God – About Things That Matter

Jesus’ Words: “Lazarus Come Forth” — Their Meaning in Gaza — and Iran

Despite distractions provided by the carpet bombings of Trump’s Epstein War in Iran, the genocide in Gaza continues.

For the past two years it has confronted us with images almost too painful to watch. Entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Hospitals destroyed. Families digging through shattered concrete searching for loved ones.

Human-rights organizations report that thousands remain buried beneath collapsed buildings—men, women, and children entombed by the violence of heartless slaughter.

The irony is difficult to miss. The state carrying out this devastation identifies itself as the homeland of the “People of God,” heirs to the biblical tradition that again and again insists that God’s special concern is for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

Yet today the land of the prophets has become the site of mass graves of those very categories of victims buried under concrete and dust. In such a moment the Gospel summons we hear today presses itself upon us with frightening relevance: “Lazarus, come forth.” What could such words addressed to the dead possibly mean when so many lie buried under the rubble of war?

For an answer, consider the story’s details. They are a command to resist empire – Rome’s then and the condominium represented by Israel and the United States today.

Today’s Gospel

Today’s Gospel—the raising of Lazarus—may appear at first to be simply a miracle story. Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the tomb after four days of death. But the narrative is much more than a display of supernatural power. In the Gospel according to John, the raising of Lazarus is the turning point that seals Jesus’ fate.

Notice what happens immediately after the miracle. The authorities in Jerusalem convene an emergency meeting. Their concern is not theological but political: “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy our place and our nation.” In other words, belief in Jesus is ipso facto inimical to empire.

Here’s why.

Jerusalem at the time was a colonial city under Roman occupation. Imperial troops controlled the land. Local elites—both political and religious—had learned to maintain their own authority by cooperating with that imperial system. They managed the Temple economy, collected taxes, and preserved order on Rome’s behalf. In return they enjoyed prestige, wealth, and protection.

Religion and empire were joined at the hip.

Jesus and the entire prophetic tradition he embodied contradicted that juncture. It’s as simple as that.

Israel’s Prophets (Including Jesus)

The prophets of Israel had seen this arrangement many times before.

Again and again, they warned that the covenant was never meant to enrich the powerful — much less gentile imperialists. The law of Moses insisted that society must protect those with the least power: the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the resident alien. Those four groups appear constantly in the Hebrew Scriptures because they represent people who cannot defend themselves.

Whenever rulers forgot them, the prophets spoke.

Amos for example thundered against those who “sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals.” Isaiah condemned leaders who accumulated land while the poor lost everything. Jeremiah denounced kings who built luxurious palaces through forced labor.

Those prophets were not enemies of their nation. They were faithful Israelites calling their society back to its founding vision. But because their words threatened the powerful, they were treated as dangerous troublemakers – in today’s terms, as “anti-Semites.”

Jesus stands squarely in that prophetic line.

Like the prophets before him, Jesus’ ministry constantly returns to the same themes: good news for the poor, release for captives, healing for the broken. He heals without payment, eats with social outcasts, and proclaims a God who prefers mercy to sacrifice. In him the ancient prophetic voice speaks again.

The raising of Lazarus becomes the moment when that voice can no longer be tolerated.

Why? Because Lazarus is more than a man returning to life. He represents what happens when those who have been buried—socially, politically, economically—begin to rise again. When the forgotten begin to breathe, when the oppressed stand up, when those written off as dead reclaim their dignity—systems built on injustice begin to tremble.

“Anti-Semitism” Weaponized

Throughout history, whenever prophetic voices expose injustice, the powerful rarely answer the criticism itself. Instead, they attack the critic. Jeremiah was accused of weakening the nation in time of war. Amos was expelled from the royal sanctuary because his preaching threatened the ruling class. Jesus himself is now declared a threat to public order.

From that day forward, the Gospel tells us, they decide to kill him.

We see similar dynamics in our own time. Criticism of violence, occupation, or injustice—particularly when directed toward the policies of the Israeli state—is often dismissed with the charge of “anti-Semitism.” The term properly refers to hatred of Jews as a people, and such hatred is sometimes real. But when the accusation is used to silence moral criticism of Zionist genocide, it becomes something else entirely: a political shield protecting power from accountability.

The prophetic tradition refuses such shields.

Its loyalty is never to rulers, governments, or empires. Its loyalty is to the God of justice who demands protection for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

And that brings us back to the question with which we began.

The Threat of Resurrection

What does “Lazarus, come forth!” mean in a world where thousands lie buried beneath the rubble of Gaza – and Tehran?

It cannot simply mean a miraculous resuscitation of individuals. The Gospel is pointing toward something larger. The command is addressed to all who have been buried by systems of domination—those crushed by war, poverty, and political violence. It is a summons to life, dignity, and resistance against the forces that entomb human beings.

That is why the miracle becomes so dangerous.

Because once the dead begin to rise, the powerful begin to panic.

In fact, the irony deepens as the Gospel story continues. Not only do the authorities decide to kill Jesus. Later we are told they also plan to kill Lazarus himself—because his very existence is evidence that something new has begun.

Life is breaking out of the tomb.

Conclusion

The story of Lazarus therefore prepares us for what lies ahead. The conflict between prophetic truth and imperial power will soon reach its climax.

The cross was Rome’s instrument for eliminating those who threaten the system.But the Gospel insists that even the cross cannot bury the truth forever.

Because once the dead begin to rise, it becomes impossible to keep them in their graves.

Our call on this Fifth Sunday of Lent is clear: don’t allow yourself to be gaslit or intimidated. Recognize the burial of the innocent for the genocide it is. Name it.

Don’t be intimidated by weaponized charges of “anti-Semitism.”

What the Gospel of the Man Born Blind Says About War, Empire, and Biblical Illiteracy

Readings for Fourth Sunday of Lent: 1st Samuel 16: 1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Psalm 23: 1-6; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9: 1-41

If you have been following the news the past couple of weeks, you know that the world seems once again to be sliding toward catastrophe. The bombing of Iran by the United States and Israel represents a case in point.

Reports describe cities under bombardment and civilians trapped beneath collapsing buildings. On the first day of the conflict alone, a missile strike destroyed a girls’ elementary school, killing scores of children.

Yet amid such horrors, political leaders insist that these acts defend freedom, protect civilization, and even fulfill God’s purposes. Meanwhile a powerful current within contemporary Christianity—especially among right-wing interpreters of the Bible—assures us that geopolitical violence somehow fits within the divine plan.

None of this is new. For centuries religion has been used to sanctify empire and to bless the ambitions of the powerful. The prophets of Israel knew this. Jesus knew it.

And the readings for this Fourth Sunday of Lent expose the pattern with remarkable clarity. Taken together, they ask and answer a disturbing question: who actually sees the truth of history—the powerful who claim to interpret God’s will, or the people pushed to the margins of society?

The answer in today’s readings is that the marginalized see more clearly than the powerful.

Unlikely Choice of David

The first reading from First Samuel tells the familiar story of the prophet Samuel searching for Israel’s next king. Samuel arrives at the house of Jesse and begins inspecting the man’s sons. The eldest looks strong and impressive. Surely this must be the Lord’s anointed. But God interrupts Samuel’s expectations with a startling correction: “Not as man sees does God see. Man looks at appearances, but the Lord looks into the heart.” One after another the impressive candidates pass before Samuel and are rejected. Finally, Samuel asks whether there are any more sons. Jesse answers almost as an afterthought: “There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.” In other words, the boy so insignificant that no one even thought to invite him. Yet it is precisely this overlooked shepherd—David—whom God chooses.

