Scripture is crystal clear about the dangers of false prophets. In the book of Matthew, they are described as deceptive figures who appear harmless as sheep but are inwardly destructive like ravenous wolves, often leading people astray through lies, false signs, or teachings that contradict God’s word.

But sometimes “false teacher” is a label used to defame and discredit a true teacher.

“It’s a real threat on one end, but then it’s also an accusation that is thrown around very loosely,” Zach Dasher said on a recent episode of “Unashamed with the Robertson Family.”

In this world of truly false teachers and those who have just been wrongly labeled one, how are Christians to know who to avoid and who to trust?

Dasher says there’s a simple “litmus test” we can use to help us navigate this common dilemma.

“The litmus test for me, and I think the litmus test in Scripture,” he says, revolves around how these teachers “treat the body [of Christ].”

He references Ezekiel 34:2-3: “Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.”

In this passage, God rebukes Israel’s leaders (the “shepherds”) for selfishness. Instead of caring for and feeding the people (the “sheep”), they are only feeding themselves — eating the best food, taking the wool for clothing, and slaughtering the fattest animals for their own benefit — while neglecting to provide for or protect the flock.

These same warnings about corrupt leadership echo throughout the Bible — from Isaiah to Jude.

A true shepherd, Dasher says, “eats last.”

“I think that’s the caveat. So when you are looking at ministry leaders and you’re looking at teachers and you’re looking at shepherds, look at their ministry. Look at the fruit of their life. Are they elevating themselves at the expense of the body? Are they using people?” he continues.

He gives the example of the “prosperity gospel” — the belief that tithing and donations result in divine blessings of material wealth, health, and success — as a truly heretical doctrine.

It’s not uncommon to see teachers of the prosperity gospel “go buy an airplane with [their congregations’] money,” he says.

“I mean, that is a shepherd feeding [himself].”

To hear more of the panel’s wisdom, watch the video above.

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Satan is real — whether his depraved fashion-world followers believe it or not

Last week I made the case for you that Paris Fashion Week, which just wrapped up on March 10, is yet another example of elitist satanic worship — the same brand of wickedness we see festering all throughout Hollywood and among other elite circles.

Now I’m going to prove it to you.

Official descriptions boast that Inferno is 'not just a party' but a 'ritual.'

In my previous article, I awarded the gold medal for the most in-your-face demonic collection to French fashion label Matières Fécales — translation: Fecal Matter. Its Canadian founders, Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, paraded a sequence of grotesque looks down the runway that included models distorted by nightmarish prosthetics and grisly surgical wounds; ensembles one would expect to see in a film about ghouls and grim reapers; and overtly satanic elements, like devil horns, fake blood, and cult-like theatrics.

The nonconforming, alien-esque duo attempted to justify their freak show by slapping a satire label on it. All the nauseating pageantry and horror were nothing more than a critique of elitist power and privilege, they said.

It’s a recycled narrative we have heard countless times from stars and public figures questioned about their dark spectacles. If the staleness of their defense wasn’t cause enough to reject it as a lie, then Matières Fécales’ partnership with Lewis G. Burton — the obese, transgender, intersex “Mother” of London’s queer underworld — certainly is.

He was one of the “models” chosen to don a look from the label’s Fall 2026 “Ready-to-Wear” collection — a hooded black floor-length robe resembling that of a satanic priest.

Victor Virgile/Getty Images

A far cry from the skeletal catwalkers we’re accustomed to seeing on high-fashion runways, Burton’s large figure, which he proudly uses to fight “fatphobia” and push “fat liberation,” is a core piece of his identity.

It is his stated intention not only to normalize but to glorify obesity and objective ugliness. In a 2019 interview with i-D magazine, Burton, a trained performance artist, said, “When I was first on stage being garish and grotesque, I was shoving my ugliness in people’s faces. I was saying: I feel repulsive because you made me feel repulsive, so now you have to look at it. Now I see it differently because I think I’m f**king beautiful! It’s a new extreme now. It’s about showing that beauty to the world.”

Joe Hale/Getty Images

Beyond the body: Burton’s activism and influence

But fatness is the least interesting layer of the onion that is Burton.

As a founding member of London Trans+ Pride — which he helped grow from just 1,500 people in 2019 to over 100,000 in 2025 — he remains one of the most visible faces of London’s trans activism.

