As of this writing, Project Hail Mary has grossed over $500 million at the worldwide box office, and it still appears to have some legs. Word of mouth has remained strong, and part of the reason, I believe, is that whole families can go watch it and enjoy it regardless of age. There’s something for everyone. Children can enjoy something with gravitas and humor, while parents can feel comfortable that nothing obscene will flash on the screen or blare from the speakers.

It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s a well-made, entertaining movie. A family-friendly movie. The type of movie that used to be common. The type of move that assumed that families, parents and children of varying ages, wanted to do things together.

The family movie used to be the norm, but now it’s a rarity. And when you mention the idea of a “family-friendly movie,” some recoil and think you mean a “kid’s movie,” the kind that might be animated, full of juvenile jokes, so many colors and lights swirling and blinking designed to cause seizures in even the most stable minds, and pacing leaves the audience wondering whether they have ADD. All sizzle, no steak. Not so much a movie but an obnoxious theme park ride.

In other words, they think of the Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Something families technically watch together, but no reasonable adult would watch on their own. The parents are along for the ride, much like a hostage in the trunk of a car. These movies are intended to shut the kids up for 2 hours, then be forgotten, and Hollywood is strewn with their ruins and refuse.

The other type of “kids’ movie” rightly derided is one with “very special episode” syndrome, where the aim is not to tell a story but to convey a lesson. Propaganda, in other words. FernGully: The Last Rainforest is a prime example, though that one almost succeeds in being an actual movie. Many movies of this ilk are saccharine sweet and sanitized, and watching them has all the appeal of licking a freshly-bleached kitchen counter top. No sharp corners, and everything is covered in bubble wrap. Others have an outrageous wish-fulfillment as its premise (not a bad idea in concept), but to make the plot happen, every adult in the movie is either an enemy or a moron, especially the parents.

Some movies made for children elevate the art form and become something more (WALL-E, The Incredibles, much of early Pixar); these aren’t the norm, and even Pixar has been lobotomized. “Kids’ movie” is a slur, though it didn’t have to be that way.

But even an elevated, well-crafted kids’ movie is not a family movie. The parents are still incidental observers, even if they end up enjoying the experience.

What is a family-friendly movie?

“Not Everything Needs to Be Made For Kids”

I lamented that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms could have been a great show if they had made it so families could watch it together. It wouldn’t have taken much. Just remove 10 seconds of nudity and cut the profanity. The show wasn’t that violent (and its main action scene kind of sucks), so they had already dialed it back from typical HBO levels. A shame, because it had a good core with some potential, and decided to tip over the porta-potty to make it more "thrilling" or whatever.

Someone protested that “not everything needs to be made for kids.” But that’s not what I was arguing for. The comment betrayed some fundamental assumptions, not to mention a dumb, juvenile definition of what “for adults” should mean. In the case of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, “for adults” meant prosthetic genitalia on display for about 10 seconds. A more charitable interpretation is that people don’t want all the edges sanded off, and they don’t want their only entertainment options to be G-rated fluff.

But again, that wasn’t the point. I don’t want G-rated fluff either, nor do I want it for my kids. A diet cannot consist of only syrup and cotton candy. Does no one read original fairy tales anymore, many of which are full of danger and grotesquerie? There are TV cuts of Die Hard and Terminator 2 that aired on network television, intended to be family-friendly, and both movies, despite the edits, still work and have every single one of their most iconic moments.

Family-friendly movies do not need all of the edges sanded off. They can have sharp corners and frightening moments. They can deal with heavy themes, some of which might float 6 feet above the heads of most children watching. The definition transcends the rating system and transcends genres.

I consider A Quiet Place family-friendly, despite some scary and heavy moments and despite being rated PG-13. There is nothing gratuitous or voyeuristic. The whole family can watch it and get something out of it, and during the scary moments, children can avert their eyes for a second or snuggle in closer to Mom and Dad. Maybe not a nighttime watch, but it’s something the whole family can enjoy, and no one has accused it of “being made for kids.”

Even a movie like Gladiator is almost family-friendly. It wouldn’t take much to make it so, while keeping the core of what works.

Many of the Marvel movies are family-friendly, though many also pushed that PG-13 rating to the limit. Would the franchise have been such a juggernaut if more of them were rated a hard R? Would the original Star Wars have been successful if it included nudity, rape, and more profanity?

And more importantly, would any of these movies be better by making them more obscene?

Every Movie Used to Be a “Family-Friendly” Movie

Once upon a time, it was assumed that families would watch movies together, and so every movie was made with that expectation. Hence, the Hays Code, a set of self-enforced guidelines, partly introduced to avoid regulation coming down on the growing movie industry. The guidelines involved “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls” so that a movie did not lower “the moral standards of those who see it."

I’m not advocating a return to something like this, nor do I think the code was perfect. It was overly rigid and a product of its time. For example, it allowed no depiction of miscegenation and no ridicule of the clergy. Even though the clergy deserve some ridicule, and sometimes they make it way too easy.

What it did do, however, was force film creators to be creative in telling their stories. Constraints fertilize the soil where creativity grows. Dialogue and cleverness reigned. Some of the greatest films ever made came out of this era. Hitchcock’s best movies were born in this era.

You can still watch Rear Window and North by Northwest with your family, and everyone will have a great time. Would anyone accuse these movies of being made “just for kids?” You’ll also notice that Hitchcock filled his movies with sexual innuendo and imagery, and he certainly didn’t shy away from the darker sides of human nature. I’m not praising him for the innuendo, just highlighting that “family-friendly” does not mean “sanitized.”

Explaining this, I feel like the grandfather from The Princess Bride, promising that the story is not a “kissing book” and there’s actually a lot to get excited about, just keep your shirt on, people. (The Princess Bride being another great family movie, of course). A family-friendly movie can be just as impactful and exciting as any other movie, but — and here’s the kicker — it might take more effort and craftsmanship. You have a few more constraints. You can’t depend on boobies to capture attention. You can’t rely on excessive gore to shock the audience. You must work more on pathos, and not the mere appearance of pathos.

What happened when the expectation that families would watch movies together vanished? Segregation and pandering. One side descended into bright colors, frenetic action, inane plots, poop jokes, and cheap moralizing. The other descended into further depravity, acting like a desperate stand-up comedian who is bombing on stage, who desperately reaches for a sex joke or obscenity as a shortcut to engagement. The two sides have gotten farther and farther apart, though there are rare moments of overlap.

So, What Is a Family-Friendly Movie?

It’s hard to come up with a concrete rule and easier to point to movies, as I’ve done above. Add to that list The Great Escape, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (and other westerns), It Happened on Fifth Avenue, and Charade. More modern examples are harder to find, though Master and Commander, Godzilla Minus One, and The Lord of the Rings work well.

However, another modern example that almost made the cut will suffice to help coalesce around a definition. Free Guy could have been family-friendly and still retain 100% of its entertainment power and payoffs. Instead, it’s laced with profanity and crude sex jokes, which add nothing and aren’t funny. Swapping out around 3 minutes of a 2-hour movie, either cutting or replacing it with something that serves a similar purpose, would have made the movie family-friendly. That’s it. And it would have been a better movie.

The only reason to season the milkshake with diarrhea was to snicker the way teenage boys snicker in the back of the room when they think they’re telling a slightly transgressive joke.

So here is my definition.

A family-friendly movie:

• Has nothing in it that would cause a teenager to squirm while watching it with their parents. Usually sexual in nature.

• Has nothing that would cause the parents to cover their children’s ears.

• Has no vivid, extreme on-screen violence or imagery that could give a younger child nightmares.

• Does not glorify harmful lifestyle choices and is sensitive in its presentation of them. We don’t need an extended, detailed sequence of someone shooting up heroin.

Notice what is not on the list: tense situations, heavy themes, scary moments. A movie can be genuinely creepy and scary without being nightmare-fuel. It doesn’t have to be bleached and scrubbed of all things interesting. If you don’t believe something can be good, noble, true, beautiful while also being entertaining and exciting unless it’s also laced with arsenic, your taste is broken, and your imagination has been handicapped.

Also, notice that these guidelines exist on more of a spectrum. A movie can still be “family-friendly” and not be appropriate for a sensitive 5-year-old to watch, but 3 years later, they might be ready. Movies like A Quiet Place fall into that category. You know your family. You know your children. Adjust accordingly.

Above all, a family-friendly movie must be a good movie. No one wants to be fed slop or from something scraped from the bottom of the slush pile. A family-friendly movie is not worth watching if it is not, first and foremost, a good movie. It shouldn’t be overly sentimental, didactic syrup.

Why Do I Care?

I want more movies to be family-friendly for purely selfish reasons. My time is limited, and if I’m going to watch a movie, I’d like to watch it with my family. I like my family. I enjoy spending time with them. I enjoy sharing good things with them. If I can’t watch something with my family, I’m probably not going to watch it. Life is too short, and I have more important things to do. Sure, there are services like VidAngel and Clearplay that do an admirable job, and I commend them to you, but that’s a whole other layer of friction.

But my children will also have to deal with other children who have been force-fed “made for kids” slop, their eyelids forced to stay open from pure inertia. When these children crash out or go into withdrawals, unable to pay attention to anything that doesn’t flash at them every 2 seconds, my children will eventually need to pick up the pieces. I want a better future for them, and for these other children. They deserve better.

Children know they are being pandered to, and they long for the day they can watch “real movies.” And because of our extreme segregation, “real movies” usually have sex, gore, and profanity. To be “real,” something must be edgy. What a horrible frame. What a horrible way to train them to look at the world. We had plenty of real movies, and great ones, before our choices split off into inanity or obscenity.

We should demand better.

And if you’re starved for family-friendly stories, I compiled a collection of fantasy and adventure short stories called Fire and Stone. Perfect for read-aloud time, or hand it to your 10-year-old.

This past Christmas, I had my Grade 7/8 class memorize John Milton’s On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity. At thirty-one stanzas, it’s an imposing specimen — not just in terms of its length, but its theme as well. Gone are the eerily reverent livestock and gauzy backlit manger. The pillowy angels and feeble triad of wise men are off haunting the front yard of a Unitarian church somewhere. Instead, from “the dreaded Infant’s hand,” we observe a blood-slicked sword. A legion of old gods — Osiris, Ashtaroth, Ba’al, Typhon — lay hacked into ribbons at his feet.

It’s the incarnation, only reimagined by Quentin Tarantino.

Despite the culling of gods in the poem’s second half, Milton extends unexpected amnesty to the “mighty Pan.” But it shouldn’t surprise us. Although Milton is a Christian, he is also a classicist. Ed Simon, writing for the Paris Review, even goes so far as to note a “regretful twinge” throughout Milton’s poem, as “anti-pagan iconoclasm always threatens to morph into more complete atheism.” Men like Lewis and Tolkien would agree, viewing the opus of ancient myth and legend as misguided, but sincere graspings after the “true myth” of Christ. Such men could view even history’s bleakest religious seasons as a veritable orchard of analogy.

In this, I believe Milton can shepherd both modern Christians (benumbed as we are by materialism) as well as pagans, back home again.

King of sheep, friend of sinners

It’s no surprise that in our own skeptical age, many are turning to paganism for consolation. As of October 2025, #WitchTok had racked up nearly ten million posts. Many parts of Europe are seeing an explosion of interest in various reconstructions of pre-Christian Germanic religion. Perhaps they imagine those virile, red-blooded gods — those gods with horns and hammers — will assist them in battle against the ravages of disenchantment. In light of such desperation, well might we lament with Beowulf’s author, “These were hard times, heart-breaking … Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed offering to idols, swore oaths that the killer of souls might come to their aid and save the people. That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.”

As Christians, although we may affirm certain ontological aspects of paganism (i.e., the world is certainly more than the physical stuff around us), we must also insist on its insufficiency as a door. As an analogy, however, we would be far from the first to view myth as a stepping stone to truth.

Indeed, as Milton himself does:

The shepherds on the lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,
Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below:
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep;

For those unfamiliar with Pan, he was among the more rustic contingent of Greek deities. A wild, unpredictable figure, some of his more notable features include being half-man, half-goat, lord of lonely places, friend (or foe) of shepherds, and a lover of wine and women. Those wandering the wilds might suddenly find themselves stricken with unspeakable “PANic” (the root of our modern word) or paralyzing anxiety at the sound of his reed panpipes. Many a nymph, and the odd unfortunate ewe, found themselves the object of his lecherous advances.

Pan’s *ahem* earthy appetites made him a popular choice among the labouring class, for whom such pleasures made the toil of subsistence living endurable. Whereas many of the gods were viewed as too occupied with global happenings to care about the liver fluke afflicting their flock, Pan was a firmly parochial god. In him, the common man could find a refuge divine enough to offer solace, and yet human enough not to inspire shame.

At the hands of the Romans, the entity of Pan received something of a domestication and became known as “Faunus” or “Innis.” It was this less-savage iteration that would be taken up by various Edwardian authors such as Kenneth Graham, J.M. Barrie, and Eleanor Farjeon. In Pan, they discerned an atavism that could help them brace against the devastation of industrialization and the loss of their bucolic countryside.

There was a problem, however. Pan had died some 2000 years earlier.

According to Plutarch, an Egyptian sailor named Thamus was once sailing to Italy. As he passed by the Greek islands, he heard a divine voice call to him by name and told him, upon returning home, to announce that the great god Pan was dead. When he did, “a great cry of lamentation was heard, not from one person but from many, mixed with exclamations of astonishment . . . Tiberius was so convinced of the truth of the story that he ordered inquiries and investigations into Pan, and the scholars, numerous in his court, speculated that Pan was the son born of Hermes and Penelope.” (Plutarch, On the Decline of Oracles, 17)

The story of the death of Pan was seen as significant by certain Church Fathers, including Eusebius, who routinely mocked the pagan gods and made the connection that since “Pan” was Greek for “all,” the death of Pan represented the death of the entire pagan structure. Interestingly, Pan’s death occurred during the reign of Tiberius, who would have been emperor around the same time as Christ was born. Chesterton notes, “It is said truly in a sense that Pan died because Christ was born. It is almost as true in another sense that men knew that Christ was born because Pan was already dead. A void was made by the vanishing world of the whole mythology of mankind, which would have asphyxiated like a vacuum if it had not been filled with theology.”

If history proves anything, it’s that mankind was made to worship. If not the stars, then the sun. If not the sun, then the stones. What Chesterton is saying is that man cannot arrive at the totality of meaning within himself, nor in the works of his own hands. The state has tried. Silicon Valley has tried. Modern education has tried. And yet for all these efforts to suppress the divine hunger — or at least to keep it respectable — it keeps blowing out in embarrassing caricatures: Thor, Anubis, Pan.