Biblical scholars have long recognized something profoundly political in this story. Again and again the biblical narrative reveals a God who acts from below rather than from the centers of power. The decisive figures in salvation history are rarely kings or priests or generals.

Instead, they are slaves in Egypt, shepherds in Bethlehem, fishermen in Galilee, a construction worker from Nazareth. The logic of empire assumes that leadership belongs naturally to those who are wealthy, impressive, and already powerful. The Bible insists on the opposite: God’s future consistently begins among those whom society overlooks.

Lord & Shepherds

Psalm 23 deepens this theme. “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.” We often hear those words as gentle religious poetry. Yet in the ancient world they carried a quiet political edge.

Kings throughout the Near East loved to describe themselves as shepherds of their people. Pharaoh was a shepherd. Babylon’s emperor was a shepherd. Caesar claimed to shepherd the Roman world. But the psalm rejects that claim. The psalmist does not say that the king is my shepherd or that the empire guarantees my security. Instead, he says that the Lord alone is shepherd. The source of life, protection, and abundance is not the machinery of power.

The psalm imagines something very different: green pastures, quiet waters, and a table prepared in the presence of enemies where cups overflow. It is an image of a world organized around care rather than domination.

Paul’s Wokeness

Paul’s words to the Ephesians introduce another theme running through today’s readings: the contrast between light and darkness. “You were once darkness,” Paul says, “but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” Notice how Paul defines that light. It is not merely personal piety or private virtue.

“Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness,” he writes, “but rather expose them.” In other words, light reveals what systems of power try to hide. Unjust structures survive only by persuading people that their violence is necessary and their privileges natural. But when those illusions are exposed—when reality becomes visible—the system itself begins to tremble.

What the Poor See

That insight prepares us for the extraordinary drama in today’s Gospel from John. Jesus encounters a man blind from birth. The disciples immediately ask a question reflecting the dominant ideology of their time: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

It is the ancient version of a familiar argument: suffering must be someone’s fault. Victims must somehow deserve their fate. Jesus rejects that entire framework. The man’s blindness is not the result of personal guilt. Instead, it becomes the occasion through which God’s work will be revealed.

Jesus then performs a strangely earthy action. He spits on the ground, makes clay, and spreads the mud across the man’s eyes. The gesture echoes the creation story in Genesis where humanity is formed from the dust of the earth. It is as if Jesus is re-creating the man, giving him new sight. But the real miracle unfolds afterward.

Once the man can see, he becomes the center of a storm of controversy. Neighbors question him. Religious authorities interrogate him. Even his own parents become frightened and refuse to defend him.

Why such anxiety? Because the healing threatens the authority of those who claim to interpret God’s will. If Jesus truly comes from God, the leaders who oppose him might be wrong. So the authorities attempt to discredit the miracle. They accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath. They pressure the healed man to denounce him. When he refuses, they ridicule him and eventually throw him out of the synagogue.

Meanwhile something remarkable happens within the man himself. His understanding of Jesus gradually deepens. At first, he knows only that “the man called Jesus” healed him. Later he declares that Jesus must be a prophet. Finally, he encounters Jesus again and proclaims, “Lord, I believe.” The man who began the story blind ends it with the clearest vision of all.

The irony is unmistakable. Those who claimed to see—the religious experts—become increasingly blind. Those who were supposedly ignorant perceive the truth. Jesus summarizes the entire episode in a single unsettling sentence: “I came into this world so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

Conclusion

The pattern repeats itself throughout history. Empires convince themselves they are bringing peace even as they spread destruction. Religious authorities persuade themselves they are defending God even while they silence prophets. And ordinary people—the ones dismissed as insignificant—very often see the truth far more clearly than those who wield power.

That is why Paul’s words sound less like poetry and more like a summons: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

Lent is not simply a season for private self-examination. It is a call to wake up—to recognize how easily faith can be manipulated to justify violence, to question the narratives that normalize suffering, and to listen to voices that systems of power would prefer us never to hear.

Again and again, Scripture insists that God’s work in history begins in unexpected places: among shepherd boys forgotten in the fields, among beggars sitting at the roadside, among those cast out by respectable society.

Those who appear powerless often become the clearest witnesses to truth. And that may be the most unsettling lesson of today’s readings. The future of God’s kingdom does not depend on the calculations of the powerful. It emerges from the courage of those who have learned to see.

Which brings us back to Jesus’ words at the end of the Gospel: “I came so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” The question these readings place before us is simple but disturbing.

Are we willing to let the light of the Gospel open our eyes—even when it forces us to see realities we might prefer to ignore? Even when it forces us to see from the viewpoint of immigrants, the homeless, the impoverished, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Iranians, Palestinians, the LGBTQ+ community, the addicted, the imprisoned . . .?

Wells, Walls, and Manufactured Thirst

Readings for the Third Sunday of lent: Exodus 17:1–7, Romans 5:1–2, 5–8, John 4:5–42.

The readings for this Third Sunday of Lent deal with the very human question of thirst. They raise the question, what are we thirsting for — ultimately?

Our politicians give us a glib answer. They tell us that our thirst is for security — from the threatening humans that surround us. The nation is dying we are told. We have lost our greatness. We are being overrun. Scarcity is closing in.

“Make America Great Again” is not just a slogan; it is an appeal to a deep anxiety — the fear that there is not enough: not enough jobs, not enough cultural cohesion, not enough safety, not enough control.

And so we are offered a diagnosis: the crisis is immigration. The problem is those people (who happen to be the poorest in the world!). The solution is walls, expulsions, exclusion. We are invited to believe that national greatness depends on tightening the circle.

But step back for a moment. The United States has 4 percent of the world’s population and consumes roughly a quarter of its resources. The “crisis” is narrated as though the most powerful nation in human history were a fragile victim of desperate families crossing deserts.

That story itself deserves scrutiny. It feels eerily similar to another story we heard today.

Thirst in the Desert

In Exodus 17, the people have escaped Egypt — escaped forced labor, escaped imperial extraction, escaped brick quotas. But once in the wilderness, they panic. There is no water. And fear rewrites memory. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt?” they ask. “Were there not enough graves there?”

Notice what is happening. A people freed from empire begin to long for the security of empire. Scarcity produces nostalgia. Anxiety produces accusation. Moses becomes the problem. Freedom itself becomes suspect.

And they ask the piercing question: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

That question echoes beneath our own political rhetoric. Is God present in pluralism, in equity, in inclusion? Is God present in demographic change? Is God present in movements of displaced people seeking survival? Or is God only present in the imagined stability of a past we have sanctified?

At Massah and Meribah, the people’s fear does not disqualify them. Yahweh brings water from rock. Not from Pharaoh’s storehouses. Not from a border wall. From a rock in the desert. The provision comes not through renewed control, but through trust in a God who sides with vulnerable people.

The biblical tradition has always insisted that this is the decisive revelation: God is known in history through concrete acts of sustenance for those escaping bondage. Not through slogans of greatness, but through water in the wilderness.

The Woman at the Well

Then we move to John’s Gospel, and the political charge intensifies.

Jesus is in Samaria — enemy territory. Centuries of ethnic hatred stand between Jews and Samaritans. Purity codes, historical grievances, competing temples. If ever there were a border crisis, this was it. And yet Jesus does not reinforce the boundary. He crosses it.

He asks a Samaritan woman for a drink.

It is astonishing. The one who will speak of “living water” begins by placing himself in need before someone religiously and socially marginalized. He does not begin with a lecture about law and order. He begins with vulnerability.