He advocates radical positions for a number of LGBTQ+ issues, including faster and fully funded gender-affirming “care” for transgenders, access to puberty blockers for children, mandatory inclusion of trans people in single-sex spaces, and a ban on all nonconsensual surgeries on intersex children.

Like the majority of left-wing activists, however, Burton’s cries of oppression echo throughout multiple grievance movements. He has steered London Trans+ Pride toward aggressive intersectionality, most notably marching in solidarity with Palestine, which predictably (and paradoxically) includes condemnation of Islamophobia.

Marches, “visibility” events, and left-wing activism are almost unremarkable, though, when compared to Burton’s prominent role in London’s underground queer scene.

His traveling queer techno rave and performance art platform “Inferno” — inspired by Dante Alighieri’s epic poem about the nine levels of hell — is described as “seven layers” of “queer heaven,” where each circle explores new depths of perversion, varying in intensity from “gentle” rituals of chosen-family bonding to the darkest, most depraved circles of sweat-soaked techno, body horror performance, and explicit queer pornography.

Devoted to its hell theme, Inferno events are notorious for their red-drenched lighting, thick smoke, dark and shocking costumes, grotesque performances, and hedonistic indulgences.

One Inferno attendee described an event like this: “A dark warehouse illuminated by a sea of red textiles and clouds of smoke. … Inferno is a space where everyone can express themselves, whether it be through extravagant, tentacle-like costumes or full body paint.”

Victor Virgile/Getty Images

From hedonism to ritual: The spiritual dimension

But Inferno’s unmitigated paganism doesn’t stop with carnal pleasures. It embraces the spiritual, too.

Witchcraft language is woven into its DNA. Official descriptions boast that Inferno is “not just a party” but a “ritual.”

Additionally, Burton, who styles himself as the “mother” of the matriarchal “Inferno family,” appears to occupy a spiritual role in which he uses his music to cast what he calls spells.

“MOTHERS MILK is more than a music video — it’s a spell,” reads the YouTube description for his most recent song, which he regularly performs live before the dark, gyrating Inferno masses.

Burton’s spiritualism, however, extends beyond the dance floor. In addition to the grotesque, hellish aesthetics that dominate his Instagram account (view at your own risk), he regularly posts new moon rituals, guiding his followers through candle ceremonies and “cosmic resets” that he frames around themes of divine femininity and personal transformation.

In doing so, he positions himself not merely as a DJ or party host, but as a spiritual guide for the community that gathers under his influence.

This fusion of radical progressivism, New Age spirituality, and unapologetic darkness that Burton embodies is not merely a new pagan religion — it's proof that evil operates in interconnected webs.

Webs of alignment and influence

I write this not to stir up hatred for Burton. I actually deeply pity him. When I see people this spiritually lost and psychologically ill, my first thought is always to wonder about where the original break occurred — what trauma, indoctrination, or misfortune sent them down such a dark path.

I write this to illustrate that when elites and public figures shove objective evil down our throats — like Matières Fécales’ demonic Paris Fashion Week collection — they are not being ironic or critical. They are showing us what team they play for.

Choosing Burton as a model was no gesture of inclusivity. It is alignment of values. And in fact, in 2019, Matières Fécales directed the music video for Burton’s song “Hermaphrodite.” They are embedded in the same sick circle.

And that alignment of values extends upward: from the governing bodies of Paris Fashion Week, which embrace the grotesqueness of the Matières Fécales label; to high-profile celebrities who attend the shows and wear the designs — Chappell Roan and Lady Gaga among those who have prominently supported the brand — and who publicly align with the broader community Burton represents; and ultimately to the influential figures and institutions that promote radical progressivism, deliberately unraveling society through the erosion of morality and the poisoning of institutions.

Normalizing the dark: An upside-down world

This is a dark web, and at the center is a worship of evil and the intention to normalize it and sell it to the masses as something that is actually good. Fatness is fabulous. Ugliness is beauty. Perversion is uniqueness. Depravity is liberation. Hedonism is self-expression. Darkness is an aesthetic. Witchcraft is misunderstood. Truth is subjective. Opposition is violence.

Satan is symbolic.

I do believe that many of these people, likely Burton himself, genuinely think that Satan is nothing more than a way to anger the cisgender white conservative oppressors — just a red-tinged aura to throw one’s rage behind.

