Hollywood can erase Achilles, redefine manhood, and make the hero apologize. It still cannot escape Homer’s warning: Civilization dies when men reject sacred duties. Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” opened to more than $120 million at the domestic box office. Millions will see it, and for many, Nolan’s version will become the only “Odyssey” they know. The fight over this film is therefore a fight over who gets to explain Western civilization to the next generation.

Christopher Nolan may change Homer’s story, but he cannot change the truth beneath it. Hollywood can rewrite the hero. It cannot rewrite the law above him.

Hollywood wants Homer’s name. It wants his monsters, battles, kings, ships, blood, and glory. It simply does not want Homer’s moral world.

The clearest example comes in the land of the dead. In Homer’s telling, Odysseus meets Achilles, the greatest champion of the Greeks. Nolan removes Achilles and substitutes Sinon, a figure absent from Homer’s poem and known chiefly from Virgil’s later “Aeneid.” The film recasts Sinon as an innocent sacrifice and moral conscience, and Odysseus calls him the greatest soldier he ever knew.

“Elliot” Page plays Sinon. This is not an argument about Page’s dignity or talent. Every person bears the image of God. It is an argument about symbolism. Movies communicate through casting as surely as through dialogue. One of Western civilization’s defining male warriors disappears. A newly elevated character replaces him, becomes the moral center, and receives the story’s highest praise for soldierly greatness.

Whatever Nolan intended, the cultural message is hard to miss: The old hero must be displaced, the old understanding of manhood rewritten, and the victorious Western warrior made to apologize for winning.

Homer never presents Odysseus as flawless. He is proud, deceptive, and reckless. His cunning saves lives; his arrogance costs them. Those flaws do not erase his heroism. They make him human. The Western tradition has always understood that a great man can also be a gravely flawed man. The Old Testament’s King David proves the point.

Modern culture increasingly treats male imperfection as proof that male greatness itself is suspect. Nolan therefore turns Odysseus into another Robert Oppenheimer: a brilliant man psychologically crushed by what his brilliance accomplished. The Trojan horse becomes less a triumph of courage and cunning than an original sin haunting its inventor. Victory becomes guilt. Authority becomes a burden. Odysseus returns home only to surrender the throne to Telemachus and leave Ithaca with Penelope. A king becomes an exile.

That is a moral inversion of Homer.

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Homer did not need to weaken men to honor women. Penelope is already one of the strongest women in Western literature. For 20 years, she protects her household, preserves her son’s inheritance, resists the suitors, and outwits the men trying to seize her husband’s kingdom.

When Odysseus returns, Penelope tests him by ordering their marriage bed moved. He knows it cannot be moved because he built it around the living trunk of an olive tree. Homer gives us a courageous husband and an intelligent wife. Their strengths differ, but their dignity does not.

Modern ideology often imagines equality only as interchangeability, as though men and women must become the same or one must dominate the other. Homer offers something richer. Masculine courage does not diminish women. Feminine fidelity does not diminish men. Odysseus and Penelope are great together because their distinct strengths serve the same home.

Why, then, do the secular elite keep returning to the Western classics only to dismantle them?

Because the classics teach that we are not self-created. We inherit a family, a history, a nation, a body, and obligations that precede our desires. That lesson is intolerable to an ideology built on radical autonomy.

A young man who admires Odysseus may conclude that courage, loyalty, fatherhood, and duty are good. A young woman who admires Penelope may discover that faithfulness, wisdom, and defending a household are forms of strength. A child who learns that even kings answer to the divine may ask whether presidents, professors, and politicians answer to an authority above themselves.

That is why the hero must apologize, the father must abdicate, the home must become a prison, and the divine must become a psychological projection. The secular elite do not merely dislike Western civilization. They need Westerners to lose confidence in it.

Yet Nolan’s film accidentally preserves one of Homer’s central truths. Characters repeatedly invoke “Zeus’ law,” which Nolan presents as a version of the Golden Rule. The Greeks called it xenia: the sacred duties binding host and guest. Hospitality demanded generosity from the host and restraint from the guest.

Penelope’s suitors are therefore more than rude houseguests. They are enemies of civilization. They occupy Odysseus’ home, consume his wealth, pursue his wife, and plot to murder his son. They exploit an inheritance they did not build while rejecting every duty that inheritance imposes.

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Our universities, museums, entertainment companies, foundations, and public institutions were built through generations of sacrifice, learning, faith, and trust. Today’s cultural elite inherited them and now use them to teach that Western civilization is uniquely wicked, Christianity oppressive, fathers tyrants, heroes frauds, and the family an instrument of domination. They are Homer’s suitors with graduate degrees. They feast inside the house while condemning the people who built it.

What Nolan calls Zeus’ law points toward a higher law. Christians do not worship Zeus. Homer’s gods are false and morally compromised. Yet even the Greeks understood a truth our enlightened age often forgets: Civilization depends on a moral law higher than human appetite.

Christ reveals that law perfectly: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” Paul goes farther: “In humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Christianity gives sacred obligation its true foundation. We honor the stranger because he bears God’s image. We honor marriage, family, country, and neighbor because every human relationship answers ultimately to God.

Without God, the Golden Rule becomes a fragile suggestion. Why should the powerful restrain themselves? Why sacrifice for future generations? Why preserve an inheritance instead of consuming it? A civilization cannot live forever on moral habits inherited from a religion it has abandoned.