And this woman — doubly stigmatized as Samaritan and as female — becomes the first missionary in John’s Gospel. She leaves her jar and runs to her town: “Come and see.”

Our Real Thirst

What if the real thirst in our society is not for greatness, but for encounter? What if the deeper crisis is not immigration, but isolation? What if we have mistaken demographic change for existential threat because we have forgotten how to sit at wells with strangers?

“Living water,” Jesus says, becomes a spring within — not hoarded, not policed, not weaponized. It flows outward.

The irony is painful. The people who once wandered as refugees in the desert now fear refugees at their gates. The descendants of immigrants fear immigration. The community that drinks from a rock fears sharing water.

And beneath it all is that ancient question: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

If God is only with the secure, then fear makes sense. But if God is the One who hears slaves, who provides water for rebels, who speaks across enemy lines, then perhaps the presence of the stranger is not a threat but a test.

Paul, in Romans, says that “the love of God has been poured into our hearts.” Poured. Abundance language. Not scarcity language. Not zero-sum logic. Poured out while we were still estranged, still flawed, still confused.

Conclusion

Lent invites us to examine our thirst honestly. Are we thirsty for justice — or for dominance? For community — or for control? For security — or for solidarity?

Greatness, in the biblical sense, is never about territorial assertion. It is about fidelity to the God who brings water from rock and who offers living water at a contested well.

The wilderness is frightening. Demographic change is unsettling. Empires promise certainty. But the Gospel suggests that life springs up not from walls, but from wells.

The bush still burns. The rock still flows. The well is still there.

The only question is whether we will drink — and whether we will let others drink too.

Donald Trump’s Nakedness, His STFU SOTU Speech

Readings for the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 12: 1-4a; Psalm 33: 4-5, 18-19, 20,22; 2 Timothy 1: 8b-10; Matthew 17: 1-9

The Gospel reading for this Second Sunday of Lent is about the “transfiguration” of Jesus.

It’s about how the primitive Christian community’s understanding of Jesus and his significance changed following their experience of what they came to call his “resurrection.”

After that experience, whatever it was, they came to see him clearly as the New Moses and the New Elijah. As such he would introduce a New Order that would embody liberation of society’s most marginalized (Moses) and outspoken confrontation against the given imperial order (Elijah).

Jesus himself called that New Order the Kingdom of God.

It is what the world would look like if God were king instead of Caesar.

That vision should take on new meaning for Americans in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s disgraceful State of the Union Message last Tuesday. It should even embolden the profane response STFU.

Trump’s Un-transfigured World

If you watched the speech, you know what I mean.

It seemed like the dying gasp of the ruling Septuagenarian and Octogenarian classes.

It was a flailing, lie-filled proclamation of a Golden Age that never existed and that never will be if we follow the path the failed braggart president celebrated.

It was the opposite of God’s Kingdom – a world with room for everyone.

I mean, Trump’s SOTU celebrated division, wealth and power, and a militarism while targeting the poorest people on our planet. He had the staggering nerve to tone-deafly call them what the Epstein Files are revealing the political class itself to be: lawless rapists, pedophiles, robbers, drug dealers, gang members and murderers. And Trump’s crowd are blackmailers besides.

Making those allegations, the president revealed his own nakedness and that of his mindless Maga colleagues who mindlessly jumped to their feet to applaud the beauty of the Emperor’s non-existent robes.

Yes, the Files, the coverups, the sweetheart deals for Epstein and Maxwell, the redactions, the months-long failures to disclose, and the reduction of Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice to the President’s private law firm are revealing everything.

The Emperor indeed has no clothes. He’s shamelessly parading around stark naked and tiny.

And reminiscent of the Hans Christian Anderson story, it’s the little children he’s imprisoning (with their bunny ears and Spiderman backpacks) who proclaim the emperor’s embarrassing nudity.

No clothes! Naked! Tiny. Or as Joseph N. Welch put it to Senator Joseph McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”,

Jesus’ Transfigured World

The tale of Jesus’ Transfiguration tells an opposite story.

It’s the story of a poor construction worker – a former immigrant, a prophetic teacher of unconventional wisdom, the death row inmate whom empire jailed, tortured and submitted to imperial capital punishment – whose life and teaching revealed a New Order that was shining and pure because it had room for everyone.

And in today’s reading, it’s his transformed clothes and the spiritual company he keeps that tell the story.

Matthew puts it this way: “His face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him.”

That is, the one whose imperialized class status would eventually reduce him to nakedness on Mt. Calvary is perceived by his first followers as magnificently clothed.

Even more, Matthew’s account of Jesus’ Transfiguration has him conversing with Moses and Elijah.

Moses, of course, is the great liberator of the enslaved and poor.

Elijah was the courageous prophet who not only spoke truth to power but resisted false gods who take the side of the rich and powerful rather than God’s truly chosen ones, the poor and oppressed.

Don’t Let the Democrats off the Hook

But none of this should let the Democrats off the hook just because some of them refused to attend the STFU SOTU affair. Don’t let them get away with just not being Trump.

It’s time for us to echo Zohran Mamdani, the most popular politician in the country.

In my novella, Against All Odds: How Zohran Mamdani Became President and Changed America Forever, I imagine a moment like this. Not because of special foresight, but because systems built on secrecy, oligarchy, militarism, and spectacle inevitably crack. In that story, hidden ledgers surface. Blackmail networks become visible. The machinery of power is exposed. The old guard responds the only way it knows how — with louder threats, more force, and louder applause.

Sound familiar?

But exposure alone is not liberation.

Which brings us back to the mountain of Transfiguration.

That scene depicted there is not mystical escapism. It is political theology. It declares that the authority of empire is provisional — that the true sovereignty belongs to the God who sides with slaves, captives, resident aliens, and the poor.

Luke makes the program explicit: “He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor… to proclaim liberty to captives… to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”

That’s a rival social order.

And if the imperial system is unraveling before our eyes — if its nakedness is becoming visible — then what must follow is not nostalgia or revenge, but reconstruction.

In Against All Odds, the answer to systemic collapse is not personality cult or partisan fury, but the institution of a Republic of Care. It is clarity. It is the articulation of a simple, material program centered on ordinary people’s lives. Among others, the items in such a program would include:

Affordability
Universal health care
Full employment
Higher wages
Free education through college
Environmental protection
Expanded voting rights
An end to oligarchic distortions like the Electoral College
Strict term limits in every branch of government
Drastic reductions in military spending.
No endless wars
Immigration reform rooted in dignity
The dismantling of structures whose primary function is coercion at home and abroad.

In liberationist terms, none of that is utopian dreaming. Mamdani’s election proved that. The reforms just listed are what happen when the needs of the poor become the criteria of policy.

Conclusion

Trump’s embarrassing speech was the voice of Caesar defending a crumbling temple.

The Transfiguration is the unveiling of another possibility altogether.

Empires grow louder when they weaken. They shout about enemies. They celebrate force. They promise greatness. That is what dying systems do.

But the biblical tradition suggests something else: when Pharaoh hardens his heart, liberation accelerates. When Ahab clings to power, Elijah’s voice sharpens. When Rome crucifies, resurrection faith spreads.

Lent invites us to see clearly — to recognize naked empire and to imagine, without apology, a transfigured order grounded in justice for the poor.

Our petite impotent emperor is exposed.

The question now is whether we have the courage to climb the mountain with Peter, James and John to see what comes next.