I wish that were true. It would make the stakes a lot lower. But the truth is that the Satan they flirt with is not a symbol, a muse, or a vibe. He’s the very real and active root that feeds every dark idea, movement, and deed. He is also the mastermind behind the careful framing and packaging that makes objective evil palatable for the masses.

But what does it say about society when something as universally revolting as Fecal Matter or “Mother” Lewis G. Burton are hoisted up as trophies of progress on an elite stage? No one who retains control over his own mind can behold these things and genuinely approve.

To me it means that the primordial plan to engulf the world in darkness is reaching later phases. It reminds me of the scene in “The Fellowship of the Ring” where the trolls and other fell creatures have begun leaving their shadowed lands and are encroaching on peaceful borders. This breach is interpreted as a sign that the Enemy is growing strong and foreshadows the great battle to come.

Our great battle is drawing nearer, too. The signs are everywhere. You don’t even have to search for them. Just look to the streets, the classrooms, the halls of power — or the runways.

My hope, however, is that we don’t make the same mistake as Matières Fécales, Burton, and other embracers of darkness and reduce Satan to a symbol by directing our fury at people who are merely pawns in this cosmic game — forgetting that this has never been, and will never be, a battle of flesh and blood.

Allie Beth Stuckey credits Christian education for shaping her faith — and debate skills

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey credits not only her parents but her faith-based education — from kindergarten through high school — with shaping her worldview and skill set.

“My dad always said that he would do whatever it took, however many hours he had to work, however many shifts he had to work, to make sure my brothers and I attended a Christian school,” Stuckey says.

“I went to the same Christian school from kindergarten through 12th grade. Was it perfect? No. I had some not so great teachers. The culture wasn’t always the best. The community wasn’t always the best,” she continues.

“I would not trade my education for anything. In addition to the Holy Spirit and my parents, my kindergarten through 12th grade education is responsible for instilling in me the word of God, the ability to memorize it, to defend it, to think logically, to reason, to read, to write, to argue,” she explains.

“That just goes to show how crucial it is to disciple your kids from an early age because what they learn now, they will keep with them as adults, even more than the things they learn as adults,” she adds.

Stuckey points out that after her viral Jubilee debate, she was asked by several people how she prepared herself to take on such a large number of liberals.

“Yes, it took a lot of practice and preparation and skill, experience. Yes, my parents in so many ways prepared me for that just by how they raised me. But also, 13 years of Christian education, a decade of Awana, eight years of youth group, decades of Sunday school,” she explains.

“You just can’t beat the evangelical upbringing when it comes to knowing the Bible. And I am so thankful for it. I use it every single day,” she adds.

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How the modern world gets Christian forgiveness wrong

For millennia, we have all more or less understood one thing about forgiveness: You cannot demand it.

You can ask for it. You can plead for it. You can try to earn it. But the moment you insist that someone owes it to you, you have misunderstood the thing itself.

You can command a Christian to forgive because he has been given a new heart. You cannot litigate him into loving his enemy.

Sam Ridge, a philosopher at the University of California San Diego, thinks that conventional wisdom is wrong. In a recent paper, he argues that there are cases in which a wrongdoer has “a right to be forgiven by their victim.”

In other words, forgiveness can be understood as a claimable moral asset — not just something one hopes for, but something one may, under certain conditions, press for. That may sound tidy in a philosophy seminar. It sounds far less plausible beside a bloodstained cross and wounds that still bear a name.

Promise ring

Ridge’s argument begins with promises. “Promises generate rights,” he writes. And since “we can promise to forgive,” it follows that “we can have a right to be forgiven.”

He then pushes beyond explicit promises. Long habits of forbearance, he argues, can create expectations and implicit commitments inside relationships. Over time, those too may harden into something like a right. Philosophers, he says, have been wrong to treat forgiveness as if it were always the victim’s exclusive property.

From a Christian standpoint, there is something here to appreciate. Ridge is at least pushing back against the modern cult of grievance, where outrage becomes a vocation and to forgive is to cede power. He is right to insist that resentment cannot simply be nursed forever. He is also right to note that relationships impose real obligations and that promises are not decorative sounds. In a culture that treats every vow as provisional, the suggestion that words bind has the ring of sanity.

But having glimpsed the truth that forgiveness cannot be purely discretionary, Ridge reaches for the bluntest tool in the secular toolbox: rights language.