America needs families who read the Bible, schools that teach the classics without apologizing for them, and churches that form courageous Christians rather than timid spectators.

Christopher Nolan may change Homer’s story, but he cannot change the truth beneath it. A man still needs a home worth returning to. A family still needs protection. A civilization still needs heroes. A nation still needs a God above itself.

Hollywood can rewrite the hero. It cannot rewrite the law above him.

To raise Christian children who become Christian adults, one simple habit matters most

For decades, a familiar story has shaped Christian family life. It involves Sunday morning in the pews. A week at Bible camp each summer. Wednesday night youth group with pizza and a lesson. Parents pour real love and intention into these routines.

Noble as the effort is, a recent study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion suggests they are only part of the picture. Researchers analyzed data from more than 16,000 Christians nationwide, comparing childhood religious experiences with adult outcomes. Church attendance mattered. So did stable families. But the strongest predictor of lasting adult faith asked nothing extraordinary of parents.

I walked away from the faith with the kind of cocky certainty God seems to install in everyone between the ages of 13 and 19.

It was simply this: They talked to their children about God.

Homilies at home

That finding immediately took me back to my own childhood.

The first picture that comes to mind isn't a sanctuary or a stained-glass window, but the front seat of the car on the way home from school. The back yard, where my father pulled weeds like the yard had personally offended him. The living room at 10:30 on a school night, all of us long past bedtime and pretending the clock didn't exist. My grandmother, with a cup of tea that was always either too hot or somehow already cold, telling me about the importance of the Bible.

Those conversations are the reason I still believe.

My parents were, and still are, very decent people. For many years, they were overworked and underpaid in the way most ordinary families know all too well. Bills on the counter. Shifts that ran long. Sleep that ran short. Children who treated the front seat like contested real estate.

And yet they always found the energy to talk to me about Christianity — not in a recited, hands-folded-in-our-laps sort of way, but as if God were actually in the room.

We talked about how Christianity shaped the West. The fall of Rome. Forgiveness, suffering, and why Christians built the first hospitals while emperors were busy building coliseums to watch people die in. We talked about why the values modern secular society treats as self-evident — human dignity, charity, and mercy toward strangers — didn't fall from the sky. They grew slowly out of Christian soil, across centuries of tending.

What my parents said at home stayed with me longer than any sermon. Ask around, and plenty of people will say the same.

Half-cocked heretic

I was a rebellious teenager, and I rebelled with real enthusiasm. I walked away from the faith with the kind of cocky certainty God seems to install in everyone between the ages of 13 and 19, presumably as a test of parental patience. Christianity struck me as restrictive and embarrassing. I mistook cynicism for intelligence — a standard rookie mistake among precocious teenagers. I got good grades and assumed an A in English qualified me to dismiss theology, philosophy, and 2,000 years of Christian thought.

And yet, even at my wildest and most stubborn, even when I was giving the New Atheists more attention than they ever deserved, something my parents had planted refused to be dug up.

I expected my mother to lose her mind during a particularly insufferable phase of all this. Instead, she sat me down and spoke to me like an adult. No yelling. No guilt-tripping. No dragging me back to church by the collar or, as Irish mothers sometimes prefer, the ear.

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Talking it out

Instead, she calmly walked me through the contradictions in the worldview I had been presenting to my friends. She pointed out, without raising her voice, where ego had been doing my thinking for me. And then, with the patience of a woman who had already won the argument before it started, she explained why atheism was a fool's errand.

That was the moment I rediscovered the faith. Fifteen years on, I have never looked back.

That is exactly what the new study captures. Faith transmission is relational before it is institutional. Children remember whether their parents actually believed the things they claimed to believe, or whether church was just another Sunday errand sandwiched between a leisurely breakfast and a last-minute homework check.

A kid can sit in a pew every week of childhood and still walk away convinced that religion is little more than an incredibly polite social club. Conversation breaks that spell. Conversation forces engagement. Questions surface. Doubts get aired. Faith becomes something a young person can actually argue with, wrestle against, and eventually own.

Being Nice Instead Of Godly Is A Theology For Losers

If you’ve ever sat in a pew wondering why your church seems allergic to the culture war, that’s not your imagination. It’s loser theology.

3 reasons liberal podcaster's tired anti-homeschooling rant doesn't make the grade

Jennifer Welch recently unleashed a tirade against Christian homeschooling families, calling homeschooling "trickle-down stupidity" and a "fundamental crazy Christian problem" and calling parents with traditional values "the worst, worst, worst." She even dismissed the decision to homeschool as selfish.

Welch isn't an education researcher or a homeschooling expert. She's a progressive podcaster whose "I've Had It" podcast has built a large audience by channeling liberal anger at conservatives into viral commentary. Her latest target just happened to be Christian homeschool families. But her latest broadside is still worth answering, if only to correct the caricature she presented of millions of families who have chosen a different path.

Welch's comments reveal a deeper, increasingly common assumption: the belief that educational institutions are better equipped than parents to shape children.

As a serious Christian who was homeschooled from kindergarten through 12th grade and intends to homeschool my own two children, I couldn't disagree more. In fact, Welch's contempt for families like mine is a reminder of exactly why I will never hand my children over to what have become taxpayer-funded ideological institutions.

The irony is hard to miss. At a time of collapsing birth rates, declining academic achievement, and a culture struggling to pass on its moral inheritance, America needs more strong families willing to invest their time, resources, and lives in raising the next generation.