Lent, Empire, and the God We Worship

Readings for the first Sunday of Lent: Genesis 2: 7-9, 3: 1-7; Psalm 51: 3-6,12-13, 17; Romans 5: 12-19; Matthew 4: 1-11.

Today is the first Sunday of Lent. Its readings begin with the creation myth in Genesis. They conclude with the famous story of Jesus’ temptations in the desert.

But let me begin not in Eden or in the wilderness, but in Washington, Brussels, and Tel Aviv — and in the shadow places of our own national story.

We live in a country that represents roughly 4.5 percent of the world’s population yet assumes a decisive voice in nearly every corner of the globe. We maintain military installations across continents. We speak of “rules-based international order” while reserving to ourselves the authority to determine when rules apply.

The war in Ukraine grinds on amid NATO expansion despite promises to the contrary. Gaza has become a landscape of genocide even as our government supplies arms and diplomatic cover.

Regime-change interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan have left instability that outlives the speeches that justified them. And at home, the Epstein scandal remains a symbol of elite circles that appear shielded from consequences that would crush ordinary people.

Whatever one’s political alignment, it is difficult to deny that we inhabit an imperial moment.

That is why the Gospel today matters. Because the final temptation Jesus faces is not about private morality. It is about his rejection of empire.

How Animals Became Human

But before we get to the desert, we must pass through Genesis. And Genesis is stranger than we usually allow. It’s a sacred myth about how the animals became human.

Nonetheless, we were taught — many of us in catechism classrooms that did not encourage too many questions — that this story explains how a perfect world fell apart because of disobedience. But biblical scholarship has long suggested something more subtle and more interesting. The story reads less like a fall from perfection and more like the painful emergence of moral consciousness.

God forms the human being from the soil — adamah — and breathes into it. The human is an earth creature animated by divine breath. The animals are already there. What distinguishes this creature is not biology but awareness.

The serpent does not tempt with gluttony. The fruit is “desirable for gaining wisdom.” The promise is that “you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The issue is not appetite; it is autonomy. It is the claim to define good and evil independently of the Giver of breath.

And here is where the text becomes theologically uncomfortable. The God portrayed in Genesis can sound petty and jealous. (In fact, as biblical scholars Mauro Biligno and Paul Wallis have suggested, the plural Elohim in today’s reading might not refer to God at all, but to “Powerful Ones” pretending to divine identity. But that’s another story.) In any case, the prohibition from on high appears arbitrary. The threat — “you shall die” — sounds disproportionate. If we read the story naïvely, we are left with a deity who seems insecure about competition.

Many Christians resolve that discomfort by refusing to wrestle with the text. We flatten it. We moralize it. We turn it into a children’s story about disobedience and punishment. That is the fundamentalism many of us were raised on — including in Catholic form — a fundamentalism that often ignores biblical scholarship and historical context in favor of simple certainty.

But the deeper issue in Genesis is not that God fears competition. It is that humans actually do become like God. In the end the Powerful Ones (Elohim) admit “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” However, the moment the earth creature claims ultimate moral sovereignty, alienation follows. Shame. Blame. Fear. Violence. The story is mythic, but it describes something real: despite God-like powers, when creatures enthrone themselves as divine, relationships fracture.

The serpent’s whisper — “you will be like gods” — does not remain in the garden. It scales upward into civilizations.

Empires are what happen when that whisper becomes policy.

Jesus’ Temptations in the Desert

Which brings us to the desert. Matthew tells us that Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. The temptations escalate. First, appetite: turn stones into bread. Reduce humanity to consumption. Then spectacle: throw yourself from the temple and force divine validation. Manipulate religion to secure legitimacy. And finally, the decisive offer: all the kingdoms of the world and their magnificence — in exchange for worship.

This is the climax. Empire is offered as destiny.

And here the contrast with Genesis becomes luminous. The first humans grasp at godlike autonomy. Jesus refuses it. He refuses to reduce life to bread. He refuses to weaponize God. And he refuses political domination secured by kneeling before a lesser power.

“The Lord your God shall you worship, and him alone shall you serve.”

That sentence is not pious abstraction. It is a political declaration. It means that no nation, no military alliance, no economic system, no leader can claim ultimate allegiance. It means that empire — however benevolent it imagines itself — is not God.

This is precisely where much contemporary Christianity falters. Christian fundamentalism, whether Protestant or Catholic, often aligns itself enthusiastically with imperial power. It baptizes national projects. It equates military strength with divine blessing. It reads Scripture in a way that reinforces dominance rather than questions it. The same tradition that once rejected liberation theology for being “too political” now blesses drones, sanctions, and occupation without hesitation.

And yet the Gospel we read today shows Jesus rejecting the very thing many Christians defend.

He rejects empire as diabolical.

Paul & Psalms

Paul’s letter to the Romans reframes the story. Through one human being came sin — the pattern of grasping autonomy. Through another came obedience — the pattern of trust. The contrast is not between sexuality and purity, or rule-breaking and rule-keeping. It is between self-deification and worship.

Psalm 51’s cry — “Create in me a clean heart” — becomes, in this context, a plea for undivided allegiance. A clean heart is not one that never doubts. It is one that refuses to kneel before false gods.

Lenten Conclusion

Lent, then, is not about chocolate or minor self-denials. It is about allegiance. It is about whether we will continue participating in systems that assume the right to dominate the earth and dictate history — or whether we will align ourselves with the one who refused.

If Genesis tells the story of animals becoming human through moral awareness, the desert tells the story of a human refusing to become a god.

And that refusal leads to a cross, because empire does not tolerate rivals or dissent.

We begin Lent in a world intoxicated with power. The kingdoms are still on offer. They are offered to nations. They are offered to churches. They are offered to each of us in smaller ways — security in exchange for silence, comfort in exchange for complicity.

The question is not whether temptation exists. The question is before whom we will kneel.

Dust breathed upon by God does not need to become divine. It needs only to remain faithful.

And that, perhaps, is the most subversive act of all.

The Commandments and the Epstein Revelations: Whom Does God’s Law Really Protect?

Readings for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37

Let me say it straight out: the Epstein affair is not primarily about sex. It is about law. It is about whether the commandments — and the legal systems supposedly derived from them — apply equally to everyone.

For decades, Jeffrey Epstein moved among billionaires, politicians, royalty, financiers, academics, and cultural elites. His crimes were known. Complaints were made. Investigations occurred. Yet he received an extraordinary plea deal. Associates remain shielded. Documents remain sealed. Networks remain largely untouched.

Meanwhile, poor defendants fill prisons for far lesser crimes – and in the case of immigrants and asylum seekers, for no crimes at all. Petty theft, drug possession, probation violations, and “illegal” border crossings — these are prosecuted with relentless enforcement of law.

If you want a relevant commentary on such two-tiered systems of “justice,” look no further than today’s liturgical readings. They are explosive in their contemporary application.

Sirach: God Commands No Injustice

Start with Sirach 15: 15-20. There the book’s author says: “If you choose, you can keep the commandments… He has set before you fire and water… life and death.”

At first glance, that sounds like individual moral exhortation. Choose good. Avoid evil. But Sirach adds something devastating: “No one does he command to act unjustly; to none does he give license to sin.”

That line destroys every attempt to sanctify unjust systems like ours. I mean in the United States, injustice is routinely protected by law. After all, Epstein’s plea deal in 2008 was legal. The shielding of his powerful associates has been legal. Non-disclosure agreements are legal. Sealed records are legal.

But Sirach says God commands no injustice.

If the law functions to shield predators when they are rich and well-connected while punishing the poor with mechanical severity, then the issue is not simply moral failure. It is structural perversion.