Prepare ye the way

Pan is not enough. He was never enough. He was, at best, a tutor. A foreshepherd, announcing the Greater Shepherd to come. Did Pan die? Or did he simply blow away in the wind, as chaff when it is no longer needed?

One recalls Ratty and Mole, mired in their own helpless moment, suddenly confronted by the nearness of “some August presence.” Who? Some dark and bloodthirsty god? No. Instead, a shepherd. “Helper and healer, I cheer — Small waifs in the woodland wet — Strays I find in it, wounds I bind in it —”

In Christ, a true and better Shepherd had arrived. Not half-goat, half-man, nor even half-god, half-man, but arrayed in glorious Nicean unity, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” As God, he is eternal, able to bear eternal wrath. As man, he is imminent, able to make atonement for sin and aid those who are tempted. One who inhabited glory, and yet gladly laid it all aside to “kindly live with them below.” One who dwells in approachable light and yet is not ashamed to call us brothers.

In the moment the angels arrived, the shepherds found they had no room for silly thoughts. Indeed, they found they were not just shepherds at all. They were worshippers. Faced with the aching potency of the divine, they had been mercifully wrenched from their prosaic chatter. Perhaps their first impulse was towards shame — to hide their beer cans and spray Febreeze on their weed-smelling clothes. But then they realize it isn’t about them. They are mere recipients of an eternal, blazing hymn, “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

In the West, we face something of our own moment of asphyxiation. For what is materialism but a yawning void of nothingness; an agent of deconstruction we nevertheless keep trying to build on. As Christians, as wielders of the “true myth,” we must do better. In the midst of identity politics, globalist technocracies, sterile utopias, threadbare tribalism, and doomed pacts with dead gods, may God help us to “Build it again, O ye bards, Fairer than before!”

People think the Bible is boring.

Once, I was talking to another man one time, explaining my process of teaching the Old Testament and getting people to dig deeper. He interrupted, looking at me in surprise, and said: “It sounds like you are talking about The Lord of the Rings or something.”

This is a normal reaction, given what most people are fed. If you never grew up in the church, you are taught that the Bible is a derivative myth, a hodgepodge of stories that is, at best, unimportant. At worst, it is dangerous for people to take seriously.

If you did grow up in the church, you were probably taught a watered-down version that skips a lot of the “troubling” parts of the Old Testament so you can go straight to the Jesus stuff (the gospel).

But the Bible is dangerous. It was meant to be dangerous.

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Just not in the way the secular world wants you to believe it’s dangerous.

The fact that men, in particular, would find comparisons to Lord of the Rings surprising is a consequence of the feminization of the church.

The modern church has focused on one aspect of the Bible to the detriment of others. It has taught a neutered gospel.

So what is the Bible? And what is the gospel? Let’s push aside the normal platitudes and focus on the epic story being told.

The cross, and the death of Jesus, is the surprising climax of an exciting epic full of blood, battle, and chaos, the rise and fall of kings, dynasties, and empires, the constant clash of good and evil, courageous exploits of men and woman both great and small, wizard duels and superheroes, giants and demons, contests of wit and wisdom, dark political machinations, and the triumph and tragedies of warrior poets.

It is an epic beyond anything the Iliad, the Odyssey, or The Lord of the Rings can offer. And it has the most surprising twist imaginable.

It is also true.

Instead of focusing on the epic, Christians isolate the cross and the gospel and make it about our personal salvation. While not wrong on the surface, this is too small in scope. The cross is the true king finally coming into his own, after all hope seemed lost, and preparing to reward his friends and smite his enemies…

Instead of focusing on the epic, Christians made baptism nothing but a cleansing of our own personal sins. Again, not wrong, and that is glorious in and of itself. But too small in scope. Baptism is also an anointing and ordainment, a declaration of knighthood, where the new man is given a sword and told to go forth and conquer for his new king…

Instead of focusing on the epic, Christians have made households and churches a refuge from the world. But households and churches are fortresses, advance outposts in the heart of enemy territory, where Christians train new recruits and from which we launch new offensives…

Instead of focusing on the epic, Christians create an environment where the rhetoric of the rough prophets of old, and of John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul, is considered “mean” and “insensitive.” Many church-goers today would scold them for their harsh words. But the imprecatory psalms have as much a place on the lips of Christians as the penitent psalms, calling for the overthrow of our enemies…

The cross of Christ is the ultimate call to adventure for any man willing to fight. It is a call for young men to glory in their strength and enthusiasm while storing up plunder for themselves in heaven, instead of working for self-aggrandizement and passing pleasure. It is a call to make the epic a reality and to take your rightful place in it.

And instead, Christians use the cross to domesticate men.

Christians have taught a neutered gospel because a church full of eunuchs is easier to manage.

It is no wonder that men do not flock to the banner and instead turn to other things.

But the Bible is meant to be dangerous, and the cross was meant to create dangerous men. Men willing to lay down their lives. Men willing to build and conquer.

Don’t lose the epic story in the platitudes. Truth is more impactful, more able to pierce bone and marrow, when it weaves in and out of a grand story.

God knew what He was doing.

Don’t forget about my short story collection, Fire and Stone. The campaign lasts only one more day. Claim your exclusive copy now for as little as $10.

The Athenian Empire ruled the islands of the Aegean Sea with superior naval might and craft. What started as a voluntary alliance against Persia devolved into a relationship of a powerful state lording over weaker vassals, and when Naxos attempted to leave the “alliance”, Athens subjugated the city and forced it to return.

This shift in power happened gradually, and Thucydides lays most of the blame not on Athens herself, but on the growing softness of the allies. Athens did what any powerful state would do when it suddenly found an empire in its hands. Might as well blame a mother bear for protecting her cubs.

At first, the allies contributed to the alliance with ships and service, sending men into direct action. This arrangement became tiresome, however, and they preferred to start paying more in tribute instead. Athens would get money to build and equip ships, and Athens would handle all martial matters. Only Athens would fight naval battles. Only Athens would gain critical naval experience. Only Athens would spill blood.

And so the allies atrophied. They no longer kept a navy, let alone the men experienced enough to man and sail it. When Athenian leadership turned toward tyranny, they had no recourse. Tribute for the common defense became tribute extracted with a bully’s boot on the neck. For “protection.” They eschewed the horrors of war and so accepted the heaviness of a slaver’s chains.

Nice island you have there. Would be a shame if it were scrubbed clean and colonized by Athenian citizens.

Beyond obvious 2nd amendment applications, there are other modern parallels.

Most notably, the offloading of human effort and ingenuity to AI.

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Use It Or Lose It

Socrates once criticized the idea of the written word, claiming that books would lead to atrophied memory, a subpar learning experience because a dead page can’t engage in dialogue, and the illusion of knowledge without true wisdom. Today, in an age where more and more people are becoming functionally illiterate, and we lament the lack of reading, Socrates sounds absurd. We need more, and better, books. We need more reading. We would all be better off for it.

But Socrates was not wrong. Maybe not in his own epoch, but after the invention of the printing press, the proliferation of books did indeed lead to his predicted outcomes. People don’t memorize much anymore. And you can’t stroll down any lane in social media without tripping over a midwit quoting something from a book that he obviously doesn’t understand. And then there’s 90% of BookTok, which would make Socrates kill himself all over again.

So Socrates was right. But does that mean books were a bad idea? A mistake destined to shape us into a morass of dumb, murmuring idiots?

With the benefit of hindsight and the wisdom of tradition, we can safely say that books are a net positive for humanity. Not every book, of course, but the technology itself. Every technology has tradeoffs, and what we gained with the wide adoption of books was well worth what we lost.

Importantly, however, what we lost was not any part of our essential humanity. If anything, books give us a greater connection and ground us. We can read the thoughts of our ancestors across the chasm of time. Words they wrote with their hands. We can transmit our thoughts over distances in a form of telepathy that is accessible to almost anyone. And let’s not forget that Scripture comes to us as the written word.

What’s more, books don’t erase or replace face-to-face communications. People talk to other people about books. Teachers teach their students. People eat together and have conversations. Whatever good things that books stripped away, they didn’t strip away anything essential. It was an exfoliation, and not a skinning to the bone.

Compare these outcomes to ubiquitous smartphones, which seem to not only strip some things to the bone, but also implant a deep cancer. All of those things books did not take away, our entertainment vortexes have. How many families do you see out to dinner, the kids on tablets? How many times have you seen a group of guys out at lunch, obviously coworkers, every single one staring at their phones? Netflix tends to champion movies and shows that assume people are also scrolling on their phones while “watching.” The tradeoffs don’t seem as beneficial.

Anything we don’t use will eventually atrophy. This shrinking doesn’t necessarily mean catastrophe or impotence. Many skills aren’t frozen in time, nor should they be. George Washington never knew how to change the oil in his car, and that didn’t stop him from living a life of courage and virtue. Just because we know how to do something now doesn’t mean we should know how to do it for all time, everywhere.

Most men in America used to know how to change the oil in their cars, and did so. Today, most don’t. Does that make them less human? Are we lesser men because of that loss? Maybe. Not because changing the oil represents some platonic ideal of a skill that men should have, but because in the current context of history, with the current state of humanity and culture, abandoning that skill might leave a bigger hole than when most men stopped learning how to saddle a horse.

How much can we lose before we become easy subjects and slaves? How much can we lose before we lose our humanity?

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Losing Our Humanity

Like every technology that has come before it, AI is reshaping who we are and, therefore, the culture at large. Studies have already shown that overreliance on tools like ChatGPT can decrease active brain engagement, lessen critical thinking, and reduce neuroplasticity in the long term. Modern AI tools seem to be making us dumber.

Like the islands that outsourced their defense to Athens and so became easy prey, we risk much by outsourcing our thinking. Those who retain their full faculties would find a more passive populace to mold as they see fit. C.S. Lewis says in The Abolition of Man that man’s power over nature is really man using nature to subjugate and change his fellow man. The vibes are similar with AI.

I’m not an AI doomer, but it’s fair to ask how much degradation our brains can withstand before we are no longer human. Guardrails are smart. Just like we limit screen time and social media access for children, some fences should be placed around AI usage. Some of those fences should have barbed wire and an electrical current that could kill a T-rex.

But where to build those fences? We should take a hint from the adoption of books, or even look to the Amish and how they evaluate technology. Contrary to popular belief, the Amish don’t reject all modern technology, but ask intentional questions and allow evaluation trials. Questions like:

• Will it strengthen the family?

• Will it strengthen the community?

• Will it encourage vanity, pride, or "worldly" fashion?

I’m not suggesting we adopt these, but only take a cue from how seriously they treat the problem, and the fact that they treat it as a problem at all.

Don’t drink from a random well without first testing the water, or at least looking to see if an inordinate amount of skeletons are lying around.

For something like AI, we want to use it as a tool, and not become the tools ourselves. We want it to serve us, not the other way around. How do we ensure this outcome?How do we manage the tradeoffs so the negatives don’t smother us? How do we get real benefits that aren’t lies, similar to the “social” in social media?

Even the lowly sundial imposed a cost, as evinced by this section from a 3rd century Roman play.

May the gods destroy the one who first discovered hours
and who also first set up a sundial here!
He has reduced my day to pieces.
For when I was a boy my belly was my sundial,
by far the best and more truthful than all those ones.
You would eat when it told you, except when there was nothing.
Now even what there is, is not eaten, except with solar approval.
And thus the town is now so stuffed with sundials,
most of the people are on their knees, parched with hunger.

Remaining Human While Using a Tool

I don’t claim to have easy answers, but here is how I’ve drawn certain guidelines.

On Writing

AI was not used to write even a single sentence of this essay. I also don’t use it for any creative writing. For several reasons, but the main one is this: For me, writing is thinking. As I write, I am taking a shovel and digging into the soil of my mind. I uncover surprises and tangents, connections I never would have made otherwise. I discover what I really think about something. I change my mind. I sift through thoughts that would have gone unexamined. Several points and examples I’ve written here didn’t come to me until I was already writing this.

Bypassing this process with AI would be like dropping the shovel and flying over the treetops, never stopping to inspect curiosities. I would be made less, and so the work I produced would be less. Even more, the writing and thinking I do now help fuel future writing and thinking. Using AI would be like gobbling up my seed corn.

Is there any writing I use AI for?

Yes. For some marketing content. Certain blog posts, promotional newsletters, and ad copy brainstorming are some examples. Ephemeral content. Stuff that needs to be done, but isn’t the main thing. AI workflows save a bit of time; however, they don’t replace human effort. I still make a lot of changes, but having some raw material speeds up the work.

What about social media? I experimented with it a bit, and it never worked well. What’s more, it didn’t save me that much time. I had far less fun as well. And even though social media content is intended to be trivial and ephemeral, there is the implicit promise that you will be interacting with a real, flesh-and-blood person. Even though social media isn’t very social, and flattens communication, it is still intended to be real communication, and introducing AI and bots makes everything worse.

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On Research

I use AI the most for research and information gathering. It really can be like having an assistant, albeit one who is forever in arrested development. It saves me from having to visit Google over and over, and (sometimes) it can collate data in certain formats. Very useful, and better than a normal search engine.

However, AI has transformed how I gather and sort through live research. Auto-transcription of video calls is great, and I can take that transcription and do something with it. I can get it summarized and pull out quotes, and I can do this all without listening to the interview again over and over and over. And over. Throwing the transcripts of several long YouTube videos, along with the transcription of an interview I’ve done, and using something like NotebookLM to interrogate all of them and find connections is extremely powerful.

A key caveat: I do not do passive interviews. I remain an active listener and ask questions, all the while taking handwritten notes. Yes, handwritten notes. I write them as if AI is not transcribing every word. These notes then guide me as I’m guiding the AI. It keeps the process grounded. It keeps the process human. The AI remains a tool, not the main agent of action.

On Illustrations and Photos

I deliberately did not use the word “art” for this section, because nothing AI does is art. There is an argument to be made for artists who use AI and then transform the results into something unique and touched by the human soul, but whatever an algorithm spits out is not art, just like a blank canvas and containers full of untouched paint is not art. I doubt anyone has paid to print out, frame, and hang an AI-generated image on their wall. Those who would probably already have a wall cluttered with banalities from Hobby Lobby, so the leap isn’t a large one.