Yet instead of encouraging those families, Welch chooses to mock them.

Here are three reasons Welch couldn't be more wrong about families like mine.

1. Homeschoolers outperform their peers in nearly every measure

Study after study has found that homeschoolers outperform their peers across a wide range of academic measures. The facts simply don't support Welch's dismissive caricature of homeschooling or her claim that it produces "trickle-down stupidity." Homeschooled students consistently perform well in standardized testing, reading, language arts, math, science, and social studies. Research has also found that homeschooled adults tend to be highly engaged in their communities and successful in higher education and professional life.

Interestingly enough, there were at least 16 U.S. presidents who received part or all of their education at home through their parents or tutors, which was a more common practice in early America.

Public schooling, by comparison, is a relatively recent invention — and one that is increasingly failing America's students. If we're going to question an educational model, perhaps we should begin with the one producing declining test scores and growing dissatisfaction.

If Welch believes homeschooling produces "trickle-down stupidity," she's overlooking a remarkable list of accomplished homeschool graduates. In addition to presidents, homeschooling has helped produce notable entrepreneurs, athletes, military leaders, and scholars for generations. More recently, figures such as Tim Tebow, Charlie Kirk, Serena Williams, Simone Biles, and Bethany Hamilton demonstrate that an education at home is hardly a barrier to excellence.

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2. Homeschooling puts our children's needs before our own

Welch calls homeschooling "child abuse" and "selfish," then goes on to admit she cannot imagine spending that much time with her own children: "For me personally, it was that I would have gotten up on my hands and knees and strapped them to my back and crawled to get them to school every day just to get them where I wasn't."

It's difficult to square those remarks with the claim that homeschooling parents are the selfish ones.

Parents who educate their children at home invest thousands of dollars in curriculum, books, and educational resources while often sacrificing an entire income so one parent can teach full-time. They willingly make those financial and personal sacrifices because they believe giving their children a strong education, solid character, and a biblical worldview is worth far more than the cost.

This is exactly why, long before we ever started dating, my husband and I had each independently decided that homeschooling would be non-negotiable for our future family. If we couldn't agree on homeschooling or Christian school for our children, it would have been a deal-breaker. That's how deeply we care about raising children who love God, love their country, think critically, and become exceptionally well educated.

That isn't selfish. It's putting our children's needs ahead of our own.

3. Parents — not the government — should raise children

Welch's comments reveal a deeper, increasingly common assumption: the belief that educational institutions are better equipped than parents to shape children. But our children don't belong to the state, to cultural elites, or to government institutions. Parents bear the primary responsibility for raising them. That isn't simply a Christian conviction; it's one of the foundations of a free society.

The Bible commands parents to teach their children diligently, pass on the faith, and train them in wisdom and truth, especially in a culture that has lost its bearings. Homeschooling is one way families can faithfully live out those convictions. As the late preacher Voddie Baucham famously warned, “If we continue to send our children to Caesar for their education, we need to stop being surprised when they come home as Romans."

Whenever people ask why my husband and I plan to homeschool our children, the conversation almost inevitably ends with the same question: "How will they socialize?" — as though homeschoolers spend their childhood hidden away from society.

My own experience was exactly the opposite. I interacted with people of all ages and walks of life through church, sports, music lessons, homeschool co-ops, volunteer opportunities, and countless experiences outside the walls of a traditional classroom.

I still remember living and working in Washington, D.C., and watching people's jaws drop when I told them I had been homeschooled.

"But you're so normal?"

Exactly.

Homeschooling isn't about hiding children from the world. It's about preparing them to enter it with strong convictions, intellectual curiosity, and a sense of purpose.

Jennifer Welch is free to mock families like mine. We'll keep raising our children according to our convictions — and we'll let the results speak for themselves.

Want to sell your book? Vilify the Christians who raised you.

Last year, here in Portland, I went to an author event at my local bookstore. The book was called "On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right." It was a memoir by Josiah Hesse.

The event description said the memoir was about Hesse’s “bleak and difficult childhood in a small, rural Evangelical community in Iowa.”

My guess is that his literary agent or his editor understood how hungry mainstream publishers are for books that attack and slander the Christian faith.

Apparently, Hesse suffered mental anguish as a child when he was told by church elders that he was going to be tortured in hell for his sins.

Breaking with his church and family while still in his teens, he struck out on his own, eventually becoming a successful writer and journalist. Now he had written a book exposing the Christian right.

Dissing Christians

Hesse was doing a national book tour. He was traveling the country doing interviews and podcasts. He had just been featured on National Public Radio.

Needless to say, the mainstream media loved this book. A full frontal attack on the Midwestern evangelicals is always welcome in their circles. Especially if the author escaped the oppression of the church and found shelter in the safe spaces of progressive liberalism.

The book event began with Josiah Hesse making a grand entrance into the bookstore’s event area.

I didn’t know what to expect from such an author in terms of appearance, but I was definitely not expecting the rock-star shag haircut, the crisp white shirt, the shimmering black dinner jacket, or the elegant cravat around his neck.

Had this guy come here on his yacht? His face had definitely been moisturized. He looked like he could be in an ABBA tribute band.

Getting to know the author

Hesse took the stage and began his talk. He described growing up as an evangelical Christian.

As a young man, he was sensitive and imaginative and didn’t fit in. His parents, meanwhile, were loyal evangelicals. His dad believed in the “end times” and the eventual rise of the Antichrist.