Liberation theology (i.e. non-literalist biblical interpretation supported by modern scripture scholarship) reminds us that “choice” is structured. The poor do not choose within the same field of protection as billionaires. There, fire and water are not distributed evenly. Life and death are not equally accessible.

The commandment is not merely “Don’t sin.” The deeper question is: Does the legal order reflect God’s refusal to legalize injustice?

Psalm 119: Blessed Are Those Who Follow the Law

Now look at today’s responsorial psalm. It’s refrain proclaims: “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.”

But what is the law for?

As José Porfirio Miranda and Norman Gottwald argue, the Decalogue emerged not as abstract piety but as social protection. It arose among people resisting royal systems that accumulated land, wealth, and power in elite hands.

Both theologians remind us that biblical law was a shield for subsistence households. “You shall not steal” originally meant: the powerful may not confiscate the livelihood of the vulnerable. “You shall not covet” meant desire backed by power must be restrained.

In that light, now ask the uncomfortable question: when billionaires operate in networks of mutual protection and the law seems reluctant to expose them fully, is that still Torah? Or is it what the prophets called “corruption at the gate?”

Psalm 119 blesses those who follow God’s law — not those who manipulate civil law to protect privilege.

Paul: The Wisdom of the Rulers

In the same spirit of Sirach and Psalm 119, Paul speaks of “a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age… who are passing away.” He also adds something chilling: “None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

The cross was a legal execution. It was state-sanctioned. It was justified under Roman law and enabled by religious authority.

That’s Paul’s point.

The rulers always believe their system is rational and necessary. Franz Hinkelammert reminds us that ruling ideologies present themselves as inevitable. Markets are inevitable. Elite networks are inevitable. Certain people are untouchable.

When the Epstein affair reveals how proximity to wealth and power appears to blunt accountability, we are witnessing what Paul calls “the wisdom of this age.” A wisdom that protects itself.

The rulers crucified Jesus legally. Legality is not the same as justice.

Jesus: Fulfilling the Law by Protecting the Vulnerable

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus declares:
“I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.”

Then he radicalizes it. “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not kill.’ But I say to you, whoever humiliates…”

Jesus’ point is that dehumanization precedes violence. When victims are dismissed because they lack status, when their testimony is doubted because they are young, poor, or socially marginal, contempt is already at work.

“You have heard it said… You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks with lust…”

Could these words be more pertinent to the Epstein Affair? In a world where wealthy men are allowed to treat vulnerable underage girls and women as property, lust backed by power means coercion. Jesus targets the interior logic of such domination.

His teaching on divorce does the same thing. It sides with the economically vulnerable spouse. Legal permission did not equal justice.

Notice the pattern: every intensification of the commandment in today’s readings closes loopholes that allow the powerful to exploit the weak.

That is fulfillment of the law. If a legal system permits exploitation through influence, money, and secrecy, it has not fulfilled the law. It has hollowed it out.

Two Systems

The Epstein affair is not an anomaly. It is a revelation.

It reveals what liberation theology has long argued: sin is social as well as personal. Structures can be sinful. Systems can crucify.

When poor defendants encounter swift prosecution while elite networks encounter delay, protection, and opacity, we are not witnessing isolated moral failure. We are witnessing two systems.

Sirach sets before us life and death. The death-dealing system is one where law bends upward. The life-giving system is one where law protects the vulnerable first:

“Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.”
Blessed are those who refuse to equate legality with justice.
Blessed are those who demand that commandments function as protection for the powerless.
Blessed are those who see through the “wisdom” of powerful elites

Jesus did not abolish the commandments. He sharpened them until they pierced hypocrisy.

Before us remain fire and water. The question is not whether we personally avoid wrongdoing.

The question is whether we will accept a system where justice is negotiated by wealth — or insist that the law once again become what it was meant to be: protection and good news for the poor.

Why Isaiah and Jesus Sound Like Marx (Again)

Readings for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Isaiah 58:7-10; Psalm112:4-9; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Matthew 5:13-16.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been saying (here and here) something that makes some people nervous: that the teachings of Jesus and the practice of the earliest Christian communities contain themes that can only be described as Marxist, socialist, even communist. Not in the caricatured sense tossed around on talk shows. Not in the Cold War sense. But in the deeply biblical sense—rooted in shared bread, structural justice, and God’s bias toward the poor.

Today’s readings don’t retreat from that claim. They double down.

Let’s start with the prophet and then move on to the Psalms, Paul, and Jesus.

Isaiah 58: God’s Politics of Bread

In Book of Isaiah 58, God is not interested in private piety detached from public justice. Isaiah says: Share your bread with the hungry. Shelter the oppressed and the homeless. Clothe the naked. Remove oppression from your midst.

This is not charity as a hobby. This is social reorganization. The prophet does not say, “Pray more and the hungry will be spiritually nourished.” He says: share your bread. Bread is economic. Bread is material. Bread is about who owns what and who eats.

The prophet assumes something structural: hunger is not accidental. Homelessness is not random. Oppression is not an individual moral failure; it is embedded in systems. And the remedy is not spiritualization—it is redistribution.

Psalm112:4-9

The Responsorial Psalm is often read as describing personal virtue. But listen carefully.

“Lavishly he gives to the poor.”
“He conducts his affairs with justice.”

The psalmist describes someone whose economic behavior is transformed. The just person lends without exploitation. He is not shaken by “evil report.” He is steadfast in justice.

This is not the portrait of a nationalist strongman obsessed with dominance. It is not the image of someone defending borders, hoarding wealth, or equating divine favor with market success. It is the image of someone who destabilizes unjust systems by generosity.

Franz Hinkelammert, the German-Latin American economist and theologian, warned that modern capitalism turns the market into an idol—demanding sacrifice of human lives in the name of “efficiency.” Hinkelammert argued that when profit becomes sacred, people become expendable.

Psalm 112 offers a different sacred center: the poor.

The just person’s heart is firm not because he has secured his investments—but because he trusts in the Lord while giving away resources.

That is profoundly anti-idolatrous. And therefore, profoundly political.

Paul in Corinth: Power in Weakness

In First Epistle to the Corinthians 2, Paul says something revolutionary:

“I did not come with sublimity of words or wisdom… but with Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

The crucified one is not a nationalist hero. He is an executed victim of empire. (Crucifixion was the form of capital punishment reserved for insurrectionists.) Paul refuses rhetorical domination. He refuses identification with the elite. He centers the cross—an instrument of state terror.

Liberation theology has always emphasized this: the cross reveals God’s identification with victims. God is not neutral between oppressor and oppressed. God is found among those crucified by history.

Paul’s refusal of “persuasive words of wisdom” is also a critique of ideological manipulation. Faith must not rest on elite rhetoric, but on divine power manifest in solidarity with those empire hates and kills.

That is why Christian nationalism feels threatened by the cross.

Christian nationalism prefers triumph. It prefers cultural dominance. It prefers flags draped over crosses.

But Paul gives us a broken body instead.

Jesus: Salt and Light

Now the Gospel.

In Gospel of Matthew 5, Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth.” “You are the light of the world.”

Salt preserves from decay. Light exposes what is hidden.

This is not a call to privatized spirituality. It is a call to public transformation.

Notice: your light must shine so that others see your good deeds.

What deeds?

Isaiah has already told us: feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, dismantling oppression.

Jesus is not inventing a new ethic here. He is intensifying Isaiah’s.

A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. This is a communal image. It evokes not isolated believers but a visible alternative society.