Eudist Servants of the 11th Hour

Forgiveness fix

The move also fits a broader cultural drift. In recent years, forgiveness has steadily been reframed in therapeutic terms. Harvard researchers now explain that “forgiveness is good for us,” meaning it lowers stress, improves mental health, and stabilizes relationships.

In popular self-help language, the advice is even simpler: Forgive so you can heal; forgive so you can move on.

Once forgiveness is treated primarily as a psychological good, it becomes easy to assume that people ought to supply that good to one another. Ridge’s argument may simply be the next step in that progression: If forgiveness benefits everyone, why shouldn’t the offender have some claim to it?

The result is philosophically clever and spiritually tone-deaf.

Debt relief

The trouble with Ridge’s proposal appears in at least three places.

The New Testament does not picture forgiveness as a debtor’s legal claim against the heart of his neighbor. It presents forgiveness as an act flowing from divine mercy: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Christian forgiveness is commanded, yes, but it is not coerced. It grows out of a heart that knows it has been forgiven more than it will ever be asked to forgive.

That is the first problem with Ridge’s view. He treats forgiveness as a morally chargeable transaction. I promised; therefore you can bill me. We have a pattern; therefore you can invoice me again. But Scripture treats forgiveness not as a payable debt but as the fruit of regeneration. You can command a Christian to forgive because he has been given a new heart. You cannot litigate him into loving his enemy. You can wring out an apology. You cannot compel the release of a grudge.

Your word and God's word

The second problem is more basic. Ridge blurs the line between keeping one’s word and performing a spiritual act. If a father tells his daughter, “I promise to forgive you,” then yes, he has taken on a real obligation. He ought to master his anger, repent of bitterness, and restore goodwill where he can.

But it does not follow that the daughter acquires a standing right to demand what only grace can genuinely produce. Ridge’s own formula — “We can promise to forgive. Therefore, we can have a right to be forgiven” — slides too quickly past that distinction. The pressure falls first on the father’s conscience before God, not on the daughter’s ability to cash a promissory note.

His friendship examples make the same mistake in softer form. Old friends do owe one another patience, mercy, and readiness to reconcile. If a man refuses forgiveness after decades of mutual forbearance, then yes, something real has broken down. But what has broken down is not best described as a hidden contract. It is a failure of charity, of character, of fidelity to the shape of friendship itself. Friendship is sustained by habits of mercy, not by enforceable claims.

Crucifying pride

The third problem is where Ridge’s framework leads, once applied to what he calls “moderate wrongdoing,” the ordinary failures “we have all committed and, regrettably, will commit again.” Those are precisely the daily arenas in which Christ calls people to crucify pride and extend mercy before they feel like it. Once those moments are reframed in the language of rights, forgiveness begins to sound less like grace and more like entitlement: I repented; I made amends — now you owe me.

That posture may satisfy a theorist. It corrodes the virtue itself.

The philosophers Ridge is pushing against — figures like Lucy Allais, Cheshire Calhoun, and Charles Griswold — were right to sense the danger. Many of them describe forgiveness as supererogatory: admirable, fitting, sometimes morally beautiful, but not something the offender may demand as a matter of right. As Ridge himself notes, there is “near universal agreement” on this point. They understood something Ridge does not fully reckon with: Forgiveness can be morally urgent without becoming something the offender may properly claim. The instant it hardens into entitlement, something essential has already been lost.

More demanding, more humane

To be fair, Ridge does try to hedge the claim. He confines it to a certain band of offenses. He concedes that some acts may be unforgivable in practice. He also insists that victims retain “leeway” and cannot be pushed into immediate or shallow reconciliation. Those are sensible guardrails. But his own framework undermines them. Once forgiveness is grounded in rights talk, the victim’s conscience becomes one more obstacle to be managed, pressured, and eventually treated as suspect for failing to deliver on schedule.

The Christian alternative is both more demanding and more humane.

It says to the wrongdoer: You are not entitled to your neighbor’s forgiveness; you are entitled only to throw yourself on the mercy of Christ.

It says to the victim: You are not entitled to nurse hatred forever; you are commanded to forgive as you have been forgiven.

But that command comes from God, not from the person who hurt you.

And it reminds both parties that a wounded relationship is not a contract to be litigated, but a place where grace, repentance, truth, and sometimes hard boundaries must coexist — not a ledger of claims and entitlements.

‘The Faithful’ puts focus on Bible’s female figures

Rene Echevarria broke into show business by penning episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in the ’80s.