In his teen years, Hesse’s feelings of alienation from his family and community got progressively worse. It didn’t help matters that he developed a taste for wearing high heels and trying on his mother’s clothes.

Small-town boy

So it turns out that Josiah was gay! Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Eventually, he did what so many young gay people do: When he was old enough, he moved to the nearest big city. In this case, Denver.

There, he scraped by, working odd jobs and picking up writing gigs. Over time, he was able to develop his talent and eventually got a literary agent and published a book called "Runner's High" at a major publishing house.

Watching him talk, he seemed like an upbeat guy. He told funny stories. He didn’t seem traumatized by his Christian upbringing. He was just gay. And now he was a successful writer who was gay.

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Family ties

I also noticed the “breaking with his family” part of the story wasn’t quite as severe as promised. In his talk, he described returning home, hanging out with his dad, meeting up with old friends, reconnecting as best he could.

It was an interesting and relatable story.

So what happened to the evil Christian right? That’s what the book was supposed to be about. Where’s the trauma? Where’s the abuse? Where are the scars?

The Portland audience seemed restless and disappointed. Where was the evil? That’s what they came for. WE WANT OUR CHRISTIAN EVIL!

Not following the script

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know for sure what’s in it. Hesse did quote some statistics during his talk.

These statistics seemed designed to reassure the anti-Christian audience that he was on their side. Trump is bad. Conservatives are neanderthals. Christians are brainwashed and in some cases predatory.

But I was skeptical. I didn’t believe Hesse was really this simpleminded. He was clearly an intelligent guy. He wasn’t super political. He didn’t hate his family, or his town, or his old friends.

He had moved away from his rural community, as any talented gay person would do. He found his people in Denver. And now he was writing books and living his best life.

Go where the money is

My guess is that his literary agent, or his editor, or maybe Hesse himself understood how hungry mainstream publishers are for books that attack and slander the Christian faith.

They especially love books that confirm the stereotype: “small-town Christians = bigots + racists.”

These memoirs are so popular that there’s a formula:

The author is abused and humiliated by the sadistic locals.
The author breaks free of their bigotry and finds his way to the “good people,” i.e. college-educated liberals in coastal cities.
There, the formerly oppressed author can flourish and be his true self: gay, or nonbinary, or furry, or poly-whatever.
Everyone lives happily ever after.

That’s the genre that Josiah Hesse’s "On Fire for God" supposedly belongs to. (See also "Educated" by Tara Westover, another memoir with almost the exact same storyline.)

Did Josiah strictly adhere to that formula? More or less. My main impression of the author: He looked happy. His writing career was going great. He was on a national tour. He was staying in nice hotels. He was wearing a cravat.

And I’m sure his publishers got what they wanted too. Another book that confirms that educated people, good people, moral people are uniformly against the Christian right, which is apparently an ongoing threat to our nation.

The only problem is: Whenever someone writes a book about the “dangerous Christian right,” it turns out he is just describing another small town in Iowa — usually, a town where, if you actually went there, you would find kind, decent people who, when you brought up the “Christian right,” wouldn’t even know what you were talking about.

The question of the AI age: How much humanism is too much?

Five years ago this month, I finished the manuscript for “Human Forever: The Digital Politics of Spiritual War.” By fall, it was in print, available as an e-book, and inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain. It remains available today exclusively in Bitcoin on canonic.xyz.

Despite its narrow audience — then considered a kiss of death, today hailed as smart “niching down” — “Human Forever” has made an enduring impact.

Why assume that posthuman intelligence would honor what ‘we’ mean by progress as an ultimate good?

Working from a relative handful of influences, insights, and goals, I was able to see quite a ways around the corner of the next five years. That may seem surprising, given how much has changed since then, especially in AI.

But the book’s continued relevance in an age of rapid obsolescence has to do with its thesis being larger than tech. Its central question was what, if anything, could be bigger than technology — more fundamental, more authoritative, more inherent to who and what we are.

While many are now locked in debate over whether technology is upstream of politics or politics is upstream of technology, “Human Forever” explored the primacy over both of spiritual being, spiritual life, and spiritual order.

Few were discussing this dynamic in 2021. Many are discussing it now.

That is not surprising. As I argued in the book, and have continued to explore in the essays and posts it set in motion, the cultural and social resurgence of spirituality in all its dimensions — including those most of us were trained to believe would never return from the distant past — is largely attributable to the direction, speed, and scope of technological advancement.

Technology has now reached a point at which it is discrediting many of the sophisticated intellectual mechanisms once designed to justify human existence and supply human purpose without spirituality, revelation, or faith in the divine.

Today even — perhaps especially — those working at the frontier of AI development are gravitating toward spiritual structures, from the ancient Christian church to novel and idiosyncratic cults.

But momentum at the technological frontier still favors those who would rather replace all previous and existing religions than kneel with the faithful of any.

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Welcome to the party

I now notice two main trends relative to what I argued in “Human Forever.”

The first is a gratifying high-level awareness of what is at stake and what is needed to preserve our accustomed freedom and command in the digital age.

Recently, none other than Palantir CEO Alex Karp helped kick off a remarkable turn among key hyperscalers toward concepts and priorities laid out in the book: control of compute as an index of sovereignty; technological competition consolidating among a handful of civilization-states; the need to protect and preserve the shared memory, or ontology, of people and organizations; and the spiritual risk of a new kind of slavery typified by what cybernetics theorists call homeostasis — an unceasing feedback loop optimizing for predictability, uniformity, and interchangeability.