The earliest Christian communities took this seriously. They held goods in common. They redistributed resources so that “there was not a needy person among them.” That sounds dangerously close to socialism—because it is.

And here is where we must address the tension with voices like Charlie Kirk‘s, which argue that Christianity is fundamentally about individual salvation, private morality, and national strength.

In that framework, the market is sacred, property rights are absolute, and any talk of structural redistribution is labeled “Marxist” as if that ends the conversation.

But here’s the irony: Isaiah sounds more Marxist than the commentators who condemn Marx. Jesus sounds more socialist than the pundits who wave Bibles at rallies.

When Christians share bread, dismantle oppression, and organize communal life around the needs of the poor, they are not betraying the Gospel. They are embodying it.

Why This Theology Was Targeted

This is why liberation theology (i.e. authentic biblical theology informed by modern scripture scholarship) was perceived as dangerous.

In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration and policy strategists behind what became known as the Santa Fe Document explicitly identified liberation theology as a threat in Latin America. It aligned peasants and workers with biblical faith. It exposed structural injustice. It challenged U.S.-backed regimes.

So, it had to be neutralized.

The strategy was twofold: (1) Portray liberation theology as “Marxist infiltration,” and (2) Promote a privatized, depoliticized Christianity compatible with neoliberal economics.

The result?

U.S.-sponsored death squads.
Assassinations of priests, nuns, and catechists. (Recall the slogan in El Salvador, “Be a patriot; kill a priest.”)
A generation of Christians taught to fear the word “justice” if it implied systemic change.
A generation trained to equate patriotism with piety.
A generation suspicious of any theology that speaks of class.

And so, the Left weakened—because it surrendered theological imagination — and often faith itself. Meanwhile, the Right grew strong—because it wrapped market ideology in biblical language.

But Isaiah is still there.

Paul is still there.

Jesus is still there.

And they continue to say: share your bread. Remove oppression. Shine with good deeds.

The Conflict Today

The conflict is not between Christianity and atheism. It is between two versions of Christianity. One blesses empire. The other stands with the crucified. One Christianity defends borders above human beings. The other remembers that Jesus himself was a refugee. One Christianity fears the language of class. The other recognizes that the Bible is saturated with it—rich and poor, debtor and creditor, slave and free.

Christian nationalism proclaims, “Make the nation great again.” Biblical theology proclaims, “Make the poor visible again.”

Christian nationalism identifies God with power. Biblical theology identifies God with victims.

And today’s readings make clear which side the biblical text leans toward.

Salt That Has Not Lost Its Taste

Jesus warns: salt can lose its taste.

What does that mean? It means faith can lose its transformative power. It can become bland, domesticated, harmless. When Christianity ceases to confront structural injustice, it becomes tasteless. When the Church fears being called “socialist” more than it fears ignoring the hungry, it has lost its saltiness. When Christians defend systems that produce homelessness while quoting Scripture about personal morality, the light dims.

But when bread is shared, light breaks forth like dawn. When oppression is removed, darkness becomes midday. When communities embody economic justice—God says, “Here I am.”

That is the promise of Isaiah.

That is the power of the cross.

That is the calling of salt and light.

Conclusion

For the past two weeks, I’ve suggested that Marx did not invent concern for the poor. The prophets did. Jesus did. The earliest Christians did.

Marx analyzed exploitation. Isaiah condemned it. Jesus embodied resistance to it.

To acknowledge this is not to baptize every socialist experiment in history. It is not to deny the complexities of economics. It is simply to be honest about the text.

The Bible does not defend hoarding. It does not sanctify inequality. It does not idolize the nation-state. It calls for justice. And justice, in Scripture, is not abstract. It is bread, shelter, clothing, and dignity.

So, if someone says that such preaching is “Marxist,” perhaps the better question is: why does Marx sound like Isaiah?

If someone claims that Christian faith is about national power, perhaps we should ask: what do we do with the crucified Messiah?

If someone insists that the Church should avoid politics, perhaps we should re-read Isaiah 58.

The readings today are not subtle. They do not whisper. They’re about salt and light, bread and justice, capital punishment and resurrection.

They do not endorse empire, domination or nationalism disguised as faith. Instead, they announce that authentic worship is inseparable from economic justice.

And when that justice begins to take shape—when bread is shared, when the afflicted are satisfied—then, Isaiah promises, “your light shall rise in the darkness.”

May we have the courage to let it shine.

When Even Liberals Deny The Communism Present in the Bible

Readings for Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13; Psalm 146:6-7, 8-9-10; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; Matthew 5:12a

Not long ago, Bill Maher dismissed Zohran Mamdani by calling him a “straight-up communist,” as if that were the end of the conversation. No serious engagement with ideas. No discussion of wages, housing, healthcare, or workers’ rights. Just the word — used the way it has been used in this country for a century: to make people afraid and to shut down debate.

What’s striking is that this kind of reaction no longer comes only from the political right. It now comes from a whole class of well-off “liberals” who pride themselves on being socially progressive while remaining fiercely protective of the economic arrangements that benefit them.

They’ll support diversity. They’ll support tolerance. They’ll support every cultural reform that does not threaten concentrated wealth.

But the moment someone starts talking seriously about class, about exploitation, about systems that generate poverty in the middle of abundance, suddenly the conversation becomes “dangerous,” “extreme,” or “un-American.”

And that tells us something important: even liberal politics in this country has very strict limits when it comes to challenging economic power.

Which makes today’s readings deeply inconvenient — not only for conservatives, but for comfortable liberals as well.

Because Scripture is not neutral. And it is not polite.

In today’s first reading, Zephaniah tells us that God’s future is not secured by elites, but by: “a people humble and lowly… who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord.” The future belongs not to those the world considers “winners,” but to a remnant of impoverished survivors.

And the responsorial Psalm leaves no ambiguity about divine priorities:

The Lord secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets captives free, protects strangers (immigrants and refugees), sustains widows and orphans, and thwarts the way of the wicked.

That is not cultural progressivism. That is economic and social judgment.

Then Paul says something that should make every “meritocracy” uncomfortable: Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth.

In other words, the Church did not begin among the educated, affluent, and influential — and it was never meant to become their chaplain.

God, Paul says, deliberately chooses the weak and the lowly in order to expose how hollow our usual standards of success really are.

That is not a message designed to reassure people who are already doing quite well.

Then Jesus goes up the mountain and does something extraordinary: He does not bless hard work. He does not bless ambition. He does not bless entrepreneurship.

He blesses: the poor, the grieving, the meek (humble, gentle, non-violent) and those who hunger and thirst for justice.

And Luke strips away any remaining ambiguity: He has Jesus say directly “Blessed are you who are poor.” Not “poor in spirit” (Matthew’s version). Not “poor but virtuous.” Not “poor but patient.” Just poor.

This is not charity language. This is political language.

Jesus is announcing that God’s future does not belong to those who win under present arrangements. It belongs to those who have been pushed aside by them.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.” Not the landlords. Not the corporations. The meek (humble, gentle, non-violent).

Which raises an obvious question: inherit it from whom?

From those who currently control it.

That is not spiritualized poetry. That is social reversal.

And then Jesus adds: Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you because of me.

In other words, if you stand with the poor and challenge systems that benefit the powerful, do not expect bipartisan approval. Expect mockery — including from people who otherwise think of themselves as progressive (like Bill Maher).

Because nothing makes respectable liberals more uncomfortable than the suggestion that their comfort may depend on someone else’s suffering.

Now let’s talk again about that word: “communist.”

Karl Marx was not writing self-help books for the wealthy. He was analyzing why workers who produce society’s wealth often cannot afford to live securely in it. He was naming class as a structural reality, not a personality flaw.

