We are often told that history’s great crimes were committed by monsters.

This is comforting. Monsters are not us. Monsters are not our neighbors, our coworkers, our relatives, or the people we grew up with. Monsters do not emerge from ordinary homes or ordinary institutions. Monsters are rare, obvious, and easily identified.

But this story is false.

When governments talk about “national preparedness,” they almost always mean one thing: military readiness. Budgets swell. Weapons are procured. Forces are trained. And citizens are told that safety depends on obedience, sacrifice, and trust in institutions that remain safely distant from everyday life.

But there is another kind of preparedness—older, quieter, and far more resilient—that rarely gets discussed because it does not concentrate power.

A society is not defended primarily by soldiers.
It is defended by people who are healthy, stable, skilled, and connected.

Modern states insist that military service is about defense. But their own rules betray a deeper truth: what they fear most is not invasion—it’s independent moral judgment.

This becomes clearest when we look at how the United States defines a conscientious objector. To qualify, you must oppose all war without exception. You may not object because a particular war is unjust, illegal, imperial, or immoral. You may not invoke the Nuremberg Principles. You may not appeal to just war theory. You may not say this war crosses a line.

You may only say: war itself is wrong, always.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, and in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands were playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched fire-crackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand, and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies, a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause, in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half-dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat the anxious loved ones, their lips moving in silent and reverent prayer that the blessing of Almighty God might be and abide with those young men.

Then the preacher stood up in his place and offered up a prayer such as none but a preacher could offer, a prayer for victory, for safety to the troops, for glory to the flag; and he ended by beseeching the Great Commander of Battles to be with those who were to fight on the morrow.

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There are a lot of books about boundaries. Most of them frame boundaries as personal wellness tools: ways to reduce stress, avoid burnout, or keep difficult people at arm’s length. They often sound therapeutic, managerial, or vaguely corporate.

Things Boundaries Are Allowed to Do is not that kind of book.

Young people are often told they’ve been misled.
That they don’t understand economics.
That they’ve fallen for “socialist myths.”

But what’s usually missing from that lecture is this simple fact:

You cannot gaslight people who cannot pay rent or afford the dentist.

There is a sentence that should chill us whenever it appears in public life:

“They are not my kind.”

It is a sentence that sounds modern, political, and practical.
It is also ancient.

For much of Christian history, the death of Jesus has been described as the moment when God’s justice was satisfied — when a divine penalty was paid. But what if the deeper biblical story tells us something far more intimate, and far more subversive?

What if the cross wasn’t about God needing suffering — but about God entering ours?

The story begins in Genesis 3:15, when God speaks to the serpent:

Verse 1

Midnight! Christians, it is the solemn hour
When the God-man came down to us,
To erase the stain of the whole world’s sin
And to halt His Father’s anger.
All the world trembles with hope
On this night that gives it a Savior.
People, fall to your knees—await your deliverance!
Christmas! Christmas! Here is the Redeemer!
Christmas! Christmas! Here is the Redeemer!

Verse 2

Verse 1

In a manger so small, ‘neath a cold winter sky,
shepherds tremble as the angels cry.
No throne, no crown, just straw and hay,
yet the King of Heaven has come to stay.
The night holds its breath in wonder,
as the Word becomes flesh and light,
and the silence of the stable
breaks the darkness of the night.

Chorus
Mene, Mene — Christ is coming soon,
Tekel — your burden He removes.
Upharsin — all you built will turn to dust,
but grace still calls to us.

There’s a deep fear that many Christians quietly carry: What will happen when I stand before God on Judgment Day? Will every sin I’ve ever committed be replayed like a courtroom record? Will I face the shame of all I’ve done wrong?

A friend once voiced this worry in a discussion about Matthew 25 — the passage where Jesus separates the sheep from the goats. Their concern was simple but piercing: Even if I’m one of the sheep, won’t I still have to face everything I’ve ever done wrong?