I don’t use AI for my children’s books, nor do I intend to. I will also not use AI for the cover art of any of my books. Because a book is supposed to be art, a uniquely human endeavor, and I want my books to last a while. I want them to stay on people’s shelves. I want them to be passed down to children and grandchildren. I want them to have some permanence. For that to happen, you need a touch of the eternal, a pouring out of the human soul. Like writing, the process is just as important as the end result.

Plus, I like collaborating with good artists. It’s fun. I have also gone out of my way, and taken my children with me, to purchase real art to hang on our walls.

Now, I still use AI tools for images and illustrations. For applications that I would use clipcart or stock photography, I have no revulsion for using AI. It’s also fun. For these scenarios, it’s not a choice between using AI or paying an artist for something. The choice is between using AI or not doing anything at all. This is work I wouldn’t pay anyone for anyway. It’s just not that important. The time I want to spend focused on it could fit inside a thimble, just like I wouldn’t spend time framing the scribbles of tic-tac-toe my children played while waiting for our food at a restaurant.

If it’s not that important, why do anything at all? Because it’s fun. The enjoyment I get out of it is way out of proportion to the time and effort spent. However, I do not mistake them for art. I consider them as valuable as hasty scribbles on a napkin. But they can be useful. AI illustrations serve as pure marketing content, here today, gone tomorrow. Just like the illustrations of triremes, lodged at the top of this article.

On Coding

I’ve been developing software and websites for over 15 years, many of them high-level and well-trafficked. As a test, I created a SaaS (Software as a service) for something I personally wanted to exist, for myself and my family. It’s called Incordium, something that guides users through memorizing large passages.

And I created it without writing a single line of code. The core was created in a weekend. The spit and polish took another month of conversations and testing, an hour or two per night. The experiment was a success.

Now, I had to lead it down some specific hallways related to performance, because it didn’t implement certain best practices automatically. But that will get better. Created applications will be something that requires less specialized training and knowledge, though I grant the road to get there will be bumpy, and we’ll have to avoid some three-car pile-ups.

Many other software developers are lamenting this trajectory. I’m not. The coding was never the fun part for me. I was coding toward a purpose, to solve specific problems, to create certain tools. For me, writing code was never the point. It was never the end in itself. It was fun only insofar as it got me closer to where I wanted to be.

I can now create while spending more time doing human things, like reading a good book. Because the real problem still exists: What do you create? All problems that need solving are, at their core, people problems. Answering that question still requires human ingenuity and embodied experience. You can’t fake problem-solving. AI might give us more time to step away from our monitors and spreadsheets and do a little digging to find out what problems deserve our full attention.

But you should try out Incordium. I loved using AI to create a tool that encourages people to use their brains more instead of outsourcing their memory.

Be Intentional

We shouldn’t be clutching our pearls, but we also shouldn’t be jumping up and down, performing cartwheels with pom poms in our hands. Using a tool should not be accidental. And when we use it, we want to use it for the proper purpose. You could take a buzzsaw blade and use it to turn a flat-head screw, and it might even work. Success at the task, however, doesn’t mean it was the appropriate tool, nor does it mean the task was worth doing.

Undoubtedly, AI has made social media, and the internet at large, worse. Slop spills off the screen as if someone is tipping over a porta-potty. Trust will continue to fall. Skepticism will continue to rise. Ironically, this trend will push people toward face-to-face interactions, with a premium on the local. It might, in other words, force us to be more human just to function in this brave new world. The trajectory would be a positive one, despite any temporary disruptions it might cause.

Those who ask the right questions and approach the use of AI with wisdom and intentionality will be better prepared for that world. Above all, we don’t want to find ourselves enslaved by a new Athens because we couldn’t be bothered with some essential function of life. Atrophy is a real danger, and the world envisioned by Wall-E is the tame version of that fate.

Don’t sell your birthright for a bit of convenience.

How do you write a review for a beloved classic? A novel many consider one of the best ever written? I’ve now read Anna Karenina once, and I feel I need to read it at least two more times before I do it justice. Classics, after all, are not books you get to judge, not until your own tastes have matured to a certain point, after marinating in wisdom, life, and other great literature.

Classics are works that judge you. If you don’t like a classic, that means your tastes are wrong. Period. Most people will die before they prove an exception to that maxim, before they could ever offer a proper critique, though many try as if they were lobbing invectives at the sun.

So this isn’t a review of Anna Karenina, but a stumbling, drunken appreciation of it. My goal is to get you to read it. That’s it. Joshua Gibbs once said that the goal of teaching a classic in high school is to infuse enough love and curiosity into the student so they would willingly choose to read that classic again later in life, and profit from it. And so that is my humble aim. To get you to read it.

Except for Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina is the easiest classic I’ve ever read, despite being the longest classic I’ve ever read. Halfway through reading it, in anticipation of reading it again, I purchased another copy with a different translation. That’s not something I did for Crime and Punishment.

From the first page, I was hooked and ready for the journey. I think you’ll experience something similar. In many ways, it felt impossibly modern, as if it had been written just a decade ago and someone had successfully pulled off an elaborate prank.

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The Friends You Made Along the Way

We are not to take Anna Karenina as a work of art. We are to take it as a piece of life.

Matthew Arnold

And you’ll find many pieces of life in this book, pieces you recognize as if Tolstoy had been peeping in your window. You’ll see yourself. You’ll see your friends. You’ll see your enemies. The first time you read, everything is new, yet so many things are familiar.

One moment, Tolstoy will describe a posture or attitude you’ve always known and recognized but never quite been able to sculpt into something coherent, but as soon as you read it, the swirl in your mind solidifies and you say, “Yes!” Sometimes audibly. Or sometimes you just chuckle.

From Levin working up the courage and bumbling out a proposal, to the description of “happy terror” two people in love feel as they embark into the unknown, to a mother who, one moment, is so proud of her children she could burst, and then later think they are some of the most wicked children in the world, it’s all familiar and real.

When Anna’s husband greets her at the train station, he says, “Yes, as you can see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first year after marriage, burned with impatience to see you.” But he says it, and I quote:

…in his deliberate, high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he almost always took with her, a tone of jeering at any one who should say in earnest what he said.

Is this not the modern Millennial posture? Earnestness is not allowed, because to be earnest is to open yourself up to disappointment or ridicule. It is this sarcasm that will prevent Anna’s husband from being sincere and earnest when it is most critical, when she is being seduced by another man.

Every single character is flesh and blood, with veins and muscles and tears and laughter and hopes and heartache, and the ink on the page might as well be the breath of life that animates them inside your head. It drips with life. And you can’t help getting swept up in the drama.

Tolstoy loves these characters. Even his villains. You can sense that he wishes they made different choices. Nearly every character has something admirable about them, and you know that, as far as human judges go, Tolstoy would give you a fair hearing even while stripping away all of your pretensions.

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Wisdom for Life

And because you know you are in good hands, hands that have proven themselves time and again, hands that know the contours of the world and the people that walk around in it, you trust the occasional asides and wisdom it tosses out. Both obvious and direct, but also painted on a particular character. There is much to learn and reflect on.

For example, describing Vronksy:

He did not know that this mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite character, that it is courting young girls with no intention of marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men such as he was. It seems to him that he was the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.

Vronsky has some of the same faults as Austen’s Wickham from Pride and Prejudice, but while Austen, ever coy and in her own brilliant way, only shows the crater caused by Wickham, Tolstoy gives us the full portrait and exactly why Vronsky is terrible. Not only that, we immediately recognize the tendency in others or ourselves. Any one of us men could be a Vronsky.

Then Tolstoy will throw us an insight into childhood, which makes us take stock of our own hearts.

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

And this quick homage to marriage spouted off quickly by a loyal friend.

“But I’m married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one’s wife, if one loves her, as some one has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them.”

You’ll also learn that adultery doesn’t “just happen.” The great sin that kicks off the drama was first coaxed and coddled into being with discontentment, unwise imaginations, improper yet “innocent” conversations, and other small steps that fanned the ember into a dangerous flame. Let the reader take heed, lest he also fall.

The act itself never gets a wide-angled, lingering shot from the camera. We only bear witness to the direct aftermath, described in such haunting, depressing language that would make any reasonable person recoil at the thought of mimicking such a deed.

As Anna lies sobbing on the floor, begging forgiveness, Vronksy is described as follows:

He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has gained by his murder.

There is no wink at evil, no enticement to the forbidden.

Blue Collar Prose

The prose refuses to point to itself and instead dances out of the way. No blinking lights to call attention to its own brilliance. It is content to be a perfectly clean window into its world. Simple and effective. You don’t read this book for the prose. Like muscles, the prose is meant to perform a job, not preen about in tight shirts, glistening in the sun. And it performs the job admirably. Certainly, the translation (by Constance Garnett) has something to do with this, but she required something to translate, and the final product must have fidelity to the original.

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Beware Modern Study Guides

Anna Karenina is a book you can get a lot out of, even as a casual reader. A good teacher could lead you to greater insight and appreciation, but for the layperson, it’s not needed. You certainly don’t need a modern study guide. It’s more likely to lead you into the woods to get lost and devoured by an evil witch than give you any help.

My used copy of the book included Spark Notes as a bonus. I expected them to be lame. I expected them to try to pick my pocket. Instead, they tried burn my house down. I am dumber for having read parts of this guide.

Predictably, its analysis of Anna attempts to frame her as a proto-feminist hero, one who is simply trying to be true to herself. She might not have committed suicide if the shackles of society’s expectations hadn’t strangled her. It also tries to soften her abandonment of her son by insisting she still cared for him because she snuck in to see him on his birthday. That’s like seeing a wolf vomit up the hind leg of a rabbit and conclude that it’s apologizing for its bout of carnivorism.

No.

The wolf only had some indigestion, just like Anna had a sudden bout of motherly feelings. The wolf will continue to devour rabbits, and Anna will continue to ignore her son.

The real kicker, the part that proves whoever wrote this guide should be forced to do manual labor on a chain gang instead of subjecting readers to such nonsense, is the attempt to describe the "forgiveness" motif.

During this explanation, it cites the novel's epigraph: "Vengeance is mine. I will repay."

According to the Spark Notes, this is meant to haunt the novel and convey that forgiveness is, perhaps, not the ultimate virtue after all. Not once does it mention where the quote is from, nor its greater meaning.

Does someone engaged in literary analysis really not recognize a relatively well-known quote from the Bible? And then ignore that context?

God Himself is saying, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay." You are not to engage in vengeance, because it belongs to him.

For the Spark Notes to suggest that "Vengeance is mine. I will repay" is somehow oppositional to the idea of forgiveness is, itself, unforgivable. All of the ink used to print it is wasted, and would have been better off used for drawing mustaches on the people gracing the covers of old dentist office magazines.

It fills me with horror that someone can buy a Spark Notes guide and think they're getting accurate information about a work of art. Don’t do it. Just read the book at your own pace and enjoy the journey.

Read This Book

I’m telling you to read this book because I think you will enjoy it. I think you will be surprised by it. I think you will be delighted by it. There might be certain points where you will be tempted to quit, but I think the momentum you build up will carry you through.

While reading a classic can sometimes feel like eating your vegetables, as if you’re a child starting at broccoli that’s been boiled to a bland, pale, tasteless torture, contemplating the future of a sad night without dessert, this novel is like discovering butter, salt, and cheese and the magic those ingredients can perform on almost any food that’s “good for you.”

Tell me if you’ve heard of this one before.

In this animated movie, a group of demons enthralls people with music, feeding on their adoration and instigating conflict so they can conquer the world. The music of these demons must be combated with music, and so a band of friends must unite their voices and sing like the fate of the world depends upon their performance.

Because the fate of the world does depend on their performance.

In the final showdown, there is no more subtext, and the lyrics of the demon’s song are openly hostile and obvious about their desire for domination. But no one cares. The audience is already enthralled. It’s too late.

Or is it? After fighting with each other and breaking the band apart, the group of friends comes back together for the finale and defeats the demons with the power of friendship and song.

I’m writing, of course, My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks, the hit sequel to the successful spin-off of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic television series. A movie so fabulous and derivative that it requires two subtitles.

Oh, you don’t know about this movie?

You must not have had a 6-year-old girl in the mid-2010s.

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But of course, I’m also talking about KPop Demon Hunters, because who isn’t? It’s the most popular Netflix movie of all time, has a chart-topping song and album, and is wrapping up a successful theatrical run. With this notoriety comes comparisons.

These similarities, however, don’t mean it’s a lesser movie. Plots and archetypes are reused. Ideas evolve and are improved upon. Execution and craft can spin gold out of a dumb idea.

These comparisons, especially the comparisons to Frozen—another popular animated film with a chart-topping soundtrack—miss something important. Mostly, they miss the part where Frozen is just bad, but also make some terrible assumptions about KPop Demon Hunters.

The Surface-Level Similarities

Let’s do the same exercise I did at the beginning, except with less tongue in my cheek. I’ll describe KPop Demon Hunters in a way that makes it easy to assume I’m talking about Frozen.

An animated musical where a girl hides a true part of herself from her friends because she’s afraid they will think she’s a monster. To her, it’s a curse. Her mother reinforces this view. Once the secret is revealed, she runs off, endangering everything she once held dear. Only when she comes back, learns to accept herself, and realizes her friends and family accept her, can she defeat the villains and push back the danger to those she loves.

To break it down:

• Both protagonists have a hidden curse that their parents, real or adoptive, demand they keep secret.

• The curse is revealed, leading to fallout and disaster.

• The curse is finally accepted as part of the protagonist’s true self. The kingdom (world) is saved.

It’s a story about acceptance and love. Maybe even a gay “coming out” allegory.

Clean and tidy.

Except this doesn’t really describe KPop Demon Hunters at all. Someone has looked at the facades of two houses on the street and determined they have the same architecture. But one is only painted to look like brick, and behind the facade, it’s not really a house, but a jury-rigged contraption of 2x4s, bent nails, and wood glue. It’s a temporary party decoration at best, not a livable dwelling.

Let’s take a further tour.

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The Curse

In KPop, it’s revealed that Rumi, the main protagonist, is part demon. As a result, she has demon patterns on her body that she has kept hidden all of her life. The patterns keep growing until they become impossible to hide.

In Frozen, Elsa has awesome magical powers, allowing her to control ice and snow.

Obviously, one of these things isn’t really a curse. Elsa’s powers are a gift. The conflict is caused by a lack of control and fear, not the gift itself. And some really terrible parents who never taught her to properly harness the power. There is nothing inherently evil about it.

But Rumi’s patterns and pedigree are curses, especially since her profession is demon hunting. They offer no advantages. In the movie, demons are things to be killed. Period. It is a curse, top-to-bottom, and at no point does Rumi need to harness her demon powers to save the day. Nothing good can come from it.