In the book, I emphasized that Bitcoin offered ordinary human beings an exemplary opportunity to re-establish healthy freedom and command under digital conditions. Bitcoin is relatively mature, stable, comprehensible, and ready to use now, without requiring trust in massive organizations with equally massive trust gaps.

I am still waiting for leading tech figures to sing that tune. On the other hand, perhaps it is best for ordinary people to figure it out for themselves, without monitoring or supervision.

The secular trap

The second trend is more uncanny and unnerving.

A funny paradox has emerged. Many of those most euphoric about developing AI into a recursively self-improving cosmic intelligence — one that removes our pain, solves our problems, and likely erases many of the limits of human being — simply assume that the machines will preserve their very human ideas about “improvement” itself.

They seem to believe that machines designed to surpass us in every way will somehow neither surpass nor contradict them when defining the core concepts and purposes at the heart of the AI project.

Improvement, advancement, perfection — these and related ideas define the AI-maxxing ideology. But for us, absent divine teaching about what they truly mean, they remain inescapably human ideas.

If “we” are building entities with the goal of liberating them from the petty confines of human intellect, agency, and identity, why would we expect them to retain modern secular-human notions of value and progress?

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Why assume that posthuman intelligence would honor what “we” mean by progress as an ultimate good?

Strangely, the stubborn reliance on merely human definitions at the heart of the ostensibly posthuman agenda mirrors the same reliance among many of the most visible and well-funded anti-AI movements, which rally around symbols of human identity such as a caveman’s handprint.

Neither side of the conflict seems eager to confront the hard lesson of history: When we stray from divine teaching about what it means to improve, progress, and perfect, and when we replace that teaching with merely human measures of justice, truth, beauty, and goodness, the result is often the opposite — sometimes catastrophically so.

The true frontier

Of course, there are many incompatible religious teachings in the world today. But they are nearly unanimous on the folly of turning away from divine instruction and trying to do it ourselves — especially when that effort frustrates us so badly that we attempt to outsource it to institutions of our own creation.

Historical warts and all, the implication is strong: Stubborn secular humanism will undermine even the most ambitious and well-intentioned goals of both AI lovers and AI haters.

For many Americans, and for many others across the globe, the only authoritative, resonant, reliable, and compatible frame of spiritual authority will be a Christian one.

For Americans in particular, that poses a unique challenge.

Just as an AI theocracy would be unconstitutional, so would a Christian theocracy. America will have to work harder than other countries to resolve the relationship among spiritual authority, political order, and technological development.

Instead of worrying about whether we still have time, we had better make the time.

Jesus in the temple (of progressivism): What I learned watching Portlanders debate a street preacher

Recently, I stopped to grab a pizza slice in the Hawthorne district of Portland. This is a trendy neighborhood, full of vintage shops, vinyl record stores, hipster cafes. The vibe is very liberal progressive.

As I approached the pizza place, I heard someone talking over a loudspeaker. I assumed there was a protest going on. Or a Pride event.

A green-haired woman said: 'Are you sure God is a He?'

But then I saw what it was: A street preacher was proselytizing and holding a big sign that read, "SINNERS REPENT! OR BURN IN HELL!"

Potty mouths repent!

I’d never seen one of these guys in the wild. Not in Portland. I’ve seen them on YouTube, where they often get into fights with people. Or sometimes, they get attacked.

As I got closer, I could read the large sign and its long list of hell-bound sinners:

Perverts
Fornicators
Homosexuals
Adulterers
Potty mouths
Drunkards
Thieves
Liars
Used car salesmen (yes, this was on the list)

The street preacher was a skinny, youngish guy (30?) with a trendy mustache. He wore a cap that said in big letters, "OBEY GOD."

He was standing on the corner, just outside my pizzeria. At the moment I went inside, he was being yelled at by a short, angry, gray-haired man (50?). I didn’t hear what was being said. I went inside.

Once I had my slice, I sat by the window so I could further observe the adventures of the street preacher and his sign.

By then, the short, angry guy had left. What had he been yelling about? He was probably outraged that a street preacher would dare come plant himself in the middle of the liberal Hawthorne district. And it was June! It was still Pride Month!

We need to have a dialogue

Once the short, angry guy was gone, things calmed down. But other people continued to stop and gawk at the street preacher or engage him in conversation.

For a while, a young woman (25?) was questioning him. She wasn’t yelling, but she seemed pretty worked up.

The street preacher listened to her and seemed to consider what she was saying. I was surprised by how intelligent he looked. Also, he was a reasonably good-looking guy. He wasn’t the pot-bellied, crew-cut fanatic one might expect.

Does God exist?

By the time I finished my pizza slice, a new crowd of people had formed around the street preacher. I went outside and joined the group. I wanted to hear what people were saying.

A middle-aged man wearing cargo shorts and Teva sandals was asking the street preacher questions: If there’s a God, why are there wars? Why is there poverty and disease? And how could God send anyone to burn in hell for eternity? Doesn’t God forgive? Doesn’t He love everyone equally?

To me, these questions sounded like what a 14-year-old would ask. Which made me wonder to myself: “Is everyone in Portland 14?”

Passage Publishing; Washington Post/Getty Images

What would Jesus do?

Another bystander joined in. He said that Christ didn’t go around denouncing people for their sexual preference. How could the street preacher carry a sign criticizing any people? Jesus would never do that.

