There are days I wake and feel like the last sane man in a house on fire, and every other soul has agreed to call the flames “the new normal.”

So let me speak plainly, and if it costs me your approval, so be it. A good word never chipped a tooth.

We live under a system that smiles and strangles us in the same breath. It hands us a ballot with one hand and handcuffs with the other. It baptizes itself in slogans like freedom, progress, and equality, but it knows nothing of truth, and nothing of God. It is not neutral. It is not harmless. It is insidious; not a boot on the neck, but a velvet glove on the throat. Liberal democracy doesn’t care what we believe, so long as we believe it quietly, never let it change our spending, and make sure we vote when they tell us.

It does not want citizens, it wants consumers. Not thinkers, but repeaters. Not families, but fractured, lonely voters who stare at screens
and mistake noise for thought. And God help us if we dare to notice.

Because the lie has language now. Corporate-crafted, algorithm-fed, soft as milk but sharp as a hook. It calls itself news. It calls itself education. It calls itself medicine. It calls itself church.

And we, Christians, have we learned to tell the difference?

We’ve been warned so many times, but we ignore the prophets.

Propaganda isn’t about lies. It’s about drowning the truth beneath ten thousand trivialities. We’re not beaten by falsehood. We’re seduced by distraction. We’re not denied the truth. We’re bored of it. We scroll and scroll, and change the channels, until the voice of God is drowned out by the purr of endless opinion, our imaginations flattened, our memories dulled, our souls numbed to silence.

And the Church, God help us, has joined in. We think if we use the right buzzwords, if we soften the edges, if we nod along to the language of empire, they’ll leave us alone. They won’t. They never do. Because the evil one doesn’t want us to be silent, he wants us fluent in his language.

And so, what of our children, then? Schooling isn’t where we go to be educated. It’s where we drop off our children to be domesticated. The state doesn’t want our children to be curious. It wants them dull and agreeable, comfortable with lies, dependent on government programs,
fearful of difference, hostile to depth, and allergic to beauty. We’ve handed our sons and daughters over to be catechized by machines and bureaucrats and then we act surprised when they come back emptied of wonder and faith. They’ve been trained to comply. Not to seek. Not to risk. Not to believe.

And what of our bodies? Now we queue up like cattle and let strangers inject us with substances we cannot name, with side effects no one will speak of. And if our children collapse, if our mothers stroke out, if our friend dies in their sleep three days after the dose, we’re told it’s a coincidence. A mystery.

“Trust the science.”

But whose science? Whose data? Whose god? No one asks. No one dares. And if we do, we’re mocked, shunned, silenced by our doctor, by our priest, by our friends, by the very people who once prayed beside us.

And where are the shepherds? Where are the watchmen? Where are the pulpits that sound the alarm? Too many pulpits have gone hoarse preaching safety. Too many pastors speak the language of NPR and not the language of Jeremiah. We have traded fire for fog. We have traded the cross for consensus. Do we want the truth? It’s thicker than a blood clot and deadlier than turbo cancer.

The Church is dying not because the world is dark, but because we have dimmed our lamps. We fear being offensive more than we fear God. We court the world’s approval like a girl at a dance, hoping to be picked. We mouth the name of Jesus while winking at Caesar.

But hear this: The Gospel is not polite. The Gospel is not safe. The Gospel is not “just your opinion.” It is the thunder of Sinai. It is the fire of Pentecost. It is the blood-soaked truth that God became man, was nailed to a cross by cowards and clergy alike, rose from the dead, and is coming again to judge the living and the dead. And if that doesn’t shape our politics, our parenting, our prayers, our thoughts, our habits, and our fears, then what on earth is our faith for?

So here is the call. The same summons Jesus puts out to every time and place: Wake up. Come alive. Repent. Turn off the voice of the machine and open your ears to the voice of Christ. Stop catechizing your children with the culture and start baptizing them in the Truth. Stop offering your body to the system and remember it was bought with a price: Christ’s body and blood. Stop pretending the Church can survive by speaking softly to a world that roars. The time is late. The wolves are at the door, and some are already in the pews.

You can’t be neutral. You can’t be quiet. You can’t be a disciple and a coward. So let your yes be yes, and your no be no, because Christ has not stopped speaking. But you… You have stopped listening.

And so, may God strengthen you, and may you stand with the Truth to the end of your Life.