So is Rumi cursed for all time? Irredeemable?

That is the central question.

Climax and Resolution

Frozen ends with Anna sacrificing herself for her sister, then has some handwavy spiel about love, and all of a sudden, Elsa knows how to use her powers safely. She has accepted her “curse,” which was awesome all along, because of course it was. Ice powers are cool.

KPop ends with Rumi confessing her shame and admitting that she can’t save herself.

The ruler of all demons, Gwi-ma, says, “You think you can fix the world? You can’t even fix yourself.”

Rumi answers, “I can’t.”

The song that follows begins with the lyrics, “Nothing but the truth now…” and then confesses her sins in front of her friends.

Another lyric: “I should have let the jagged edges meet the light instead.” The song is part confession, bringing out things that should be exposed to the light.

“So we were cowards. So we were liars. So we’re not heroes.”

And then they kill a bunch of demons. In the scene before the close of the movie, Rumi’s patterns have begun to fade. Confession paired with sorrow is, indeed, the only proper way to deal with hidden shame.

The world wants people to be proud of their shame. To polish it off, wear it like a nose ring for all to see, sear their conscience so they become numb to it, and then snarl at anyone who dares suggest it is something to be ashamed of. Hidden shame and open pride are two ways that evil enslaves people.

And it’s how the head demon in the movie controls his minions and fills his ranks with new minions.

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On Villains, Desire, And Shifting Loyalties

The villains in Frozen are fuzzy and lame, and the movie has to do some narrative sleight of hand to make them work. Barely. It wants the villains to be concepts like self-loathing, fear, misunderstanding, and naivety. It’s as unfocused as a dog on shrooms hallucinating an army of squirrels.

Elsa must accept herself. Anna shouldn’t have fallen for Hans. The funny-looking Duke shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Hans acts heroically in places, playing the part of the traditional hero we would expect, but the movie subverts our expectations. Silly us. We shouldn’t have been as naive as Anna. Traditional heroes don’t exist anymore.

The villains in KPop, however, are evil. Demons are to be killed because they are evil. They are not misunderstood creatures. But the movie also gets the head demon, Gwi-ma, right. His main weapon is accusation, which he uses to nurture shame and guilt. We hear several of these accusations, and they sound plausible and realistic.

Sound familiar?

Satan is the great accuser.

And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

Revelation 12:10

I’m not sure how this got into the movie and became such a critical part of its architecture. There’s some chatter online about it being the Korean word for devil/satan spelled backwards, Ma-gwi. If so, it was clearly intentional and an unexpected touch. It’s no Screwtape Letters, but it does accurately portray how the devil sometimes operates, something I wouldn’t expect from a modern animated musical. The solution to his attacks, a full-throated confession, is equally insightful.

We also see how evil is seductive and uses misplaced loyalty to lure people to their doom. The Saja boys, in their final concert, are no longer disguised. They unveil their true demon form, singing, “You gave me your heart, now I’m here for your soul. I’m the only one who will love your sins. You’re down on your knees, I’ma be your idol.”

What we desire is a matter of life and death. In its cartoonish juxtaposition of two bands dueling for the hearts of fans, KPop Demon Hunters presents the real dangers of giving your heart to the wrong thing. How quickly love can become obsession and worship.

And how easy it is to get loyalty to transfer from one thing to another if they share a category or have similar accoutrements. Unexamined loyalty can be exploited. The unscrupulous try to exploit it all the time. Why do you think Disney bought Star Wars? Why did Amazon create Rings of Power? Why did DC make Superman bisexual in the comics? Why do beloved brands get hollowed out, worn like a skin suit, and drafted into the culture war? Because of built-in loyalty. Sure, some will bail. But some will follow. Into darkness.

The Saja Boys portray a very real phenomenon. Fortunately, modern manifestations of this evil have no regulating principle. It will almost always unmask itself too early. In the movie, the transition to “Bow down, I’m you’re idol” happens gradually and with nuance. In the real world, evil often tries to rush straight to the idol stage, spray-painting itself gold and streaking across the field on live television, screaming obscenities, demanding respect and worship.

We are in the later stages of what C.S. Lewis describes in That Hideous Strength:

Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.

For that, we should be grateful. It wasn’t always this way, however.

Sometimes, evil remains subtle and deceptive. Television began as mostly wholesome entertainment. There were strict standards. Once the culture became loyal to the small screen and the watching habit was ingrained in the populace, television shifted. We didn’t go from I Love Lucy to sodomites sticking their tongues down each other’s throats overnight.

KPop Demon Hunters does a great job of depicting this phenomenon, while giving some much-deserved critique to K-pop fandom.

But what about Jinu, the lead singer of the demon boy band?

While some might complain that Jinu, the lead singer of the demon boy band, has a redemption arc, it’s not as clear-cut as that. While I grant that it’s the weakest part of the movie, he is still not a misunderstood villain. The movie makes it very clear that he is evil. By his own admission, he abandoned his entire family in exchange for temporary riches and comfort. He, too, confesses and then sacrifices himself once he sees Rumi free from her own shame.

But in the end, Jinu still has to die, just like the other demons. There is no true redemption, though there is some handwavey stuff about his soul. He still had a soul? And it can turn into a weapon now? The movie gets a bit confused at this point, but it’s in the middle of the final anthem and charges on toward a satisfying ending.

They might ruin all of this in the inevitable sequel, but for now, Jinu is dead and gone.

Not Perfect, but Good

Like all movies, you should watch this one with discernment. Nothing we watch should be drunk to the dregs in a single, careless gulp. But it is a much healthier movie than, say, The Little Mermaid.

There are multiple discussion points to have with your kids while you watch. Sift through the lies. Polish off the truth.

And the truth this movie attempts to tell shines bright, indeed.

You might have noticed the posting cadence on Bluster and Brine has slackened. At least, I hope you’ve noticed. If not, this is going to be awkward.

I give a bunch of excuses below, but also what you can expect in the near future.

1. I Got Laid Off in March

A lot of this is going around. It’s the second time I’ve been laid off in my life, but this one stung. I had been with the company for over 10 years and would probably have stuck around for another 10, if given the choice. But it wasn’t my choice.

Naturally, I had to find another source of income. God was kind to me, and I landed plenty of freelance work to support my family. Maybe a little too much work, but that was my fault.

It was easier to get a paying client than it was to get a phone interview in this job climate. I had trouble saying “no,” for fear of some other source drying up. I was making plenty of money, but with an increase in stress and a decrease in free time.

Equilibrium has been achieved. For now. I think I’ve found my sea legs and can handle the wobbling of the deck and all the vagaries that come with kickstarting a new business. Necessity forces you to learn real quick.

That being said, every single paid subscription here or at Foundation Father helps ease the pressure a bit. I’m thankful for each and every one of you.

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2. I Have a Book Deal

My middle-grade postapocalyptic novel, How to Slay a Giant, is due to be released through Canon Press next Spring or early Summer. With the copious amounts of free time that I don’t have, I’ve been working on the final round of edits, to be submitted this month. So that’s where a lot of my creative energy has gone. This work, combined with the complete upheaval of my professional life, has limited the other writing I can do.

But this part is almost finished.

I can’t wait to get this book into your hands. Your kids are going to love it. Pure adventure and a bombastic fusion of fantasy and modern tech.

After these edits, I’ll also have time to keep working on the first draft of the sequel, currently sitting at 10,000. I plan to have the first draft done before the end of the year.

I’ve found I can be productive with writing new prose in smaller chunks of time. All it takes is 45 minutes to get a few hundred words hammered out. Deep editing, however, takes more brain power and juggling of moving parts. I need to grasp the whole and be surgical rather than charge ahead. For this reason, 90-minute blocks are the minimum for my editing sessions. Much harder to squeeze into the margins.

Not having something to edit will net me more time and brain cycles.

Once the book is open for pre-orders, this will be one of the first places I post the information.

3. I Launched an App For Memorizing Scripture and Poetry

It’s been a while since I’ve coded anything from scratch, and I wanted to try out some of the new AI coding tools. I started using Cursor, and one month later, had a fully functional app.

It’s called Incordium. Duolingo for English poetry and Scripture. Start memorizing something from the growing public library, or add your own passages. The app will break it up into snippets and guide you through memorizing something step by step.

One account can serve an entire family. See a quick demo below:

The app is free to try forever. A premium account is cheap, especially since your whole family can use it. However, the first five subscribers who sign up for a premium account will get 50% off the yearly price for life. That’s only $25 per year. Just use code “MAFRANKLIN50”.

And if you have anything you want to add to the public library, let me know.

I was honestly blown away by how much I could do with Cursor. However, I’m a web developer by trade, and knew what to ask. Grasp of the vocabulary was especially important for the spit and polish. It kept the AI from going too wild, like bumpers in a bowling lane. I’ll expound more on my experience in another post.

What You Can Expect

Attentive readers will notice that 2 of my 3 excuses above have now been resolved. My job situation has stabilized (for now). I will continue to promote and maintain Incordium, but that takes far less time than building it from scratch.

The third and final excuse, the edits for my book, should be wrapped up this month. I’ll be able to get back to a regular cadence very soon. Here are my current plans.

I have a few posts simmering in my read, ready to pour out of my fingertips:

• Why Comparing KPop Demonhunters to Frozen is Unfair

• Why the Broken Men Are Heroes - A Review of Shane

• The Athenian Empire and AI

An Experiment in Serialization

Beyond these, I might start publishing a serialized novel here. It’s called Whip, and it’s a satire about a guy who gets fired for saying something innocuous. Complete fiction, I assure you. Woke is dead, I’m told.

But if so, its corpse is still animated and wandering around, giving off a terrible stench, getting in the way, and occasionally biting people when someone stops paying attention.

I’m convinced the novel is still relevant. It’s hard to satire this stuff because the truth is so insane, but I’ve found an angle that works and is, so far, funny and recognizable.

The first three chapters are done. I could start posting them after I’m done with the edit for my middle-grade novel. I’m not sure of the cadence yet. It might be once every two weeks or once a month.

If you’re interested in this serialized satire, let me know.

Thanks for sticking with me this far.

Like most boys at the age of five, I was scared of what would happen if my Dad died. That scene in The Lion King where Simba creeps toward his dead father and asks him to get up... it terrified me. What would happen if Dad died? I thought. Who would protect us from the bad guys then?

I remember dreaming that maniacal killers, some with clown faces, some with the dead bones of men strapped onto their limbs, would come to kill me as I stood in our entryway. Of course, my parents were chatting in the other room, unaware that a villain was about to murder me. I would cry out to them and they wouldn’t notice me. Maybe I would get their heads to turn and see me in travail. But every time they turned back to conversation as if nothing was the matter.

These fears only plagued me at night, generally when I was sleeping and alone. During the day, my Dad was never going to die or leave me, and I knew that if some psycho with a kitchen knife broke into our house, my Dad would grab the blade, rip it out of the fiend’s hand, even if his own hand bled while doing it. He would tie up the bad guy until the policemen came.

In short, Dad was Superman.

As a boy, I never watched a Superman movie. I watched the quintessential Superman show that has passed on from generation to generation: Max Fleischer’s Superman, which came out in the 1940s.

Each episode, Superman has to save the city from a prehistoric dinosaur that has come back from extinction, apprehend mad scientists trying to steal jewels with armored robots, or save Lois Lane from an oversized gorilla. There is not an ounce of nuance in any of the escapades. There are villains, usually wearing masks, who are clearly evil. Superman always risks everything to save the world, to be good. That never confused me as a boy. Such a story made sense of the world and eased the fears I had when I was alone in bed. When I watched Clark Kent take off that suit and fly off to save Lois Lane from the evils of this world, I knew that everything would be alright.

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Outgrowing Superman

Soon, I grew a few years older, and then Batman and The Hulk took hold of my imagination. I wanted to be Batman because of his ingenious gadgets, because of his brooding in a cowl, and I wanted to be the Hulk because he used his strength to channel his anger. Batman and the Hulk had demons, which I thought made them more realistic. I had matured in my tastes. Bruce Wayne lost his parents, and the Hulk was actually a raving madman with no self-control. This was the way the world really was, I thought.

I began to see the silliness of Superman being an overpowered hero wearing a tight-fitting costume. What was the fun of being good at everything, having no broken past, and always winning?

I wasn’t alone in this realization.

Every other nine-year-old boy owned the consensus that Superman was gay. He was boring. Yet, despite my supposed maturity, movies like Superman (1978), Superman Returns (2006), Man of Steel (2014), and James Gunn’s Superman (2025) revealed this property was and is making enough money to keep people coming back for more movies, even if the alien from Krypton is overpowered.

After watching Man of Steel, I wondered what the point of the property was. Was Clark Kent’s Dad really going to sacrifice his life for the family dog ( like every Kansas farmer would)? Was Superman going to smash a trucker’s semi after the guy was mean to him in the bar? Was he going to decimate Metropolis? I liked Superman as a boy, but if Henry Cavill’s Superman was going to take petty vengeance on miscreants, I was out. Even Christopher Reeves’ Superman took vengeance on some bullies in a diner who messed with him.

Whether I articulated what was wrong with this at the time, I knew in my bones something was different about all these adaptations from the Fleischer Superman.

What every Superman movie misses is the American myth of it all. Now that our country is more integrated with people from every ethnicity, Cowboys and Indians have moved into the history books. Superman represents a universal hero for everyone to latch onto in a world of technological advancement. In a world where machine guns, missiles, nuclear bombs, rockets, birth control, IVF, neuro link, and AI exist, Cowboys don’t have the power to face evil the same way.

So what makes this myth sell? It begins with the fears of a boy losing his father. Every boy has not only thought about how his Dad will die, but about how he will die. How we are all going to die. Sometimes in horrible ways.

In the age of the machine, there are many ways to end it all. World War II and Vietnam both revealed the horrors of the atom bomb and Agent Orange. The pill revealed you could die before you’ve been implanted in your mother’s womb. It’s significant Superman came onto the scene in 1938, when the world was on the cusp of the horrors of war and the sexual revolution, because part of Superman’s identity is truth, justice, and the American way. But more importantly, he isn’t a killer. Superman saves the cat in the tree, he talks to the woman who’s about to jump off the top of a building––he doesn’t just fight supervillains. Zach Snyder missed this with his Man of Steel. The whole film is about Superman being a god among men. That’s why Metropolis gets levelled at the end of the film.

Though they have their weaknesses, James Gunn’s Superman and Richard Donner’s Superman both understand our hero needs to save a girl from the building that’s about to fall on her. Yet in the Fleischer Superman, he is always saving life, never taking vengeance or condoning it.