Now, the versatile writer/director is putting his Christian faith front and center with a limited series unlike any other.

‘Play it like you don’t know you’re in the Bible.’

“The Faithful: Women of the Bible” debuts at 8 p.m. March 22 on FOX and airs the next day on Hulu. The three-part saga explores the book of Genesis through the eyes of consequential women.

Think Sarah (Minnie Driver), the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac, whose infertility gave way to a spiritual miracle. Or Rebekah (Alexa Davalos), mother of Jacob and Esau and wife of Isaac.

In the beginning

Echevarria’s production partner, veteran TV producer Carol Mendelsohn, came up with the show’s angle.

“She knew I was a believer and loved the Bible,” Echevarria tells Align. “She’s a seeker, with a restless curiosity about spiritual matters.”

The veteran storyteller wasn’t initially convinced that the project would be the perfect fit for him.

“I was a little skeptical ... [asking], ‘Is that too limiting?’” he says of the concept, adding that his initial fears were unfounded. “The experience has been great; it opened my eyes to understanding these timeless stories.”

Deeper truth

Echevarria, who has worked with James Cameron (“Dark Angel”) and Steven Spielberg (“Terra Nova”) throughout his expansive career, says he took care to balance creative license with both his faith and the source material.

“I’ve been blessed to have worked in this business a long time. mostly making up stories. interpreting stories,” he says. Not this time.

“I always have to check myself, and sometimes I wish that little piece of Scripture wasn’t there. It would be so much easier,” he says from a dramatic perspective. “I found that if I didn’t try to avoid the challenges but steer into them, ... you’ll find something deeper, a deeper truth, ... things that I didn’t think of.”

“The Faithful” was shot in Italy, giving the creative team access to lush landscapes, including expanses of olive trees, that created a reasonable facsimile to biblical times. The team decided early in the production to work with mostly British actors and use their vocal cadences in the process.

A new light

The son of Cuban immigrants says making “The Faithful” impacted his personal faith.

“It re-invigorated my love of Scripture. ... I’m seeing things I thought I knew in a completely new light,” he says.

Some cast and crew members didn’t necessarily share his faith, which added nuance to the production.

“There’s a lot of downtime on set. So many times, people shared with me stories about why and how this project came to them at the right place in their lives,” he says. “Like people struggling with having lost a parent or having troubles with their kids.”

Others were skeptical about doing a Bible-based project.

“One actor shared that he found himself drawn in and said, ‘Yes, I want to do that,’” he recalls after the performer’s initial reluctance.

Vertical

No 'unearned piety'

Still, he turned having actors who didn’t know Scripture into a positive development. It made the humanity of the core players pop.

“Play it like you don’t know you’re in the Bible,” he says of his advice to the cast. That allowed them to avoid an “unearned piety” that brought the figures down to earth. “It’s just ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.”

Echevarria wouldn’t mind telling more tales from the “Faithful” perspective. He cites the book of Ruth and the Samaritan woman at the well as stories ripe for future “Faithful” installments. That’s assuming viewers flock to the show, set to wrap on Easter Sunday.

“That’s my fondest hope, that the show finds an audience,” he says. Those chances are better than ever given the current pop culture climate. Shows like “The Chosen” and “House of David” have connected with Christians the world over, and the first part of Mel Gibson’s “The Resurrection of the Christ” series could be one of 2027’s biggest movie events.

“There’s a hunger out there for this kind of storytelling,” he says. “They’re resonating. People are taking notice.”

And he hasn’t forgotten how he entered show business several decades ago. He dreams of rejoining the “Star Trek” universe after penning 30-plus episodes across “The Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine.” He’s been noodling with an idea “out of left field” to share in that franchise.

“I’m waiting for the right moment to bring it over there,” he says.

Parents: Your Teen’s Fiction Book Might be Demonic Porn | Ep 1319

Ditch The Leprechauns And Read The Real Story Of St. Patrick’s Day

Now, more than ever, we need to put the Saint back into St. Patrick’s Day!

James Talarico found a verse — and twisted the meaning

Democrats can learn. Political survival demands adaptation, and lately some on the left have started studying their Republican opponents with something like anthropological curiosity. They watch Republicans work a crowd and ask a practical question: What works?

One answer keeps recurring. Republicans like to quote the Bible.

Christians should stay alert. Not everyone who borrows the language of faith speaks truth.