And the society he imagined was one marked, at least in theory, by: shared abundance, no permanent classes, and no state serving as guardian of elite interests.

Now again, Jesus is not Marx. But when Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of God, what he describes is a world where: no one hoards while others starve, no one is reduced to a disposable labor unit, no one’s worth is determined by productivity or profit.

And that is not just talk.

Acts tells us that the first Christians: held all things in common and distributed to each as any had need.

That is not symbolic. That is economic practice.

And yet, in modern American Christianity, we are told again and again that faith has nothing to say about economic structures, only about personal morality.

Which is very convenient — for those who benefit from those structures.

Now add one more truth we cannot afford to forget. Jesus was not only poor. He was not only from a peasant class. He was also a refugee.

Like so many at our borders today, his family fled across state lines to escape political violence. His survival depended on being welcomed as a stranger in a foreign land.

Which means that when today’s political debates treat migrants as threats, burdens, or criminals, they are not simply ignoring Jesus’ teachings — they are contradicting Jesus’ life.

Borders were not sacred and inviolable for Jesus and his family. Saving their own lives was.

And that should matter a great deal when Christians start speaking as though national security is more sacred than human dignity.

So, when I hear wealthy comedians and pundits sneer at movements for economic justice and immigrant dignity as “communist,” what I really hear is anxiety — not about ideology, but about the possibility that the moral center of society might shift away from protecting privilege.

Because let’s be honest: the Beatitudes are far more dangerous to entrenched wealth than Marx ever was.

They do not simply criticize exploitation. They declare that God’s future belongs to those who suffer under it.

And that is precisely why even “liberal” societies work so hard to tame Jesus, spiritualize his words, and turn Christianity into a religion of personal decency rather than structural transformation.

But Scripture refuses to cooperate. From the prophets to Paul to Jesus himself, the message is consistent: God sides with the poor. God challenges the powerful. God imagines a world beyond class domination and enforced scarcity.

And if that vision makes polite society nervous — if it earns ridicule from television studios and think tanks — then perhaps it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

Because Jesus said: Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and speak evil against you falsely because of me.

And this not because suffering is good, but because standing with the poor has always been the place where God’s kingdom collides with human empires — including empires that call themselves liberal, enlightened, and even Christian.

And that collision is not behind us.

It is very much still unfolding.

Me and Charlie Kirk

The more I watch Charlie Kirk’s “debates” with college students, the more compassion I feel for him. He strikes me as a brilliant but frightened young man—haunted, as I once was, by a God of fear and judgment. Like Charlie, I once believed in that God until I reached roughly the same age he was when he died at just thirty-one.

That “biblical” God, as I was taught, was the almighty creator, lawgiver, judge, and punisher—the terrifying being who condemned sinners to eternal torment for disobedience. Who wouldn’t be afraid of such a deity? Certainly not me. Like Charlie, I accepted it all.

My education—spanning from kindergarten in 1945 to my doctoral studies in Rome in 1972—was entirely within the Catholic Church. Nuns and priests trained me in one of the most traditional, patriarchal institutions in the world. They taught that there was “no salvation outside the Church.” It was our duty to convert the “pagans.”

So I spent thirteen years in seminaries preparing to be a missionary in Asia—China, Korea, Burma, Japan. Then came five more years of doctoral study in theology. The indoctrination could hardly have been deeper.

Like Charlie Kirk’s brand of fundamentalism, my Catholic formation fostered a deep suspicion of science and “secular” knowledge. Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864) had warned against modern thought. From it emerged the apologetic mindset that shaped both of us—a defensive “us versus them” posture toward the modern world. Apologetics gave us tidy answers to every challenge: “If they say this, you say that.” Charlie mastered it. So did I. We both found it airtight, logical, and comforting.

Our politics flowed from the same worldview. My Catholic mentors, like Charlie’s conservative allies, saw communism as evil incarnate. When Senator Joseph McCarthy died, one of my seminary teachers told me, “A great man died today.” At twenty-two, I cast my first vote for Barry Goldwater.

And yet, even in that enclosed world, the “bad ideas” we feared had a way of slipping in. Despite my resistance, studying Latin and Greek classics, French and English literature, and Church history began to unsettle my certainty. Questions emerged about morality, colonialism, the Crusades, and the value of other faiths. I fought those doubts—but they persisted.

When the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) finally opened the Church to modernity, I was among the last to let go of my conservative instincts. I loved the Latin Mass, the vestments, and the comforting clarity of dogma. Like Charlie, I thought the Bible was literally dictated by God through chosen “transcribers”—Moses, David, Solomon, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

But my four years of pre-ordination Scripture study shattered that illusion. Doctoral work confirmed it: The Bible isn’t a single book. It’s a diverse library written by many flawed human beings over a thousand years. They used different names for God and often disagreed about divine commands.

The Bible contains myth, legend, poetry, law, prophecy, fiction, and coded “apocalyptic” literature—resistance writings against empire, not predictions of the end of the world. I still remember my shock learning that Matthew’s “three wise men” story was midrash, not history. To treat all of it as literal fact is to miss its deeper truth.

Even so, like Charlie, I continue to believe the Bible is true—not in every detail, but in its moral and spiritual essence. As one of my friends says, “The Bible is true, and some of it even happened.” Its central story is not Adam and Eve’s fall, but the Exodus—the liberation of slaves. That story reveals the Bible’s real heart: what scholars call “God’s preferential option for the poor.”

The Bible sides with the enslaved, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant—the victims of empire. In fact, it may be the only ancient text written almost entirely by people conquered by Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. Its truth is that followers of Jesus are called to stand with the oppressed.

I wish Charlie Kirk had lived long enough to encounter that truth. I believe his integrity might have led him toward it. But he dropped out of college after one semester, calling higher education a scam and a waste of time. He thought it was too expensive and too slow—a mere credentialing machine for good jobs.

To him, studying literature, history, or biblical scholarship in college was pointless. Worse, he saw such studies as dangerous, because they exposed students to the “bad ideas” that challenge inherited faith.

That, I think, is the crux of the problem. For both Charlie and my younger self, religion was the one realm where childhood knowledge was considered complete and unchangeable. Questioning it was betrayal. It’s as if a student of arithmetic said, “I know all about addition and subtraction—don’t confuse me with algebra or calculus.”

But algebra and calculus exist. They expand mathematical truth. And in the same way, modern biblical scholarship and scientific discovery expand our understanding of faith. History, psychology, sociology, and biology all reveal new dimensions of reality. Dismissing them out of fear is not faith—it’s denial.

I know, because I lived that denial for years. So when I watch Charlie Kirk confronting the questions of college students, I feel compassion. I see a man of goodwill trapped in a theology of fear. My heart goes out to him—and to all conservative Christians whose terror of change and of God narrows their vision to biblical literalism and political reaction.

Faith can be so much larger than that.
It can liberate, not confine.
It can open hearts instead of closing them.

That’s the lesson Charlie Kirk never got the chance to learn.

When Bible Readers Like Charlie Kirk Ignore Its Class-Consciousness

The recent assassination of Charlie Kirk provoked a flurry of commentary about God, faith, and politics. Among the more thoughtful responses was David Brooks’ New York Times column, “We Need to Think Straight About God and Politics.” His essay reminded me once again how central theology remains for understanding today’s world—and how dangerous it is for progressives to ignore it.