In Superman (2025), Superman has superhero friends who help him defend Metropolis. Gunn juxtaposes the difference between Superman’s mercy and the superhero friends’ willingness to be merciless, sometimes even to kill. Later in the film, Hawkgirl (one of Superman’s friends) hunts down an evil politician, grabs him, and flies up into the sky. The villain pleads for his life, saying, “Superman wouldn’t kill me.” Hawkgirl responds, “I’m not Superman.”

She drops him to his death.

Hence, Gunn doesn’t fully believe in Superman’s ideals. At least he had the decency to keep Superman out of the scene. But most viewers would agree it was distasteful.

So why don’t we all go back to the Fleischer Cartoons? The nihilism of modernity always creeps into our supposedly hopeful American myth anyway.

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The Ideal Superman

But maybe the problem with our Superman movies isn’t the nihilism. Maybe the problem is attempting to craft Superman stories with nuance. The beauty of Superman is his simplicity. He loves truth, justice, and the American way. Even though he saves a plane from crashing, he will assure everyone that air travel is one of the safest ways to get around.

Few know this, but there is an ideal Superman movie that packages the Superman myth at an angle while telling an entirely different story about a giant metal robot. Maybe keeping Superman simple is the way to compel viewers.

Brad Bird famously pitched his film The Iron Giant (1999) with a question. What if a gun had a soul and didn’t want to be a gun? The producers greenlighted the project without knowing exactly what was going to come out of it.

Set in 1957, in the small town of Rockwell, Maine, a giant metal robot falls from the sky into the ocean off the coast. It’s the same year as Sputnik. All of smalltown America is worried about the Russians.

And then a nine-year-old boy named Hogarth Hughes finds the metal robot in the woods behind his house and befriends it and hides it in his barn. A government agent reports to the town after hearing reports of colossal bites out of metal objects around Rockwell. After the agent discovers the existence of the robot, Hogarth must protect his new friend from the U.S. Army.

And yes, I’ll explain why this is about Superman.

The iron giant that fell from the sky is the gun with a soul. He cannot remember where he came from. He received a dent on his head after hitting earth and we know he eats metal and is taller than the forests of Maine. After befriending Hogarth, he learns many things about life, as he cannot remember his purpose for coming to Earth. When the two come across a dead deer in the woods, Hogarth explains to the robot that everyone dies and sometimes people use guns to kill. In that moment, the iron giant accepts that killing is bad and saving life is good, revealing he has a conscience.

Later, Hogarth brings his comics out to the robot staying in his barn. He first shows him Atomo: The Metal Menace. As viewers, we know nothing about Atomo, but he looks like a typical alien robot invading earth. The metal robot dislikes this, because he remembers that guns kill and Atomo looks like a gun. But then everything changes when we see Hogarth pull out a Superman comic. The boy says, “You’re a good guy...like Superman.” When this happens, the metal robot’s eyes light up and we get no explanation of what Superman does. We simply know he is good. Hogarth doesn't even say Superman saves people instead of killing them like Atomo, because we all know the American Myth that is Superman, the hero that is simply good and saves people. Even if it is a fantasy, we imagine in our worst moments, when the house is in flames and caving in on us, Superman will be there.

The Iron Giant feels turmoil within him. Sometimes he wants to be a gun, but he must overcome it to become Superman at the end of the film, saving Rockwell from a nuclear bomb.

Unlike the traditional Superman movie, Brad Bird’s Superman is an ideal, something for the iron giant to live up to. The giant knows that it is bad for him to turn into a gun and to kill, and he longs to give himself up as a selfless hero who will save everyone’s life. The iron giant comprehends that he can’t be weak. He has to be Superman or else everyone is going to die.

But as I’ve said before, as a boy I was scared my Dad would die. I longed to feel safe knowing my Dad would never die. In our introduction to Hogarth, the film reveals that his Mom works overtime at a diner while he watches horror movies at home. He’s alone, and his Dad is clearly out of the picture. For all we know, Hogarth’s Dad abandoned him.

Throughout the film, Hogarth wears an old pilot helmet, and we don’t know the story behind it. He wears it every time he is scared, such as the time he finds the giant robot in the woods. Subconsciously, we know there is something important about this helmet. In a later scene, we see Hogarth wearing the helmet as he sits on his bed. The camera pans to the clock on his nightstand, and right next to the clock is a picture of a fighter pilot getting into a plane. He has the same helmet.

And then it all comes together in an understated way. The scene with the picture of the pilot is less than a second. But in that second, we can infer that Hogarth’s Dad died as a fighter pilot in the war. His mom is working late shifts trying to make ends meet. We infer she feels guilty because her son has lost his father.

Hogarth is alone.

When he is scared or faces the enemy, he puts on his Dad’s helmet, which represents a hero who died for his country and for his son. Like Superman, Hogarth’s father died trying to save others, which is why Hogarth needs someone to save him. But someone does come, falling out of the sky from another planet to save Hogarth, who is alone and afraid. The giant metal robot shows up and becomes Superman, saving Hogarth and the town of Rockwell.

The Iron Giant leaves Superman untainted, if nothing else. Throughout this film, our superhero helps us to process our longing for good things to happen in a world where everyone dies and man’s heart is utterly wicked.

What are Myths For?

Myths are important because they give us fantasies to help us live righteously in the real world. As a boy, I thought my dad was Superman. But one day I grew up and realized he was really Clark Kent. As I’ve had to forgive him for that, now I have my own sons. I realize that I am Clark Kent raising sons who now see me as Superman. My oldest son is scared of death, and he finds comfort in knowing that there are dragons in this world that need slaying. Even in his fear, he makes sense of his fears through looking to a protector and longing to be one himself one day. And yet, he will have to forgive me for failing to be the ideal Superman.

A myth helps us process our fears in a world where everything does end, everyone does die. But despite all that, the myth reveals to us that nihilism is ultimately wrong and the rain falls on the just and the unjust.

God is good. Sometimes cars crash, houses burn down, bad guys gun down the innocent. Yet just like Superman, we have to be the protectors who catch the car before it drops on civilians. Just because we are really Clark Kent doesn’t give us an excuse to abdicate bearing the weight of the world on our shoulders.

Who received the spoils of WW2? Who was the main victor? Sean McMeekin argues persuasively that Stalin was objectively the person most enriched, and his empire enlarged. He even got Poland, ostensibly the reason WW2 started in the first place.

Yet, Hitler is always the main villain when describing the global eruption of conflict, the main instigator. While he is certainly a villain, he had nothing to do with the wars in Asia, and he had only invaded Poland after agreeing with Stalin to split up the country like a group of kids claiming their rooms for the week at a vacation cabin. And Russia’s share was actually supposed to be larger than Germany’s.

German military speed and competence secured a larger portion of territory than initially planned. In fact, German military speed and competence in Poland and then in France frustrated Stalin’s long-term foreign policy goals.

He wanted Europe embroiled in a long war of attrition, with the capitalist powers beating each other to pulp, exhausted to the brink as in the First World War, so the Soviets could march in unopposed and bathe Europe in the glories of Communism.

“Let them fight,” sums up Stalin’s goal. It was a war Stalin wanted. Hitler certainly didn’t want to fight France or Britain and expected them to back down again. Yet it’s also clear that, given British and French early responses, they didn’t really want to fight the war either. It didn’t serve their interests.

As Germany gobbled up France, Stalin cursed French and British incompetence. Despite being Hitler’s ally, and literally fueling the conquest with 4,000 tons of Soviet oil per day delivered to German Panzers, Stalin hated that Hitler smashed the allies so quickly. He wanted everyone to bleed.

And so the book is aptly titled Stalin’s War. While it was not exactly what he wanted, the outcome was close enough, with Soviet influence smothering half of Europe. Stalin was able to claim territory in the slipstream of German victories and in the rubble of German defeats. He played both sides, and the only reason he wasn’t burned was because of American naivety.

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“Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor…”

Ecclesiastes 4:4a

Human relationships can and will affect even the most purely technical of problems. For example, how two different systems within the same company interface will be informed just as much, if not more so, by how the two managers of the two teams might get along.

Consuming an API from another team? Your difficulty is not only based on your knowledge of the technical requirements or how well documented the API is. How well do the teams get along? How well do they communicate?

Do members eat lunch together every once in a while? Maybe a game of pickleball? Teams that get along great have important touchpoints for communication, and the contours of their respective systems and responsibilities mesh perfectly.

An antagonistic relationship bubbles up in various ways. Less integration happens than is technically possible or advantageous because everyone dreads working together, and tasks keep getting pushed to the horizon. Or the team with less political clout gets stuck with all of the less exciting tasks, which affects the fundamental design of the entire system.

Another example might be when a certain framework or conceptual model is imposed from above, stifling creativity as it cascades down. All because of the whims of a single person.

Software is made by people to solve problems that other people have determined need to be solved. Social rationality and awareness are needed. Navigating these issues, with a realistic view of human nature, is just part of the job of the most technical practitioners. The single autistic auteur who gets along with nobody has a high cost, even if those costs might be hidden.

There is no one tool that solves these problems. That’s like saying, “make me a program that solves marriage.” You can read all of the marriage books you want, and they will be about as useful as a battery for a candle if you don’t talk to your wife.

Dig deep enough, and this is always true. Why does a man work out? To get healthier. Why does he want to be healthier? To live longer and have a better quality of life. Why does he want to live longer and have a better quality of life? To be around for my grandchildren.

Ask “why” enough, and you’ll get to some reason that has to do with other people. No one is going to end that sequence of questions with “so I can binge Netflix all day long.”

Which brings me to AI. Again. At this point, I’m beating the residual dust of a dead horse’s skeleton, piling it up grain by grain just so I have a big enough target to hit. But it’s relevant.

While AI might (might) speed up many mundane tasks, or even speed up complex software development, there is always going to be a person at the other end. Why are you doing this task? For no one in particular? For no reason in particular?

How do you know you’re feeding it the right prompts and answering the right questions? AI will give you back whatever you ask for, but unless it thinks you’re racist, it won’t tell you that you asked for the wrong thing. AI doesn’t actually think for you, though it’s a fairly good muppet. Even before these newer AI tools emerged, we had issues with solving the wrong problems or designing the wrong solutions. Now we can just be wrong faster and harder and with even less creativity.

Those who can talk to other people, engage with them, interrogate them, discern feelings and moods, disagree without coming across like a jerk, can imagine being in different shoes, and inspire others, will always be in demand. In other words, people who still act like humans.

Because all problems are people problems, and they require people to solve them. This side of eternity, that will never change.

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In The Two Towers, Eomer, a Marshal of the Riddermark, says to Aragorn:

"Yet you speak the truth, that is plain: the Men of the Mark do not lie, and therefore they are not easily deceived."

This seems like an odd saying, but Tolkien is getting at something deep about the nature of reality. Aragorn has already called the men of Rohan "wise but unlearned, writing no books but singing many songs." They are not naive. They love truth. And it is a love of truth that guards against deception.

Proverbs often talks of evildoers who fall into the pit they have dug themselves, and speaking untruths is no exception. Those who lie often will fall into their own pit of lies. They will tangle themselves up and eventually fall, or they will forget what the truth tastes like, and it will impair all of their endeavors. Like a chef who loses his sense of taste.

"Whoever digs a pit will fall into it; whoever rolls a stone will have it roll back on him." - Proverbs 26:27

“The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.” - Proverbs 5:22

Anyone who traffics in falsehoods weakens his integrity and, therefore, his defenses. He becomes numb to falsehoods, anesthetized, and so becomes more susceptible to them. Consider individuals who fell victim to the Nigerian prince scam. Their failure to detect a falsehood was more than naivete. Like every scheme of conmen, it preyed on other weaknesses, like greed. A lifetime of dedication to the love of money prepared them to fall into that particular pit.

Words are special, though.

In his novel 1984, Orwell posited that dumbing down the language dumbs down the populace. To remove a word was to remove the ability to think about the word’s referent. Replacing “evil” with “doubleplusungood” meant that the moral category of “evil” could not be grasped in the mind. Thinking about it would be like trying to pick up a single pumpkin seed fresh from a carving. You end up pushing it around or shooting it off to a far corner of the room.

Being forced to call evil things “doubleplusungood” was a form of disarmament. Every time someone uses it, they become less likely to recognize the genuine article.

Having the right words can defend. Using the wrong words deliberately is handing a weapon to your enemy.

Why are so many people easy to deceive? Why do so many people get taken in by charlatans in politics and in business?

Because they have probably been dishonest with themselves and toward others.

We peddle in soft lies and think we come off unscathed.

• We call abortion "healthcare."

• We excuse porn by saying it is harmless and victimless.

• Parents lie to themselves, saying, "We did the best we could."

• Men with penises and prostates are called women and wield pronouns like a reverse incantation.

• We treat tiny dogs like children.

Play loose with the truth, and soon you won't be able to recognize it. And if by chance you stumble upon it, you won't even care. Just like a child who has gorged herself on watermelon-flavored candy and refuses to try a dripping, delicious slice of the real thing on a hot summer day.

Aim to be more like the men of Rohan. Sing many songs filled with truth and kill lies before they touch the tip of your tongue.

Marcus Pender had no idea why he had been chosen to interview the last remaining Elf. He was only a journalist for a fading local newspaper, and his biggest scoop had been about a minor budget error mishandled by the district school board. It turned out to be honest incompetence, and the perpetrators had suffered no consequences at the ballot box.

Marcus had no bylines in prestige publications. No big following on social media. He was sure his inconsistent blog, begun in college with enthusiasm and abandoned at least a dozen times over the last decade, had exactly one reader – his mom. He had settled into his life of mediocrity, the malaise that brings a form of unearned contentment before the panic of a midlife crisis.

Yet here he was, climbing the perfectly cut stone steps toward the dwelling of the greatest celebrity on the planet. Even after all of the weird occurrences, he still thought everything would be revealed as an elaborate prank as soon as he arrived at the cabin.

Trees crowded the edges of the path but left the way suspiciously clear of all debris. Every sway of the branches overhead sprayed a new pattern of sunlight onto the ornate patterns of the steps. A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face. Marcus had already stopped twice to catch his breath.

He stopped again when he came to a stone arch with words carved along the top, but he had no idea what they said. He couldn’t read Elvish. Another mark against him. When he passed through it, the skin on his face tightened like over-stretched plastic wrap, then relaxed. His hands patted the rest of his body to make sure it was still present and intact before he traversed the final dozen or so steps.