You can picture the light-bulb moment. A candidate cites Scripture. The audience nods. Somewhere, a strategist thinks: Let’s find a guy who can do that for us.

Enter James Talarico, the Texas Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate who quotes Scripture all day long.

That tactic may sway voters who enjoy hearing a verse, even when it gets pulled out of context to bless ideas Scripture condemns. Christians who know their Bibles will spot the move fast.

Jesus warned about this exact type: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.”

A Bible verse proves nothing by itself. Wolves can quote Scripture, too. So can the devil.

The question is what the verse is being used to defend.

The abortion argument

Talarico claims Genesis 2:7 teaches that a human being becomes alive, and worthy of legal protection, only at first breath.

Wrong. The verse describes Adam’s creation. God formed the first man from dust and then breathed life into him. That account does not describe ordinary human development in the womb. It describes a singular act of creation.

Every other human life begins at conception. A distinct organism exists from that point, with its own DNA and its own trajectory of development. Scripture treats unborn children as living persons. Psalm 139:13-16 speaks of God knitting a child together in the womb.

Even if someone granted Talarico’s “first breath” premise for argument’s sake, the logic collapses quickly into moral absurdity. It pushes abortion right up to delivery. Some activists embrace that conclusion. Most Americans recoil, however, because they sense the truth: Killing a fully formed child moments before birth differs only in location from killing the same child moments after birth.

The ‘nonbinary God’ argument

Talarico also claims God is “nonbinary,” as if that settles the modern LGBTQ agenda.

God has no biological sex. God is spirit. That does not erase the created order for human beings.

Scripture speaks plainly: God created humanity male and female. Genesis 1:27 teaches it. Jesus repeats it when he addresses marriage: “From the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’”

Christian teaching on marriage does not float as an arbitrary rule. It rests on creation itself, and Jesus affirms it.

Photo by Gabriel V. Cardenas/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The rainbow vs. the Ten Commandments

Talarico asks why a rainbow flag in a classroom counts as indoctrination while posting the Ten Commandments does not.

The answer isn’t complicated. The Ten Commandments summarize foundational moral truths about God, human life, and justice. They shaped the moral vocabulary of Western civilization for centuries.

The rainbow flag represents a moral program that rejects the biblical account of sex, marriage, and human nature. The two messages do not belong in the same moral category.

Fruit tells the truth

Jesus gave a practical test for identifying false teachers: Look at the fruit.

When someone uses Scripture to justify abortion or to deny the created order of male and female, the fruit shows itself. The apostle Peter warned about this kind of manipulation: “Untaught and unstable people twist [the Scriptures] to their own destruction.”

Christians should not get impressed because a politician can quote a verse. Even Satan did.

The question is whether the Bible is being handled faithfully or weaponized to sanctify fashionable sins.

Stay awake

Christians should stay alert. Not everyone who borrows the language of faith speaks truth.

Know the word of God. Test what you hear against it. Teach your children to do the same.

That’s how you recognize wolves, even when they show up in sheep’s clothing with a Bible in hand.

This Oscars Speech Genuinely Shocked Me — in the Best Way | Ep 1318

'Bugonia' and Hollywood's most post-Christian Academy Awards yet

Last night’s Academy Awards brought the usual mix of celebration, surprises, and disappointment.

It also offered a revealing glimpse into how modern storytelling wrestles with the problem of human evil. Again and again, our stories invent new creators and judges — aliens, scientists, political systems — while avoiding the possibility that the answer might be the one Christianity has proposed all along.

Interestingly, the film’s bleak ending inadvertently highlights the beauty of the alternative.

We see this pattern clearly in this year’s Best Picture winner, "One Battle After Another." In that film, humanity’s problems are framed largely as political ones: injustice embedded in systems that must be overcome through struggle here on earth.

The problem of evil

The year’s other nominees approach the same problem from different angles. "Frankenstein" warns about the dangers of human beings assuming the role of creator, while "Sinners" treats Christianity itself as a corrupting force rather than a remedy for human brokenness. The stories differ in tone and message, but they circle the same question: Why does humanity repeatedly descend into violence, cruelty, and exploitation?

And then there's "Bugonia," Yorgos Lanthimos' ambitious science-fiction drama. Although the film failed to take home Best Picture or any of the four Oscars for which it was nominated, its unsettling message reveals much about our post-Christian frame of mind.