The street preacher’s reply was something like: “The true God is a rigorous God. A righteous God. A God who does not tolerate sin. A God who does not excuse liars and perverts. God wants us to be godly. He wants us to live godly lives.”

A green-haired woman said: “Are you sure God is a He?”

The street preacher said: “God is our heavenly Father. He knows what is best for us. It is not our place to negotiate with Him. It is our place to obey Him.”

Classic liberal beliefs

That quieted the nonbelievers for a moment. But then other people chimed in. They espoused the classic liberal belief that “tolerance” and “acceptance” were always best. Who are we to judge?

But the street preacher stuck with his “rigorous” God idea. God had given us simple instructions. It was up to us to follow them. If you think you have a better plan than God ... if you think you know better than God ... well, good luck with that!

So who won the debate?

I don’t think anyone changed their minds during these discussions. But it was interesting to watch. People were respectful of each other at least. That was nice to see.

The main thing I took away from the debate was how poised the street preacher was. He was deep in enemy territory. But he never lost his cool. And he had clear and succinct responses to every question.

It was the Hawthorne atheists who couldn’t really articulate a coherent position. The best they could come up with was: “If God exists, why are people sad?”

Nor could the onlookers match the street preacher’s moral conviction. They were relativists. They couldn’t say what was “bad” or “good.” Anything could be “good,” if that’s what you were “into.”

Which worked fine in nonbinary, morally ambiguous Portland. But it wasn’t going to win an argument with this street preacher. Not today. Not even with the entire Hawthorne district backing you. This guy was taking on all comers. And he was not backing down.

'If indeed one ought to call him a man': New study shows 'historical' Jesus had bigger impact than we thought

For more than a century, mainstream historians — Christian and non-Christian alike — have largely agreed on one point: Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure.

The enduring debates concern something else entirely. Who did Jesus claim to be? What can history tell us about His life? And how should historians interpret the handful of ancient, non-Christian sources that mention Him?

That small change significantly alters the tone of the passage, allowing Josephus to report what Jesus' followers believed without personally endorsing their claims.

One of those sources has long stood at the center of scholarly debate.

"And in this time there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man ..."

Those famous words come from the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. For generations, however, many scholars have argued that portions of the passage were embellished by later Christian copyists, making it difficult to know exactly what Josephus originally wrote.

A new book argues historians have been too skeptical.

A more extraordinary Jesus?

In "Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ," Yale-trained historian T.C. Schmidt contends that Josephus' famous "Testimonium Flavianum" — his longer account of Jesus — is substantially more authentic than many scholars have believed. If Schmidt is correct, one of history's most important non-Christian accounts portrays Jesus as a more extraordinary figure than the prevailing scholarly consensus has assumed.

That would not overturn the historical case for Jesus, which already rests on multiple ancient sources. Rather, it could strengthen historians' confidence in one of antiquity's earliest and most important independent accounts of Jesus' life, execution, and the remarkable movement He inspired.

Among skeptics and believers alike, historians have long looked beyond Scripture when evaluating the historical Jesus.

As New Testament scholar John P. Meier has observed, "The implication is that the biblical evidence for Jesus is biased because it is encased in a theological text written by committed believers. What they really want to know is: Is there extra-biblical evidence ... for Jesus' existence?"

Mainstream historians have long answered that question in the affirmative.

Tacitus: No friend to Christianity

One important witness comes from Roman historian, senator, and ethnographer Tacitus, who flourished in the late first and early second centuries, well within living memory of the end of Jesus Christ's earthly life.

In his "Annals of Imperial Rome," Tacitus, who was no friend to Christianity, makes a reference to Jesus Christ that teaches the reader multiple facts about Christ from an outsider's perspective.

The passage appears amid Tacitus' account of the burning of Rome under Emperor Nero in 64 A.D. The full passage (in the Michael Grant translation) reads:

"But neither human resources, nor imperial munificence, nor appeasement of the gods, eliminated sinister suspicions that the fire had been instigated. To suppress the rumour, Nero fabricated scapegoats — and punished with every refinement the notoriously depraved Christians (as they were popularly called). Their originator, Christ, had been executed in Tiberius' reign by the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilatus. But in spite of this temporary setback, the deadly superstition had broken out afresh, not only in Judea (where the mischief had started) but even in Rome. All degraded and shameful practices collect in the capital."

(Grant notes that "this is the only mention in pagan Latin of Pontius Pilate's action.")

This not only confirms the spreading influence of Christianity over the region and beyond; it also places Jesus Christ in the correct time and place according to biblical sources and tradition, and crucially, it connects Him with Pontius Pilate.

Josephus: 2 accounts

Josephus provides another crucial witness.

His brief reference to "James, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ," found in Book 20 of "Jewish Antiquities," has long been accepted by most historians as authentic. As biblical scholar Lawrence Mykytiuk notes, the reference only serves its purpose of identifying James if Josephus expected his readers to recognize Jesus as a real historical figure.

But Josephus contains a second — and far more famous — reference to Jesus.

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Known as the "Testimonium Flavianum," Josephus' longer account of Jesus has occupied scholars for generations because portions of the text appear unusually favorable toward Christianity.

Traditionally, scholars have proposed three possibilities.

The first is that the entire passage is a later Christian forgery.

The second is that Josephus wrote it substantially as we have it today.

The third — and for many years the dominant scholarly position — is that Josephus wrote a genuine core that was later embellished by Christian scribes.