The cabin appeared plain and normal. It was like any other cabin you might see when planning a vacation to the Smoky Mountains. But as he reached up to knock on the door, he noticed the wood had no hard edges, no cuts. It was like the whole thing had been grown, not built. As he contemplated the wooden door knob with his closed fist raised in the air, the door swung open on wooden hinges.

“Good of you to come, Marcus,” said a deep voice with the ring of youth but the confidence and practice of old age. Very, very old age. The darkened shape moved away. “Do come in.”

Marcus hadn’t expected to be on a first-name basis with someone he had never met, but the familiarity felt natural. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and stepped across the threshold.

The air immediately felt cooler and as fresh as a young spring morning right after a gentle rain. His sweat was gone. Sunlight poured into the room from a few windows but suffused the entire space as if the very air sucked it up like a sponge and glowed. No corner was dark and there were no obvious shadows. Marcus could see no other light source. Other than that, the inside of the cabin was boringly normal. A table against the wall, a couch and a few chairs. And was that a Thomas Kincaid painting on the wall?

A low laugh came from the kitchen area. “It is a bit gauche, I admit,” the deep voice said, “but I have a certain fondness for his earnestness.” The last elf walked over with two mugs of something steaming. He was tall, but not so tall as to force Marcus to tilt his head back too much. White hair framed perfect, unblemished skin and eyes as blue as the horizon just above a calm sea. “Kincaid attempted to capture the lighting of our earthly abodes with such enthusiasm. He failed, of course. But do you not hang finger paintings of children on your own walls and appliances? I have seen such things.”

“I suppose,” Marcus mumbled. “Just a little surprised you have something in common with my mother.”

The elf laughed again. “The first surprise of many, I expect. Please sit.”

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They both settled down in chairs and the elf put the mugs down on the small table between them. Marcus sat with back straight, his body refusing to be comfortable. He was an imposter in this place, and his bones knew it. And it wasn’t just that Marcus was a nobody, a mere staff reporter. As far as he knew, no human had set foot anywhere close to this cabin in over fifty years. The coziness and apparent normalness of the room felt only surface deep.

“You are wondering why I chose you,” the elf said, reading part of his thoughts.

“Well…yeah.”

“Perhaps we will get to that. For now, please drink. It will calm your nerves, among other things.”

Marcus hadn’t picked up his mug for fear of his hands trembling. How could he refuse now? The drink, of course, was delicious. A menagerie of floral notes carried on a bed of rich honey. The liquid seemed to spread out from his stomach all the way to his toenails, and Marcus braced himself for the heady feeling one gets after a few shots of good whiskey, but it never came. When he set the cup back down, he was surprised to find it mostly empty.

Marcus cleared his throat. “So, umm…should I call you Mr. Shoemaker?”

The elf smiled. “If you wish. Though you may also use my real name. Druindar.”

Marcus paused while pulling out his notebook and blinked a few times at the ageless face. No elf in known history was ever known by his or her real name. They had always, at their insistence, been referred to by pseudonyms taken from the jobs elves performed in human myths and fairy tales. Shoemaker. Toymaker. Ringsmith. Treekeeper.

“And I….I can use it…” Marcus licked his lips. “I can use this name in the publication? Mr….” He worked his mouth open and closed a few times like a goldfish. “Mr. Druindar?”

“Just Druindar,” said the elf. “It is a first name. We had no need for additional distinctives.”

“Ok then. Druindar.” The word felt wrong in Marcus’s mouth, like his tongue was too thick to properly pronounce it. “Why share it now?”

“Names are powerful, and those with nefarious purposes could have used an elven name to do great evil. By the time your article goes to print, however, it will no longer matter. I will be dead.”

“You’re dying?!” Marcus spat the words out like too-hot soup.

“No. From the day of his Becoming, every elf knows the day and hour of his death. That is the first truth you should know about us.”

Marcus stared unmoving at the blue eyes as he attempted to get the words to settle into his mind. He wasn’t sure how long he stared, but he jerked in surprise when he realized it and his pen clattered to the floor. No doubt this would be the first of many revelatory moments that left him gaping, open-mouthed, so maybe pen and paper wouldn’t suffice. He reached toward his bag again. “Mind if I record this?”

“Not at all. Though there is no need. The tea you drank will maintain your memories of our conversation until you write them down.”

Marcus sat up straight again and glanced at the almost empty mug. Half joking, he asked, “Could I get that recipe?”

Druindar chuckled politely. “There are many things I wish to share, but that is not one of them. And even if you could understand it, you would not have the craft required.”

“Of course.” People had been trying to crack the secrets of Elven “magic” for centuries. Men much smarter than Marcus had made about as much progress as a turtle on a treadmill. He straightened his back again and tried to inject his voice with the gravitas the moment required. “How do you feel about your approaching death?”

“How I feel is not relevant. It simply is. We all knew we would taste of the curse before we were gathered to our people once again.”

“So you have no remorse? No regrets?”

“No more than you would have passing another landmark to your destination.”

Marcus leaned forward. “There is something after death?”

“Of course. None of us would have agreed to this mission if we were facing the Void.”

“Are you talking about Heaven?”

“There is more than one, but yes. Though it is far different from human imaginings.”

“And you know for sure that’s where you’re going?”

Druindar lifted an eyebrow and gave Marcus a long stare, with eyes that appeared old enough to have witnessed the birth of every star in the night sky. “Even after thousands of years, I will never cease to be amazed by you humans. And exasperated. All of the wonders you have seen, and you still won’t take me at my word?”

“It’s been a long time since there were any wonders done by your kind. Not in my lifetime.”

“That you know of.”

Marcus mulled on that for a brief moment. If the elves were still performing magic, that would be more big news to come out of this interview. He sat back. “Even so, I haven’t personally seen anything.”

“But you have seen the proof. Read the stories. Your entire history is predicated on certain truths of what my kind have done.”

“Stories can be embellished.”

Druindar laughed a deep laugh that filled the room like music. “‘Oh ye of little faith’ really is a descriptor of your entire race.”

“It’s not foolish to require evidence,” Marcus said, though he hated how petulant he sounded.

“I did not say it was,” Druindar said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “But your standard of evidence is absurd, a truth my kindred and I have stated over and over again, in many different ways, for hundreds of years of your recorded history and thousands of years before that. You claim to have never seen magic when you just drank a tea with effects that defy all of your naturalistic categories. Though no doubt you are thinking there must be some normal, mundane scientific explanation for it.”

Marcus bit the inside of his cheek. Yes, he had been thinking that in the back of his mind, even while remembering that the smartest people on earth had tried and failed. Over and over.

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Druindar continued. “Look around you and see with new eyes, and you will perceive that you see magic every day. Everything is magic.”

“Isn’t that like saying everything is a miracle? If that’s true, then nothing is.”

“Not at all. Just because something is common and repeatable and you can dissect it and label its parts and name it does not mean it is not magic. If I had said my intelligence would be instantly uploaded to a distant server on another planet after my death, where I would continue to live in a different type of body, you would have no trouble accepting what I said as truth. Such a process sounds like technology, which is something your race believes it understands and controls.”

Marcus sat there, wanting to come up with some snappy answer on behalf of all mankind. He didn’t know why. Even though Druindar was thousands of years old, Marcus still didn’t appreciate being lectured like a child.

The elf held up a conciliatory hand. “It is not wrong for you to seek to understand and name things. That is the prerogative of all descendants of Adam. But along with his birthright, you also inherited his hubris. Someday, the latter will be gone, and you will have true understanding.”

Marcus sighed and picked his mug back up before remembering it was still almost empty. He tightened his grip on the handle and decided to change the subject. “So the rest of your people. They really did die? They didn’t just leave or go into deeper seclusion?”

“Indeed,” Druindar said, and turned to look out the window. “Once I am gone, your race will be alone for the first time.” A small bird of some kind alighted on the sill and chirped, and the elf smiled. “Well, alone of the ensouled to walk this sphere.”

Marcus had about fifty different threads he could pluck at, his head swimming with the possibilities. It seemed that Druindar was verifying the existence of a soul. The revelation that the rest of the elves really were gone would send shockwaves across the world. And what about the Void and the mission? Marcus bounced his gaze from the bird to Druindar and picked a path before the silence grew too awkward.

“It sounds like you’ve been on our planet for far longer than you’ve let on. From past statements, at least.”

“We have never spoken a lie. We have left certain truths unsaid or let you stew in your own deceptions, but no lie has left our lips.”

“That’s a bold statement, considering your lifespan. And you’re speaking for eleven others.”

“Do you doubt my word?” For the first time, Druindar’s voice had an edge. “I thought we had already covered this ground. Perhaps this interview is pointless. Perhaps I invited the wrong person.”

“No.” Marcus spit the word out as fast as he could. “No. Just…hard for me to believe. It’ll be hard for readers to believe it, too.”

“I very much doubt that. Your kind have believed far stranger things about us.”

Marcus nodded to grant him the point and took a slow, deep breath to calm his nerves “So we have never been alone. Does that mean you have been here since…” He had almost ended with since humans evolved from apes or since the first cells had crawled out of the primordial ooze. But he remembered all elves were creationists of a sort and took such statements as insults, so he kept it vague. “You’ve been here since…the beginning?”

“Since the Fall. We are servants of the Dancing Fire.”

Marcus remembered from Sunday school something about a sword of fire placed at the entrance to the Garden of Eden. Was it related? “This is the mission you mentioned before? The reason you came to earth?”

“Indeed. We are boundary wardens.”

“What boundaries?”

“Between the spheres. Between realms.”

“Do you mean planets?”

“Yes, but not limited to them.”

“So there is other life?”

Druindar spread his hands as if presenting himself and smiled. “Did you not already know this?”

“I mean other lifeforms besides you. Besides what is on this planet. Aliens.”

“Yes, but again, not as you imagine.”

“And you…protect us from these lifeforms?”

“Some. But most of them, we protect from you.”

Marcus took a moment to process this. He had to clear his throat a few times before he was able to speak again. “You’re telling me Earth is a prison?”

“More like a quarantine zone.”

“We’re contagious?”

“Greed. Covetousness. Idolatry. We have already spoken of your hubris. Must I explain sin to you, Marcus? You have seen what humans do to each other. That level of corruption would ravage the cosmos.”

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Marcus sat straight up in the chair, looking at Druindar in a new light. At all of the elves in a new light. Common wisdom for centuries had treated them as benefactors, but had they really been prison guards? His exposé would shatter all known history. All would be dissected and reevaluated.

The beginnings of his first article swirled in his head, along with something else.

Offense.

Offense on behalf of the whole human race.

“You are thinking,” Druindar said, “of your coming fame as soon as you publish these revelations.”

Marcus tried to spin some indignation into his voice. “You’ve been treating us like children for thousands of years.”

“Because you still are. You had no issue accepting the benefits of our stewardship before, but now that you know you have no exclusive claim on our concerns for your welfare, you begin to act petulant.”

“All under false pretense!”

Druindar spread his hands again. “As I have said, we have never lied to you. It is not our fault that you always ask the wrong questions. And still, you fail to pull on the obvious thread.”

A dreadful thought popped into Marcus’s mind. “Have you sabotaged us? Our efforts to reach the stars? Improvements in technology?”

“That is the wrong thread. But since you asked, yes. Nothing too drastic, but enough to confound and dull the sharpest of your minds. A note misplaced. A name forgotten. A lens smudged at the right moment.”

Marcus stood up, his notepad falling to the floor. “You had no right.”

“It was part of our sacred duty, given to us by one whose authority is supreme. We had every right.”

Marcus looked around the room, searching for anything toward which he could direct his anger besides the infuriatingly calm face of the elf. Some picture. Some flaw. Some sign of opulence or pride he could focus on to drop the elves down a level in his own mind, some hint that they had acted above their station.

There was nothing. While everything was clean, neat, and perfectly crafted, it was mostly wood and had the air of humility and restraint. He settled for crossing his arms and clenching his fists as hard as he could.

“Would you like some more tea, Marcus? I have a different brew that will…”

“I don’t want tea!” Marcus paced a few times before stopping and grabbing the back of his chair. “This will ruin your reputation.”

“I care not. I will soon be gone, after all.”

“You said death is not the end. You won’t peek in from time to time? To see how the entire human race now hates you?”

Druindar offered a soft smile. “That avenue will be closed to me. Even if I could, I will be far too busy with a new work. Why would I put my hand back to the plow, so to speak?”

Marcus crossed his arms again. “And the rest of your kind? They left as heroes. You’re turning them into villains.”

“I look forward to reuniting with them again and telling them all that has transpired since their passing. Do sit down, Marcus. We must still get to the main point of this interview.”

“No thanks.”

“As you will,” Druindar said, tipping his head forward. “But in your indignation, you have jumped over the stream you should have stopped to inspect.”

Marcus almost said, “I don’t care,” but even in the single-mindedness of his anger, he knew it would sound childish. And it would only serve as another data point to solidify the elf’s justification in treating humanity like children. He took a deep breath and glanced out the window. The bird had flown away.

“Your work as boundary wardens isn’t all about holding us back.” Marcus swirled some poison into the last words to make it clear he was still angry. “You said ‘some.’ You protect us from something.”

Druindar tilted his head down in acknowledgement. “Indeed.”

“Hostile aliens?”

“Of a kind. The word that would describe them most accurately would be ‘demons.’”

Now Marcus felt like sitting down. Still, he refused. “What type of demons? Intradimensional? Cthulu? Lovecraftian stuff?”

Druindar chuckled. “They wish they were so grand and powerful. No. But in many ways, they are much worse.”

“So not only have you kept us in the dark, handicapped us, but you’re now going to leave us defenseless against these things?”

“Our work has been minimal since the Ascension. The way has been shut. The door sealed. The demons are locked away in dark, watery places until the consummation of all things.”

Marcus closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and finger. This was getting weird way too quickly. The pages he colored growing up in Sunday school had not given him the vocabulary to sort through all the claims slapping him across the head. The elves had never been shy about their beliefs when asked, but Marcus, and a large portion of the rest of the world, had shrugged it off as an eccentricity. Like Einstein’s hair or Tom Cruise’s Scientology. To hear the certainty out of Druindar’s own lips, however, was something else entirely.

“Jesus,” Marcus mumbled under his breath.

“Precisely,” Druindar said.

Marcus opened his eyes and cleared his throat, embarrassed. “So what’s the problem? It sounds like everything’s fine.”

“On their side of the door, the way is locked. They may still be invited in by the descendants of Adam and, despite our warnings, many do offer such invitations.”

“Who would invite a demon?”