The film proposes a provocative premise: Humanity was seeded on Earth by extraterrestrial beings known as Andromedans. But when humanity fails to live up to their expectations — ravaging the planet, waging war, exploiting one another — the aliens decide to erase the experiment and reboot the world.

Spoiler alert: They succeed.

Failed experiment

In the film’s closing act, the Andromedans judge humanity irredeemable. Our history of violence, greed, and environmental destruction becomes the evidence against us. Like scientists abandoning a failed experiment, they extinguish the human race in order to start again.

The premise is morally haunting because it contains a kernel of truth. Humanity has indeed fallen short of what we know to be right. Our history is filled with wars, cruelty, and exploitation of both people and planet. Watching the film, you can almost understand why an external observer might conclude that humanity is incapable of redemption.

But the film’s central idea contains a deeper philosophical problem that it never addresses.

In "Bugonia," aliens replace God.

Persistent theory

Instead of an eternal Creator, we are told that advanced beings from another star system planted life on Earth. Humanity, in other words, is merely the product of a cosmic experiment. The idea echoes the pseudoscientific theories popularized decades ago by Swiss author Erich von Däniken, most famously in his 1968 best-seller "Chariots of the Gods?" He argued that ancient monuments and religious traditions were evidence that extraterrestrials had visited Earth and influenced — or even created — human civilization.

Despite the popularity of those claims, they have been widely rejected by scientists and historians as speculative at best and misleading at worst. Yet the underlying idea persists in popular culture, resurfacing in films, television shows, and speculative fiction like "Bugonia."

The problem is that such explanations never truly answer the deepest question. They merely move it one step back: If the Andromedans created humanity, who created them?

The difficulty with theories that attempt to explain existence without God is that they ultimately arrive at an illogical conclusion — that somehow the material universe emerged from nothing. Matter, life, and consciousness simply appeared. The universe, in effect, would have to create itself.

Every effect requires a cause. Every creation requires a creator. If alien life exists somewhere in the universe — and it very well may — those beings would still be part of the created order. They, too, would owe their existence to something greater and eternal.

A different story

"Bugonia" imagines alien overseers who judge humanity and wipe the slate clean when the experiment fails. But the story humanity actually lives in is far different.

According to Scripture, there was indeed a moment when God chose to “reset” the world. In the story of Noah, humanity had become so violent and corrupt that God sent a flood and preserved only Noah and his family to begin again. Humanity was, in a sense, rebooted.

But even after the flood, humanity fell short again. We continued to quarrel, exploit, and destroy. The human story remained one of brokenness mixed with moments of grace.

The difference between the God of Scripture and the Andromedans of "Bugonia" is not power. It is mercy.

The aliens in the film conclude that humanity’s failures justify annihilation. God reached a radically different conclusion. Rather than abandon His creation, He entered into it.

The eternal God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world — not to condemn humanity but to redeem it. Where the Andromedans choose extermination, God chooses sacrifice.

This is the heart of the Christian story. Humanity fails again and again. Yet instead of discarding us as a failed experiment, God offers forgiveness and transformation.

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Quiet revolution

Even then, the story does not become one of instant perfection. People who follow Christ still struggle. They still fall short. The difference is not that believers suddenly become flawless, but that they now have a path toward redemption.

One of the most profound summaries of that path comes from John the Baptist, who famously said of Christ: “He must increase; I must decrease” (John 3:30).

Those few words describe the quiet revolution at the heart of Christianity. The transformation of humanity does not come from our own power or moral superiority. It comes from learning humility — placing God at the center rather than ourselves.

And that humility has consequences. A world shaped by self-interest breeds the very problems "Bugonia" highlights — violence, greed, environmental destruction, and exploitation. A world shaped by love of neighbor and reverence for a Creator begins to look very different.

Radical vision

Interestingly, the film’s bleak ending inadvertently highlights the beauty of the alternative.

In "Bugonia," humanity is judged solely by its failures. There is no grace, no redemption, no possibility that flawed beings might grow into something better.

The Christian story, by contrast, insists that redemption is the point of the whole drama. God promised after the flood that He would not destroy the world again in such a way. The ultimate reset came not through annihilation but through Christ — through renewal.

For all its imaginative power, "Bugonia" ultimately imagines a universe governed by distant creators who abandon their creation when it disappoints them.

The Christian vision offers something far more radical: a Creator who loves His creation enough to save it.

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