Schmidt argues that historians have underestimated Josephus.

'He was thought to be the Christ'

Drawing on Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian textual traditions, he contends that the "Testimonium" has survived with remarkably little alteration. According to Schmidt, the text has lost only "two or three words," while the overwhelming majority of the passage is authentically Josephus.

He also argues that early Greek-speaking Christians themselves often treated the passage not as a confession of Christian faith but as a neutral — or even mildly skeptical — description of Jesus, making extensive Christian editing less likely than many scholars have assumed.

One of Schmidt's most important arguments concerns a famous line traditionally translated, "He was the Christ."

According to Schmidt, the earliest textual evidence points instead toward a more cautious reading:

"He was thought to be the Christ."

That small change significantly alters the tone of the passage, allowing Josephus to report what Jesus' followers believed without personally endorsing their claims.

Schmidt also argues that Josephus' distinctive writing style appears consistently throughout the passage and that Josephus was uniquely positioned to know reliable information about Jesus, given his family connections and familiarity with Jerusalem's political and priestly elite.

An invitation

Schmidt ultimately invites readers to reconsider the "Testimonium Flavianum" in light of this evidence.

His reconstructed text reads:

"And in this time there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds. ... He was thought to be the Christ ... on the third day it seemed to them that he was alive again ..."

If Schmidt is correct, the significance extends beyond textual criticism.

Rather than simply reinforcing the already broad scholarly consensus that Jesus existed, Schmidt argues that one of history's most important non-Christian historians may have offered a richer — and more authentic — portrait of Jesus than generations of scholars have assumed.

Instead of merely mentioning Jesus in passing, Josephus describes Him as a wise teacher, a worker of remarkable deeds, a man who drew large crowds, whose execution under Pontius Pilate failed to extinguish His movement, and whose followers remained convinced that He had risen from the dead.

Whether Schmidt ultimately persuades the scholarly community remains to be seen. His work does not seek to settle the historical Jesus debate so much as reopen one of its most important textual questions.

It is, instead, an invitation — for believers and nonbelievers alike — to reconsider whether historians have underestimated the authenticity and significance of antiquity's most important non-Christian account of Jesus Christ.

A free online version of "Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ" is available here.

Consider the lilies — and one old Montana fir

Tucked into a draw on our Montana property stands a Douglas fir that a forester estimated to be more than 600 years old.

It grows beside a creek, sheltered by surrounding hills from the worst of the wind. The draw stretches back toward the forest and up the mountain, while the opposite hillside rises steeply above it.

God never promised His people a life without storms. He promised His presence in the midst of them. Still, we are tempted to believe the world has somehow spun beyond His control.

It is an easy place to linger.

Long before my father-in-law bought this property, others recognized that. Arrowheads and stone tools have been found nearby over the years. With fresh water, shelter from the wind, and a commanding view of the valley, it was a natural place to camp.

I sometimes wonder who sat beneath those branches centuries ago.

When friends and family visit, I often take them to see the tree. Some stare in wonder. Others shrug.

My father-in-law never shrugged.

He was so taken with the old fir that he made a simple wooden sign and named it “Legacy Tree.”

The name stuck.

Whenever I stand there, I find myself reaching out to touch its weathered trunk.

Sometimes, it helps to touch something living that has survived.

Six centuries have a way of putting things in perspective.

When this tree was young, Christopher Columbus was still trying to persuade Queen Isabella to finance an uncertain voyage across the Atlantic.

While Martin Luther challenged the church in Wittenberg, the tree quietly added another ring beneath its bark.

It stood while America’s founders pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.”

It was already centuries old before anyone called this land Montana.

Generations passed beneath its branches. Empires rose and fell. Men walked on the moon beneath the same sky that has watched over this tree for more than six centuries.

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History hurried by. The tree kept growing.

It survived fire, lightning, drought, insects, brutal winters, heavy snow, fierce winds, and everything else the Montana mountains could throw at it.

Fallen trees lie scattered across the property. Some finally yielded to age. Others were struck by lightning or brought down by wind and snow.

Why this Douglas fir still stands while others do not is a mystery known only to its creator.

One day, it too will fall.

Until then, it stands because God sustains it.

Jesus told us to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. He pointed to ordinary things people passed every day and used them to reveal extraordinary truths about His Father’s care.

Standing beneath this old fir, I have begun to wonder whether that invitation extends beyond flowers and sparrows.

If our heavenly Father clothes lilies that bloom for only a season;

if He watches over birds that few people notice;

if He has sustained this tree through six centuries of Montana winters, lightning, and fire;

how much more will He sustain His children?

That question lands differently today than it did a few years ago.

We live in an age of perpetual anxiety. Every news cycle insists catastrophe is moments away. Every political fight is described as the final chance to save civilization. Social media rewards outrage.

Fear has become a business model.

Wars rage overseas. Political divisions deepen at home. Each day seems to bring another reason to worry about tomorrow.

Scripture repeatedly tells us, “Do not be afraid.”

The world profits by feeding our fears. Scripture answers by reminding us who reigns.

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God never promised His people a life without storms. He promised His presence in the midst of them.

Still, we are tempted to believe the world has somehow spun beyond His control.

We all endure our own Montana winters and summers filled with lightning: illness, grief, financial strain, broken relationships, uncertain futures, seasons when the wind seems relentless and hope feels scarce.

Standing beneath the old fir, I hear Christ’s words with fresh ears.

