopy; we really didn't know what we were doing back then.

But the reason I'm telling you all of this is because, other than getting the guitar, New Orleans was the real destination of our road trip. It was the only city where we spent more than one night on the whole journey, and was a big selling point in getting my friends to come with me. I, like seemingly everyone else, am enchanted by New Orleans - the wild mix of French, Spanish, Creole and American influences plus the prevalence of music in the city make it hard to resist.

If you've ever been to New Orleans, you likely have spent some or all of your time in the French Quarter, where you'll find classic New Orleans spots like Cafe Du Monde and Jackson Square. Right off of Jackson Square, on a tight street called Pirate Alley, sits a late 19th-century building where William Faulkner once lived. In the late 1980s, it was converted into a bookshop, known as Faulkner House Books, which sells used and new books with a focus on Southern literature, and Faulkner specifically.

On our day in New Orleans, my friends indulged me as I dug through the shelves of Faulkner House, looking for my literary souvenir. My favorite bookshop growing up was Adams Avenue Books in the Normal Heights neighborhood of San Diego, which was a two-story house that had been converted into a bookshop, so Faulkner House had the nostalgia of my favorite shop going for it. The rows of books were tightly packed together in the old house, while light shone in through the french-style windows.

Perhaps surprisingly, or maybe I should have expected it, they were sold out of most of Faulkner's most famous works when I visited. But what they did have available was Mosquitoes, Faulkner's second novel, not well known these days. Set in New Orleans and on Lake Pontchartrain, Mosquitoes follows several artistic types from the New Orleans scene as they embark on a yacht cruise. There is little plot, as the novel focuses on the characters' conversations and interactions with one another as they try to maintain their facades and their artistic credentials.

Mosquitoes is not a great novel, and Faulkner really hadn't developed his own unique writing style at that point. His great works, like The Sound and the Fury, were to come a few years later. But even if it wasn't the book I was hoping to get, I think it was the perfect book to encapsulate that road trip. Like Faulkner, my friends and I still didn't really know what we were doing when we planned that trip. We learned a lot from it, and when we decided to do another road trip the next year we had a much better plan. The yacht cruise in the novel doesn't go particularly well, which feels somewhat akin to our wayward adventures in the car on that trip.

Maybe I'm grasping at straws a bit, and I definitely wouldn't recommend Mosquitoes to someone who hasn't read any Faulkner before, but that's the beauty of the bookshop atlas. Mosquitoes will forever hold memories of that first crazy road trip, far more than even the lovely Martin guitar I bought in Houston, simply because I wouldn't ever have picked it up otherwise. That's one of the great joys of actually going in to bookshops, no matter where you are in the world: you see and discover things you didn’t even know existed.