I responded with a story about a judge who, after hearing the same facts repeated, finally said, “That’s just not relevant.”

Verse 1 – Herod’s Slaughter

Tiny cries in Bethlehem,
Footsteps in the night.
Herod’s sword in trembling hand,
Silences the light.

Refrain

“I lost my job this month, right at the start of what was supposed to be the best month of the year… The most confusing thing is that I thought the job I lost was an opportunity from God too… I keep praying but it just hurts.”
— A Reddit user

I came across that post a few weeks ago. It’s raw, honest, and deeply human — the kind of lament that fills the Psalms and still echoes in modern hearts.
But beneath the pain is a quiet theology that many of us have inherited without realizing it — a belief that faith is supposed to protect us from pain, and that suffering means something has gone wrong in our relationship with God.

That’s not biblical faith.
That’s prosperity logic dressed in devotional language.

Recently, I came across a Reddit post that perfectly captured a common but dangerous way of thinking about faith. It read:

“I lost my job this month, right at the start of what was supposed to be the best month of the year. It was going to be the month I proposed to my girlfriend, the month we finished moving into our first house, and the month I started studying again to achieve the new goals I had spoken to God about. The most confusing thing is that I thought the job I lost was an opportunity from God too… I keep praying but it just hurts.”

It’s heartfelt and painfully honest. You can almost feel the writer’s exhaustion — the shock of losing not only a job but a sense of divine direction. And yet, this post reveals something deeper than personal pain: it exposes a quiet strain of prosperity gospel thinking that has seeped into everyday Christian life.

Verse 1

Is that all you see?
Lights from a store
Not a soul,
Nothing more
She weeps as she falls at His feet
Anoints Him in oil,
Her heart at His knees
“What a waste,” they said, “this could’ve fed the poor”
But it was more than oil — it was love poured to the King
And Jesus said, “She’s done a beautiful thing.”

Chorus

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan

Earth stood hard as iron,

Every December, the same argument returns — the one about whether Christmas has become too commercial. For many, the lights, the music, and the shopping are proof that we’ve lost the “real meaning.” But maybe that’s not quite right.

I recently read Peter Kucenski’s “Be Unfair This Christmas”, a thoughtful meditation on how true generosity doesn’t calculate returns. It’s a strong piece, but it also risks drifting into that familiar anti-commercial sentiment — the moral pose that sounds holy but often ends up joyless. Sometimes, in trying to reject materialism, we accidentally reject love.

My favorite version of A Christmas Carol is the George C. Scott one. In a pivotal scene, Scrooge grumbles about all the gifts people are buying, muttering about waste and foolishness. The Ghost of Christmas Present stops him cold:

We like our prophets loud, certain, and righteous. We prefer them when their words flatter our feelings, when their fury aligns with our own. But truth rarely comes wrapped in charisma. It often hides behind contradictions — in people who seem to bend rather than break, who say what the times will allow and act on what conscience demands.

Booker T. Washington was one of those prophets.

He is too often dismissed as an accommodationist, a man who made peace with white supremacy. Yet history shows something more complex. Washington was strategic, even subversive. Publicly, he preached patience and industry; privately, he funded anti-racist lawsuits, supported Black journalists, and quietly bankrolled efforts to challenge segregation. His book Up From Slavery was not naïve self-congratulation. It was bait — a narrative designed to open white purses so that Black children could have schools.

Verse 1

They stand on the shore with their books in hand,
Preaching chains as a holy plan.
Quoting prophets they’ve never read,
While the poor cry out for daily bread.
They talk of heaven, they talk of grace,
But build their kingdoms on another race.
They call it order, they call it right,
But truth is revealed in the light.

Pre-Chorus

In the humble stable,
in cold and poverty,
the holy little child is born
whom the world will adore.

Hosanna, hosanna they sing
with joyful hearts,
your shepherds and angels,
O King of light and love.

Come, let us adore,
come, let us adore,
come, let us adore
the Lord.