Druindar gave Marcus a look of incredulity. “Anyone craving power or wealth or knowledge. My kind have been offered bribes for such things, and when we refuse, the supplicants turn to other sources. Many are unaware they are summoning demons through their efforts, though the danger is still the same no matter their intentions.”

“It can be accidental?”

“Their actions are never accidental, but they are often misinformed.”

Marcus finally sat down again, but remained tense with his hands on his knees. “And when you’re gone, things will get worse?”

“Possibly. Whether that happens or not depends on you, Marcus Arindar Pendragon.”

Marcus blinked. “What?”

“We come to the real point of this interview. You were wondering why I chose a beat reporter who is unknown to all but his immediate family to get the scoop of the century. You know enough to make your choice, I think.”

The words bounced off Marcus’s forehead with all the effect of a ping-pong ball on the Great Wall of China. The names Druindar had used still filled his head and ears, tugging something out of his chest that had long lain dormant. “What did you call me?”

“The names of some of your ancestors. You come from noble stock. We have kept track since Merlin was put to rest.”

“Merlin.” Marcus was glad he was already sitting down. “Like the wizard. From King Arthur.” His head now felt like a balloon wobbling in the wind.

“Not exactly like that, but your myths are close enough for our present conversation.”

Marcus didn’t even know what the present conversation was about. “Merlin was real?”

Druindar smiled. “And a good friend, but that is not relevant. When I am gone, someone must continue our work, and it is time for humanity to assume that mantle. Or at least, a single human. You, to be exact.”

“Woah.” Marcus held a hand up. “Woah.” He almost said “woah” a third time, but clamped his mouth shut before it spilled out. He swallowed, and it was like forcing a baseball down his throat. “Can we slow down a bit?”

“Of course.”

“You want me to fight demons?”

“With your powers, it won’t be much of a fight. I want you to banish demons and possibly save souls in the process. You have the opportunity to do much good, Marcus. Far beyond the bounds of your current occupation.”

“I don’t even know if I believe in demons.”

“That matters not. They are real, whether you believe in them or not. But since my word is not enough…” Druindar stood and held out a cupped hand. “Let your eyes be opened, Marcus Pendragon.”

Marcus opened his mouth to object again.

He screamed instead.

He had been sitting in a comfy chair, in a comfy cabin, and now everything around him pulsed and swirled. Energy flowed through the wood and the floor and the woods outside burned with an emerald glow that dug deep into the earth. In the sky above, for he saw through the roof as if it were the clearest glass, there were wings of fire and chariots of flame that rivaled the shining sun in their intensity.

Closing his eyes did nothing. The visual barrage continued as if his eyelids had been burned away. There was no escape. Drowning in colors and light. His fingers clenched the arms of the chair until they ached, but he dared not loosen his grip lest he be lost forever in the storm raging around him. He gulped in another breath to continue his screaming.

“Marcus. Look at me.”

Marcus focused on the voice of Druindar. The elf still stood before him, luminous and somehow more solid and corporeal, but still mostly the same.

“Breath, Marcus, and rest your gaze on my eyes.”

Marcus obeyed and was glad he did so. Druindar’s eyes acted as an anchor. The world went wild around him, but the steady presence of the elf gradually calmed his terror.

Marcus swallowed and winced at the rawness of his throat. Rasping, he asked, “What have you done to me?”

“You currently see a portion of the reality behind reality. Do not worry, I will veil your sight once more. But first…” Druindar pointed downward. “Look, and remember that I am here.”

Marcus kept his eyes locked on Druindar’s face because if he glanced again at the writhing world at the edges of his vision, his stomach might leap to his throat and then drop to his ankles.

“I can’t,” he whispered. He felt a tear trace a line down his cheek.

“You must.”

“What will I see?”

“The reason I have brought you here.”

Marcus took a few deep breaths while Druindar watched him with steady eyes. The light of life rushed around and above him, and he felt the first twinge in his stomach of motion sickness.

“This will stop after I look down?”

“I promise.”

Marcus nodded and dipped his head.

Where the sky was a field of fire, the depths were a dark desolation. His vision pierced through the floor and went down, down, down until he perceived something solid. There was no light except the occasional flicker and blink of blood red. Anger. Menace. Despair. A desire to devour. These intentions hit him like a gust of hot, rancid air, the final gasp of a sickly, rotted corpse.

And there was movement. Constant movement and twisting and agitation and slithering. Marcus saw the pits of the earth filled with black worms, with no room to crawl but crawling still. Pushing and climbing and scraping against one another, like the constant churning of waves in a deep, dark sea. The red he had glimpsed before were the eyes, shown briefly as one crested to the top and then was buried. An odor of decay and death flooded his senses and his stomach churned and a headache flared deep in the center of his skull.

And then it was gone.

Marcus stared at the solid, wooden floor. Sweat and tears beaded down his face, but with every breath, his headache subsided and his sense of dread calmed.

Druindar was sitting down again, wearing a mild look of concern.

“That pit,” Marcus said. “That is what threatens us? All the time?”

“In a global or cosmic sense, no. They are no more threatening than a single moth is to the whirlwind, and they will be crushed as easily as you could crush an earthworm under your heel. But before that happens, they can cause much unnecessary suffering and heartache.” Here, Druindar sighed and glanced out the window. “Yes, much heartache.”

“But only if we invite them?”

“As I have said. But there are many fools and scoundrels, and they will always be with you until the end of time.”

Marcus blinked a lingering tear out of his eye and wiped his forehead with a sleeve. “You mentioned a choice.”

Druindar smiled. “Now we come to the point. It is time for a Pendragon to again assume the mantle of power and protection, though your task will be greater than Arthur’s.” His face took on a graver look. “It is a mantle not assumed lightly, and it is not a choice I can make for you.”

Marcus waved his hand toward the floor. “Obviously, one choice is to fight literal demons and be on the brink of insanity for the rest of my life.”

Druindar nodded. “Though I give you a boon before I go. You will know all the craft I can teach you, all the secrets of our art that man has longed to know. It will be yours.”

“But there’s a catch.”

“You perceive correctly. If you assume this mantle, all knowledge of my kind will vanish from the earth. There will be no memory of us, no written records. For the sons of Adam, it will be like we never trod this cursed ground. Only you will know the truth.”

Marcus gaped. “But why?”

“It is the way it must be. That is all I can tell you.”

“But that means…” Marcus looked around the room as if the perfect solution would be sitting on a shelf somewhere. “That means no one will believe me. I’ll be alone.”

“I can promise you, Marcus, you will never be alone.” And Druindar’s words had the certainty of deep roots that could crack the foundations of mountains.

Marcus closed his eyes. “And if I refuse?”

“After I am gone, you may do as you wish. You are a good enough writer that your interview with the last elf will likely bring you fame, and if you are savvy enough, fortune. You will rise from journalistic obscurity to the heights of your profession, as you have always wanted. It is the noble life you have always dreamed of.”

“All while demons will run around unchecked. How much damage can they do?”

Druindar steepled his fingers in front of him. “A single man can do much damage, even without the help of a demon, so do not think everything is on your shoulders. However, if there are no more boundary wardens, there will be much additional suffering that would otherwise not happen. Though of most of it, you will be unaware. That is the balm of the second choice. A lack of full knowledge.”

“That’s not much of a choice. It feels like emotional blackmail.”

“Marcus, no matter what you do, the demons lose. Their future is written. Their fate is not on your shoulders. However, the stories that happen between now and the consummation of all things are still important. You are being entrusted with the power to write a different kind of story. Or not.”

“When do I need to make my decision? How long do I have?”

“You have no need for more time because you have already made your choice.”
Marcus pressed his lips into a thin line. He knew that Druindar was right as soon as the elf uttered the words. Infuriating.

Druindar stood up and clasped his hands behind his back. “What do you choose, son of Adam?”

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In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Hebrews 9:22

There must be sacrifices. They will have sacrifice; will have man. Yes, and the very heart, centre, ground, roots of a man; dark and strong and costly as blood.

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

As uncomfortable as it is for our modern sensibilities to admit, sacrifice — both animal and human — has been a common practice throughout history. The presence of this untaught, yet transcultural, impulse suggests that not only do we instinctively know an offended god exists somewhere beyond, but that to be reconciled to him will cost us something.

There will be blood, in other words.

There must be blood. There is also, buried within the conscience, the vague notion that not just any blood will do. It isn’t simply a matter of rummaging through the pasture for a half-blind goat to toss over the side of a volcano. It should be a spotless lamb. It should be a pure maiden. It should be the best we can find.

In his fictional retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, Lewis writes about the kingdom of Glome, which is suddenly blasted by various kinds of plague and pestilence. It should be noted that within the kingdom of Glome are two competing religious systems. The first is a kind of Stoicism, embodied in a foreign Greek advisor whom the king’s daughter comes to know as The Fox. He is logical, sophisticated, and objective. The other is the long-established religion of Glome, a kind of mystic paganism, whose priests could be identified by “the holiness of the smell that hung about them — the temple-smell of blood . . . and burnt fat and singed hair and wine and stale incense.”

In response to the plagues, Glome’s high priest suggests that a human sacrifice should be offered to Ungit (their god, who is assumed to be a bloodthirsty beast) to mitigate whatever offense he might have taken against them.

The Greek advisor has no real strategy except to poke holes in the priest’s logic in the hopes of sparing the daughters he’s come to love. To this, the priest only responds that “Greek wisdom is very subtle. But it brings no rain and grows no corn; sacrifice does both.”

While a relationship between the onset of the plagues and Ungit’s disfavor is never directly established, what Lewis is doing here is what every author worth his salt should always be doing: unearthing, through the medium of myth, a universal fact of existence.

In Till We Have Faces, one such fact is consequences — in biblical parlance, the fact that “every transgression or disobedience receives a just retribution (Heb. 2:2).” Though we, with our short memories and soaring credit limits, have been taught that consequences are a thing of the past, the world is built in such a way that reality tends to be stubborn. Once, when I was young, I noticed a clump of Shaggy Mane mushrooms that had forced themselves through one of the cracks in our driveway. Reality works in a similar way; try to pave over it, and it will still find a way to come through.

The task of the teacher, the writer, and the evangelist, for that matter, is to clear away the accumulation of asphalt which godless nations such as our own tend to accumulate. And in clearing away, to give reality room to grow up, expand, and be exposed.

Sin isn’t a strategy to make people feel terrible about themselves so they will come to our church. It isn’t the present projection of our past failures. It isn’t the violation of some cultural taboo. It is the ugly reality that stands at the center of human existence. Like Glome’s plagues, it is the cause of all death, sadness, and decay. It won’t simply go away if we ignore it.

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The Modern Greek

Even the king in Lewis’ story is forced to admit that the priest’s counsel carried more weight than the Greek’s plaintive rhetoric. It was fitting, however awful, that his precious younger daughter should be sacrificed for the good of his people. Surely Ungit’s wrath could not be appeased any other way. After all, she was the best they had.

It’s hard not to see, mirrored in the priest’s response to the Greek, Lewis’s own lifelong resistance to the toxic shock which “progressive” academia tends to generate in the human soul. Here was an educational system that not only dared to philosophize about human suffering but also openly mocked those who tried to address it. Lewis was no enemy of logic, but he knew better than most how easily it could be twisted to make lies seem reasonable.

We have our own version of Greek wisdom today.

We find it among secular philosophies that tell us that guilt and shame are chemical constructs, derailed neural pathways, or residual trauma that can be corrected through medical intervention.

We find it in the thousands of articles and videos that attempt to explain away guilt by suggesting that there’s really nothing to be guilty about.

We find it in the experts, who make the inconceivable claim that at the end of the day, there really are no problems — just problems of logic; who claim that the fundamental evil at work in our age isn’t sin but a lack of authenticity and resistance to self-expression.

But then reality comes along to remind us that the guilt of sin is an objective fact of existence. It doesn’t just blow away like a plastic bag in the wind when we rearrange the rules.

In Crime and Punishment, the fact that Raskolnikov’s murder goes undetected for so long doesn’t render him “free.” It only means he must exist in a constant web of fear and paranoia. Ignoring guilt doesn’t only NOT make it go away, but actually provokes it to attack the deep tissue of the soul.

King David knew this to be true:

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.

Psalm 32: 3, 4

We pave, and the mushrooms grow.

Back to Blood

So far, we have established guilt. But guilt alone isn’t good news. Guilt alone, as we’ve seen, means condemnation.

How can we sleep at night knowing there is no courtyard or altar to go to? No priest to whom we can bring the best of our livestock or intercede on our behalf? How do we live under the crushing knowledge that not only are we not okay, but we are complete and utter frauds? Making spreadsheets, leading meetings, engaging in pleasant conversation, only to secretly harbor the most unspeakable thoughts against God and man.

We wander the deserts of Greek wisdom and therapeutic drivel, hoping for some argument strong enough to convince us we’re okay. But though Greek wisdom is more pleasant to consider than a bloody altar, at the end of the day, it brings no rain. It produces no forgiveness.

Why not?

For the life of the body is in its blood. I have given you the blood on the altar to purify you, making you right with the LORD. It is the blood, given in exchange for a life, that makes purification possible.

Lev. 17:11

The power of blood isn’t in its chemical mixture but in what it represents. Without blood, there is no life. To open a vein and bear witness as the blood is poured out is to witness the ebb of life. For a corrupted creature to be made pure, a life must be taken. Such is the inevitable law of nature written on our hearts, and such is God’s revealed instructions. And so, any “Gospel” that claims to be good news without blood isn’t good news for people like us.

For this reason, the Bible’s frequent mention of blood shouldn’t scandalize us. Rather, it should come as good news — for the blood that cleanses guilty sinners isn’t our own, but “The precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot.” He is the best heaven has to offer, and so the only fitting answer to the crime of sin.

As Christians, we need to get this into our bones.

Sometimes I worry that we have been so bent by Greek wisdom that songs like There is a Fountain or Nothing but the Blood are viewed as some bizarre pagan relics that have no place in the modern, civilized church. We prefer our forgiveness without all that grim nonsense, thank you very much.

But Jesus said in John 6 that if we don’t want participation in Christ through his blood, then we will have no participation with Christ, period. When Jesus reminded his fan club of this fact, the response was predictable.

“Many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”

And yet, as with so much of God’s Word, it is no less true for its offense.

William Cowper said it best:

Dear dying lamb thy precious blood shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed church of God is saved to sin no more.

Pantheon is a show about uploaded intelligence, and it poses all the right questions while intersecting related themes in interesting ways.

Are people uploaded to a computer really the same person?