But despite Brooks’ good intentions, his article was fundamentally flawed. He missed the Bible’s class-consciousness, a theme that runs through its central narratives and prophetic voices. In doing so, he overlooked the way modern biblical scholarship interprets scripture: as a profoundly political document that consistently sides with the poor and oppressed against the wealthy and powerful. Without acknowledging this, Brooks failed to resolve the very problem he set out to explore: how God and politics relate.

Ironically, Charlie Kirk—whose white Christian nationalism has been condemned by many—grasped something Brooks did not: that the Bible is not politically neutral. But Kirk twisted that insight. Rather than recognizing God’s solidarity with the marginalized, Kirk placed the divine firmly on the side of the dominant white, patriarchal class. His theology inverted the teachings of the Jewish prophet Jesus of Nazareth, who identified God with the poor, the dispossessed, and the oppressed.

In what follows, I want to clarify this point by (1) summarizing Brooks’ argument, (2) contrasting it with Kirk’s theological vision, and (3) comparing both with the insights of modern biblical scholarship, which I’ll describe as “critical faith theory.” My thesis is simple: without acknowledging the achievements of such theory with its implied class-consciousness, we cannot understand either the Bible’s meaning or its challenge to today’s politics.

Brooks’ Confusion

Brooks began by observing that Kirk’s funeral blurred the lines between religion and politics. Speakers portrayed Kirk as a kind of martyr, invoking Jesus’ example of forgiveness, while Donald Trump and his allies used the occasion to unleash vengeance and hatred. Brooks admitted he was disturbed and confused: why such a volatile mix of faith and politics? Shouldn’t religion stay in the private sphere, separate from political life?

To make sense of it, Brooks reached for the old notion of complementarity. Religion and politics, he suggested, are distinct but mutually supportive. Politics deals with power; religion provides the moral compass reminding us that everyone, regardless of ideology, is a sinner in need of grace. On this view, the Bible does not offer a political program. It simply sets the stage for moral reflection.

In short, Brooks tried to preserve a moderate middle ground. Faith should shape moral values but not dictate political programs.

The problem is that this neat separation has little to do with the Bible itself.

Kirk’s Fundamentalist Class-Consciousness

Kirk, unlike Brooks, made no such distinction. He declared openly: “I want to talk about spiritual things, and in order to do that, I have to enter the political arena.”

Brooks responded with incredulity, but Kirk’s reasoning is clear. His fundamentalist reading of scripture led him to embrace a particular worldview that has always been political. He believed the Bible is the literal word of God, with Moses, David, Solomon, and the gospel writers transcribing divine dictation. He accepted the traditional Christian narrative—codified since the fourth century—that humanity is fallen through Adam and Eve’s sin, redeemed by Jesus’ sacrificial death, and destined for heaven or hell depending on baptism and personal acceptance of Christ.

This theology, which became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, was weaponized to support conquest, colonization, and oppression. From the Crusades to the slave trade to European colonialism, Christian rulers used this story to justify domination of Muslims, Jews, Indigenous peoples, Africans, and other non-white, non-Christian populations. Christianity, in its imperial form, became the religion of empire.

Kirk, then, was not wrong to insist that “spiritual talk” inevitably enters politics. But he saw Christianity as legitimizing the rule of a largely white, patriarchal elite. His class-consciousness was real—but inverted.

Critical Faith Theory: A Different Story

Modern biblical scholarship tells a very different story. Beginning in the late 18th and 19th centuries, historians, linguists, archaeologists, and literary critics began examining scripture using the tools of critical analysis. They discovered that the Bible is not a single book with one author but a library of texts written and edited over centuries. These texts include myth, poetry, law codes, prophecy, letters, gospels, and apocalypses. They contain conflicting theologies: some justifying empire, others resisting it.

What emerges from this scholarship is not the story of Adam’s sin and Jesus’ death reopening heaven’s gates. Rather, it is the story of liberation from slavery and God’s solidarity with the poor.

The central narrative begins with the Exodus, the liberation of enslaved people from Egypt. Israel’s God revealed himself as a liberator, entering into a covenant with the freed slaves to form a just society where widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor would be protected. When Israel’s leaders violated that covenant, prophets arose to denounce them and call the nation back to justice.

Over centuries, Israel itself was conquered by empires—Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. Prophets promised deliverance from oppression, not heavenly rewards in a distant afterlife.

Jesus of Nazareth stood squarely in this prophetic tradition. A poor construction worker from Galilee, he proclaimed the arrival of God’s kingdom—a radically new order of justice and peace. He challenged religious elites, preached solidarity with outcasts, and raised the hopes of the oppressed. Rome executed him as a rebel through crucifixion, a punishment reserved for political insurgents.

His followers, convinced he was raised from the dead, created communities that practiced what today might be called Christian communism. The Book of Acts records that believers shared possessions in common and distributed resources “as any had need.”

This was not an abstract spirituality but a concrete economic alternative. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, it might be called “communism with Christian characteristics.” As Luke the evangelist put it in his Book of Acts 2:44-45, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” In Acts 4:32, the same author writes: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”

This approach to scripture—often called liberation theology—describes God as having a “preferential option for the poor.” Far from being neutral, the Bible takes sides. It consistently identifies God with the marginalized, not the powerful.

Jesus as the Rejected One

The class-consciousness of the Bible is perhaps most powerfully expressed in the figure of Jesus himself who, remember, is considered the fullest revelation of God.

Think about who he was: the son of an unwed teenage mother, raised by a working-class father, living under imperial occupation. As a child he was a political refugee in Egypt. As an adult he befriended prostitutes, tax collectors, and drunkards. He clashed with religious authorities and was executed as a political criminal. His death—torture and crucifixion—was reserved for those considered dangerous to empire.

This is not the profile of someone embraced by elites. It is the life of someone MAGA nationalists like Kirk would reject as unworthy, threatening, or “vermin.” Yet Christians confess this despised and rejected man as the revelation of God.

Jesus himself underlined this identification when he said in Matthew 25:40, “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters—the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the prisoner—you do to me.” The divine is encountered not in palaces, temples, or megachurches, but among the poor and excluded.

That is the class-conscious heart of the Bible.

Why It Matters

The contrast between Brooks, Kirk, and liberation theology highlights three very different approaches to God and politics.

Brooks wants to keep religion in the realm of private morality, supplementing politics but never shaping it directly. The problem is that the Bible itself refuses to be apolitical.
Kirk recognizes the political dimension but twists it to sanctify empire, patriarchy, and white supremacy. His theology reflects the imperial Christianity that oppressed much of the world.
Critical faith theory insists that the Bible sides with the oppressed. Its story begins not with sin and guilt but with liberation from slavery, continues with prophetic denunciations of injustice, and culminates in Jesus’ solidarity with the poor.

For progressives, this matters enormously. Too often the left cedes the Bible to the right, assuming it is inherently conservative. But modern scholarship shows the opposite: the Bible is a revolutionary text. It challenges systems of exploitation and offers resources for building communities of justice, equality, and care.

Conclusion

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has sparked renewed debate about God and politics. Moderates like David Brooks remain confused, trying to maintain a polite separation between religion and politics. Kirk, by contrast, embraced a political theology but aligned God with the ruling class.

The Bible itself, however, tells a different story. Through the lens of critical faith theory, we see its central theme: God’s preferential option for the poor. From the Exodus to the prophets to Jesus and the early church, scripture consistently sides with the oppressed.

Progressives ignore this at their peril. To cede the Bible to the right is to abandon one of the most powerful sources of hope, resistance, and liberation in human history. If read with eyes open to its class-consciousness, the Bible remains what it has always been: not the book of empire, but the book of revolution.