Consider the lilies. Consider the birds. And perhaps, if you will permit one Montana addition to the list, consider an old Douglas fir.

Sometimes, it helps to touch something living that has survived.

Each time I leave that quiet draw, I remember that the God who has faithfully sustained that tree throughout its existence has faithfully sustained me throughout mine.

The headlines will keep shouting.

God will remain faithful.

Only Christ can banish the terror of death

The resurrection lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.

When Paul describes what the gospel consists of, he lists two foundational elements — “Christ died for our sins” and “he was raised on the third day.” Both events happened “in accordance with the Scriptures,” and the risen Jesus was seen by numerous individuals (1 Corinthians 15:3⁠–8).

'After all the reasoning and all the rationales, I’d still desperately prefer to be a conscious, healthy human being than a corpse. Who wouldn’t?'

Unlike most other religions, whose teachings consist of moral or metaphysical principles, Christianity depends crucially on the historical death and resurrection of its founder.

As New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg observes in his commentary on 1 Corinthians:

Older Eastern religions do not even require the actual historical existence of their founders for their beliefs and practices to make sense. In some ways they are more akin to philosophies than to historical truth-claims (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism). But Christianity lives or dies with the claim of Christ’s resurrection.

'If Christ has not been raised'

Indeed, Paul states this to be the case: “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. ... Your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17).

But Christ has been raised, and his resurrection vindicates his divine identity and all that he taught. Having proclaimed that “This Jesus God raised up,” Peter summarizes what this reveals: “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:32, 36). Similarly, in Acts 17, Paul tells the philosophers in Athens that the evidence that Jesus will one day judge the world is that God “has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (17:31).

Given the centrality of this event to Christianity, is there good reason to believe it truly happened? It’s beyond the scope of this article to provide an in-depth defense of the resurrection, but a few points will suffice to show that it stands on solid historical ground.

Original creed

Returning to 1 Corinthians 15, scholars have recognized that Paul is quoting a pre-existing creed addressing the resurrection in verses 3⁠-7. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in approximately A.D. 54, a mere 20 years (roughly) after Jesus’s death. The creed he quotes, however, is much earlier than this, showing that belief in the resurrection was present from the beginning of the Christian movement and not a later legend that developed over decades, as some skeptics assert.

The eminent New Testament scholar James D.G. Dunn concurs, stating we can be "entirely confident" that this tradition was formulated within months of Jesus’ death. Other scholars date the creed somewhat later, to within a few years of Jesus’ death, but in any case, it is an extremely early witness to belief in the resurrection, and Paul likely received it directly from Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, both of whom were eyewitnesses (Galatians 1:18-24).

Thus, the belief that Jesus rose from the dead was present almost immediately after the crucifixion and was based on the firsthand testimony of those who say they witnessed it.

Our deepest longings

As human beings, we yearn to find meaning for our lives and see death as something to be avoided. The renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl observed that the “striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.” Likewise, philosopher Clifford Williams points out that we “intensely want our lives to be meaningful, to count for something, to matter not only in individual and social ways but in a ‘cosmic’ way.”

If we accept the West’s dominant philosophy of naturalism, however, objective meaning is lost and mortality is assured. Naturalist philosopher Alex Rosenberg expresses it this way:

What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

Why am I here? Just dumb luck.

... Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding?

... What happens when we die? Everything pretty much goes on as before, except us.

Rosenberg attempts to obscure the implications of naturalism with humor and nonchalance, but it’s undeniable that losing meaning and facing our own extinction is devastating. As physician Alex Lickerman confesses in Psychology Today, “I’ve tried to resolve my fear of death intellectually and come to the conclusion that it can’t be done, at least not by me.”

In that same article Lickerman notes that he’s “always surprised by people who say they're not afraid to die. ... I’ve always wondered if that answer hides a denial so deeply seated it cannot be faced by most. Certainly, this has been the case with me. I love being here and don’t want to leave.”

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No consolation

Most prominent nonbelievers seem to agree.

Even in "The Consolations of Mortality" — a book meant to help readers accept death — writer Andrew Stark admits, “After all the reasoning and all the rationales, I’d still desperately prefer to be a conscious, healthy human being than a corpse. Who wouldn’t?”

Similarly, notable atheist Sam Harris concedes that his philosophy does little to banish dread of mortality: “I think we can admit that atheism doesn’t offer real consolation on this point. ... The thing that gets lost, the thing for which there is no real substitute, is total consolation in the face of death.”

Death defeated

But what if death has been overcome and God has a purpose for our lives?

The apostle Peter declares that God has given believers “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ... so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:3, 21). The resurrection doesn’t merely demonstrate that human beings survive death, but that Jesus conquered death for all of us. “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). Even now, while on earth, we can experience “the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10).

Contrary to naturalism, for those who place their faith in Christ, life will continue in the presence of loved ones and in fellowship with our Creator. We will fulfill the purpose for which we were created: to know God, to love him, and to enjoy him forever. The paradise we lost in Eden will be regained in a new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21). We’ll spend eternity learning more about God’s infinite nature and enjoying fellowship with his people from every age. We’ll also continue to create things of “glory and honor” that will contribute to the splendor of God’s kingdom (Revelation 21:26). The popular idea that people in heaven will spend their days floating on clouds while playing harps has no basis in Scripture.

Let’s be thankful to God that because of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins and resurrection, we have a glorious destiny if we receive this gift. May we also share this good news with those who lack hope and see no real purpose for their lives.