What about a 100% genetic clone? Is he the same person or does he have a distinct identity?

What is the end game if the technology for uploaded intelligence were viable?

Can uploaded intelligences have children?

Is the uploaded intelligence the intellectual property of the company that invented the technology?

And many more. The show’s answers are surprising and entertaining, even if half of them are unsatisfactory. It plays it smart by focusing on well-rounded characters, so viewers forgive some of the handwaviness. As entertainment, it’s top-notch.

However, the show isn’t just entertainment. It posits a world that modern technologists and oligarchs desire. An artificial world made in our image, bowing to our every whim. Eternal digital life.

The very name of the show speaks to this conceit. Pantheon.

“And ye shall be as gods.”

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The “Mind Virus” of the Biological World

In a recent Vox podcast and article discussing the metaphysical assertions of AI, Jaron Lanier discusses the unusual, faith-based goals of technologists and their reverence for what they are creating.

I talk to the people who believe that stuff all the time, and increasingly, a lot of them believe that it would be good to wipe out people and that the AI future would be a better one and that we should wear a disposable temporary container for the birth of AI.

Just the other day I was at a lunch in Palo Alto and there were some young AI scientists there who were saying that they would never have a “bio baby” because as soon as you have a “bio baby,” you get the “mind virus” of the [biological] world. And when you have the mind virus, you become committed to your human baby. But it’s much more important to be committed to the AI of the future. And so to have human babies is fundamentally unethical.

Elon Musk has said that humans might be the bootloader for the intelligence that matters. The idea of something artificial replacing humanity is something serious and powerful people believe.

The desire to slough off the limitations of the flesh is nothing new. Gnosticism and its denigration of human bodies has been around forever. Even its union with modern science into a form of techno-gnosticsm was something predicted by C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength, published in 1945.

Here is a conversation from the novel among some of the scientists at N.I.C.E.

“If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, ‘Oh the horrid thing. It is alive,’ and then drop it?”

“Go on,” said Winter.

“And you, especially you English, are you not hostile to any organic life expect your own on your own body? Rather than permit it you have invented the daily bath.”

“That’s true.”

“And what do you call dirty dirt? Is it not precisely the organic? Minerals are clean dirt. But the real filth is what comes from organisms — sweat, spittles, excretions. Is not your whole idea of purity one huge example? The impure and the organic are interchangeable conceptions.”

“What are you driving at, Professor?” said Gould. “After all we are organisms ourselves.”

“I grant it. That is the point. In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it. We do not want the world any longer furred over with organic life…We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course; slowly we learn how. Learn to make our brains live with less and less body: learn to build our bodies directly with chemicals, no longer have to stuff them full of dead brutes and weeds. Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation.”

The mind. The mind is what matters. For the mind to live without the body is the ultimate wish for many.

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Hell Becomes Heaven

The first season of Pantheon treats uploaded intelligence as unnatural and ugly. The second episode has one of the most disturbing scenes I’ve ever watched. A man unwillingly has his brain burned away and scanned, layer by layer, as you watch the life dim in his eyes.

A nightmare. Who would want this? No one sane. Only the terminally ill would ever volunteer for such a procedure.

Yet, it is soon discovered that these UIs (uploaded intelligences) become superhumanly powerful as they are unleashed on the internet, free from all physical limitations.

Then the show does something clever. It introduces the flaw. The mind was not meant to live without the body, and a mind processing more data at lightspeed than any human brain could fathom begins to decay. To lose itself. If left unchecked, the flaw makes a UI even less than human and certainly less than a god. Shadows that eventually fade.

A large part of the second season is about trying to fix the flaw. Once the flaw is fixed, the nightmare is over. People can now live forever. Hell becomes heaven, even though nothing is real.

Remember The Matrix? The movie where humanity is enslaved by plugging them into a simulation, a prison they must fight to be free from?

For Pantheon and many modern technologists, the Matrix wouldn’t be a prison. A voluntary Matrix is the end goal of the human race.

So the Matrix is good, actually. Cipher, the traitor from the first movie, was correct in his desire to be plugged back in. This view isn’t new, of course, but its grown beyond the contrarians and online edgelords to the founders of real-life companies who have political influence.

No Grace in a Secular Heaven

One character, Julius Pope, complains in the penultimate episode that he helped build heaven, but he was kept out of it because of a criminal record. If he uploaded himself via the black market, the authorities would figure it out quickly and delete him.

Only the deserving get to be uploaded in this brave new world. Julius has a case of sour grapes and becomes a terrorist. It backfires with beautiful, dramatic irony.

But it’s funny when people who no doubt would complain about the capriciousness of god who dares deny entry to heaven when it’s something we would obviously do ourselves. And we would be vindictive about it. Even if we could somehow create our own paradise, we would find a way to make it exclusive.

The God of the Bible, on the other hand, offers free grace. Everyone is offered eternal life. A real life, not a digital facsimile. All they have to do is bow down and take it, no matter what else they have done. The price has already been paid.

Of course, we will never create our own paradise. We long for the Garden. In our fallen state, we also hate the Garden. We are in love with our own flesh while also despising it and desiring to make it obsolete. Everything becomes sterile and/or tyrannical.

Our would-be paradises always end up requiring the shedding of blood, and Pantheon’s paradise is no different.

A Rushed Infinite Regression

Pantheon was canceled while season 2 was in production. It’s obvious they were counting on at least one more season to tell their story, because the final two episodes are a madcap rush to a conclusion that devolves into an infinite loop.

Simulation theory is explored quickly. What if it’s all digital, all the way down?

The main protagonist becomes a god. Or does she?

The show collapses on itself, which is understandable. Those final two episodes could not bear the weight. The creators at least did something wild and interesting.

It’s a mess. But it’s a beautiful mess.

Pantheon is worth watching because real people, probably people you know, long for the digital over the physical. These ideas have captured their imagination. People want digital life without becoming the blobs from Wall-E.

The show will help you ponder the right questions, even if it can’t help you find the right answers.

8/10

1. What happens when you buy a Tesla these days? Some strange reactions and the decline of rationality.

   A particularly odd reaction was the attempt at ‘status shaming’ over buying an EV. It used to be owning an electric vehicle got you mocked as ‘less manly.’ Now, a different group is attacking it from a different direction. The message seems to be, “save the planet - but not like that.” This is honestly why we’re never going to save the planet.

2. Why the Alamo still matters. And a good summary of Davy Crockett’s life.

   The revisionists also ignore the widespread opposition throughout Mexico to Santa Anna’s dictatorship and scrapping of the 1824 Constitution. In addition to Texas, both Yucatan and the Mexican states immediately across the Rio Grande from Texas formed republics and seceded from Mexico, albeit unsuccessfully.

3. Why tariffs are good. Trump is not the only modern leader proposing and implementing tariffs (look at Biden), despite the histrionics of the mainstream news who suddenly care about the topic.

   Governments are resorting to tariffs and industrial policy, not because their prime ministers and presidents flunked Econ 101, but because they do not want their economies deindustrialized by a flood of low-priced, state-subsidized Chinese imports.

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The movie has already aged better than 2012’s The Avengers despite being eight years older. It was a breakthrough for a 3D animation studio that had struggled to animate humans, especially human hair. The voice cast is perfect. The callbacks to James Bond films are glorious. Brad Bird was the first outside director of a Pixar film, brought in partly based on the strength of The Iron Giant (another masterpiece.)

And its central theme is even more relevant today. What is that theme?

We are told at the very beginning.

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Secret Identities

The movie opens with three heroes talking about secret identities. Who wants the pressure of being “super” all the time? Who would want to go shopping dressed like Elastigirl? “Superladies” think sharing a secret identity strengthens the relationship.

Mr. Incredible thinks about the simple life and raising a family. Elastigirl scoffs at the idea of settling down. A clash of identities is naturally wrapped up in the superhero life.

As the story goes on, we are invited to ask and debate the following questions:

Which identity is the real identity, and how is it determined?

Soon, disaster strikes. Mr. Incredible causes too much collateral damage and is sued again and again, and the government can't afford to keep paying. Heroes are outlawed. One official says: "It's time for their secret identity to be their only identity."

Mr. Incredible gets his wish to “settle down” good and hard.

But first, we are introduced to Buddy.

A Mismatch of Self-Identity and Reality

Buddy has created the identity of "Incrediboy." He is the sidekick of Mr. Incredible.

The problem, of course, is that Mr. Incredible disagrees with that identification. Buddy doesn't get to decide unilaterally what his identity is. It's not as simple as a mask you can put on and off.

Soon after, the heroes are found in a similar predicament. They thought they had a hero identity, but society now disagrees. Our heroes don't get to unilaterally decide to be superheroes. The relationship between superheroes and the people they save has been an unwritten but mutual agreement.

Identities are not atomistic things.

And so Mr. Incredible's identity becomes regular Bob Parr, who works in insurance. He hates it. But he feels stuck.

Bob knows he can do so much more. His son Dash knows he can do so much more and is acting out at school. His daughter Violet has no idea who she is and goes invisible to avoid other people.

Embracing or Refusing a New Identity

The only one adjusting fine is Helen Parr, the wife and mother. She has embraced her new identity despite the feminist undertone of her introduction. She is the housewife trying to keep it all together. She cooks. She cleans. She seems to have settled into her new life. Her secret identity has become her only identity, and she is comfortable in this new skin.

But Bob goes into full mid-life crisis mode, and suddenly, Helen's new identity is in jeopardy. She finds a stray hair. She starts to suspect. Even her new identity as a housewife is not 100% controlled by her. Without a loyal husband, she is no longer a settled, loyal wife.

Bob goes through his mid-life crisis because he has found someone who agrees with him that his identity should be that of a superhero. Mirage, the stunning, mysterious woman who appears out of nowhere, confirms Mr. Incredible’s self-image. Without that confirmation from someone else, Mr. Incredible is buried beneath the identity of Bob Parr. Despite his super-strength, Mr. Incredible’s identity depends upon other people.

Which brings us back to Buddy, now called Syndrome.

And wow, does Syndrome still have identity issues.

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An Identity is More Than a Mask Or a Costume

Syndrome is a supervillian, but wants to be seen as a superhero. But again, he is foiled, because you can't just decide your own identity unilaterally. He tries an elaborate deception to overcome this, but it fails. The real heroes have to step in.

The resolution of the theme happens when Bob Parr, Mr. Incredible, correctly orients his conflicting identities. He is a husband and a father first. After that, everything begins to fall into place, including his superhero identity.

Violet, his daughter, understands the true stakes more than anyone else. During the scene at the fire with her brother, she says, "Mom and Dad's lives could be in jeopardy. Or worse, their marriage." This statement is played for laughs, the dramatic pronouncement of an anxiety-ridden teenage girl is extraordianary circumstances.

But Bob and Helen's marriage is the bonding agent that keeps all of their core identities intact. Violet is correct to be worried.

Only as a family can they be superheroes. The acceptance of each other within those bonds and boundaries allows each one to flourish in their own way. As a result, by the end of the film, more and more people begin to agree with them.

We Don’t Get to Choose

We do not get to choose our own identity. Our identities come from our bonds with other people. From the moment we are born, we are enmeshed in a series of relationships.

You don't choose your father and mother. You don't choose your name. You don't choose your sex. You are not an autonomous, sovereign individual. You do not get to unilaterally decide what your identity is. You can't just walk onto the court claiming to be an NBA basketball player. You can't just decide to be someone's boyfriend or girlfriend.

You can’t just decide to be someone’s sidekick; no more than a man can decide to become a woman.

It is our relationships that give shape to our identities, that provide borders where we can run wild and free. Having unlimited, unfettered choice in your identity is the same thing as dissolving away into nothing.

This truth is something the trans movement understands.

Trans and The Power of Other People

Why do trans people insist on people using the “correct” pronouns? Why do they see deadnaming as an unforgivable sin? Because deep down, they know they cannot unilaterally decide who they are. They must have people agree with their choice.

First, they're like Buddy. Then, they become like Syndrome.

The trans movement will never be content to play a private game of dress up and let everyone else go about their business. All of society must conform to their choice because they know their identity only matters in the context of other people. Without external affirmation and assent, their fancies are shown to be pure fiction, and that is a truth they cannot abide.

So don’t be gaslit by their pleas. Tell the truth. You can do it in a way that’s a bit more sensitive than ejecting them from the car like Mr. Incredible did to Buddy, but you should hold your ground.

The Incredibles is a great testimony to the power of other people, especially our families, to shape our identities. It's a lesson we should take to heart.

“Slow productivity” sounds like a phrase one uses to be intentionally provocative but not too provocative. You are meant to stop and think and chew. It does its job of generating curiosity.

I found Newport’s book Deep Work to be helpful, and Slow Productivity feels like a natural evolution. The book applies most to knowledge workers. Writers, developers, academics, researchers, and more.

What is knowledge work, according to Newport?

The economic activity in which knowledge is transformed into an artifact with market value thorugh application of cognitive effort.

That’s a pretty good definition. In fact, Newport excels at defining his terms. He’s not trying to pull a bait and switch, nor trying to overpromise with bombastic claims.

I’ll share exactly what he recommends under his banner of “slow productivity,” but first, let’s talk about productivity and its poisonous expectations.

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Favorite metaphor encountered: “I left her laughing. The sound was like a hen having hiccups.” - Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

1. How a Chinese film became the highest-grossing animated movie of all time. With a budget of $80 million. We’ll see what the future holds, but this doesn’t bode well for a Hollywood that is already desperate for Chinese box office revenue.

   Ne Zha 2 has already made it into the Top 10 highest-grossing film of all time. It’s the only non-Hollywood film in that list and surpassed Lion King, Jurrassic Park, and Avengers. It’s expected to pass $2B, standing alongside Star Wars, Titanic, & Avatar.

2. Christianity comes out ahead in Euthyphro’s Dilemma. A good breakdown of an issue raised in one of Plato’s dialogues.

   This however betrays a central misunderstanding about the God of the Bible and his perfections. God does not make holiness, nor is God subservient to holiness, God is holy. The good and God are one and the same.

3. Why Kendrick Lamar’s Half Time Show was important. I confess that the halftime show was literally the first time I had heard Lamar’s music. If you were in the same boat, this is a good read.

   You don’t have to like Rap music, but it is important, just like with most study of the arts, to understand the timing and events that surrounded or motivated that particular author to create that piece. For example, Les Misérables was written during the French Revolution or how Victorian England impacted Charles Dickens. Homer’s Odysseus was after The Trojan War. Or the political atmosphere of 13th Century Florence helped create Dante’s Inferno.

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