Teaching Isaiah and Wrestling with Wrath

I have 3 weeks in my class in Isaiah, and these final few lessons are never easy.

These chapters aren’t light.
They aren’t comfortable.
They press into the hardest realities of Scripture: sin, bloodshed, wrath, justice, and the costliness of redemption.

I knew this section was coming when I laid out the series, but now that I’m here — sitting day after day with Isaiah 63 and Isaiah 53 — I feel the weight of it. I feel the ache. And I’m asking for prayer as I navigate these waters.

Because Isaiah won’t let us look away from the disturbing parts of the human condition.
He forces us to acknowledge what we often avoid: the universal problem of sin and the unavoidable need for atonement.

The Movie Experience That Still Haunts Me

I've been thinking a lot about Mel Gibson's film-  The Passion of the Christ.

When it first came out, I didn’t want to see it. A friend who went early on told me something that stuck with me:

I asked him, “Were people buying popcorn?”
He said, “They were buying it… but they weren’t eating it.”

That told me everything.

My wife and I eventually went near the end of the run.
The theater was nearly empty: a couple in the front row, one man alone in the back.
It was solemn.

As the film unfolded — as I watched the suffering servant bruised, beaten, and crushed — I wept in a way I’ve never experienced in a theater. For the first time, the prophetic imagery wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t academic. It was flesh and blood, pain and silence, wrath and love converging on a single figure.

That memory is with me now as I approach Isaiah again.

Isaiah 63 — The Winepress of Wrath

Isaiah 63 is among the most jarring passages in the Bible.

“Who is this… with garments stained crimson?”
“I have trodden the winepress alone… their lifeblood spattered on my garments.”
— Isaiah 63:1–3

It is violent.
It is unsettling.
It is meant to be.

This is what sin deserves.
This is how holy God responds to deep, unrepentant evil.
It is not overreach. It is not temper. It is justice.

Isaiah is answering a question that began in the opening chapters of Scripture.

The First Cry for Justice — Genesis 4

When Cain kills Abel, God confronts him with these words:

“The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”
— Genesis 4:10

Blood doesn’t disappear.
Blood speaks.
It testifies.
It demands an answer.

And Isaiah 63 is God saying:
“I have heard that cry — all of them — and I will answer.”

This thread runs through the entire biblical story, through every age, through every nation, through every tragedy. Every drop of human blood spilled in violence cries out for truth and reckoning.

It’s no wonder John Steinbeck borrowed Isaiah’s imagery for The Grapes of Wrath.
He saw suffering — widespread, grinding, unjust — and instinctively reached for the ancient metaphor of the winepress.

When the poor are crushed long enough, their suffering becomes a cry for righteousness.
When evil is ignored long enough, the world groans for judgment.

Isaiah gives language to that groaning.

Isaiah’s imagery shaped also America again through the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

“He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…”

Julia Ward Howe understood that God cannot and will not overlook deep injustice.
History bends toward judgment because God bends toward justice.

All of this makes Isaiah 63 hard to teach.
Because teaching it honestly means acknowledging the horror of sin and the horror of judgment — both the ones we commit and the ones we endure.

Isaiah 53 — The One Who Is Crushed

But then Isaiah turns.
The same prophet who gives us the winepress of wrath gives us the suffering servant who steps into it.

“He was pierced for our transgressions;
He was crushed for our iniquities…”
— Isaiah 53:5

The terrifying part is that Isaiah 63 shows what the world deserves.
The astonishing part is that Isaiah 53 shows who bears it.

The Warrior becomes the Lamb.
The Judge becomes the Substitute.
The One who treads the winepress becomes the One who is crushed in it.

I don’t know a way to teach that lightly.
And I’m not sure I’m meant to.

The Final Pressing

The imagery doesn’t diminish in the New Testament:

“The winepress was trodden… and blood flowed…”
— Revelation 14:20

This is the end of the story of sin:
not ignored,
not minimized,
but fully dealt with.

And this is precisely why the cross matters — because it stands between us and this final reckoning.

I keep returning to these words:

“Whoever believes in Him is not condemned,
but whoever does not believe is condemned already…”
— John 3:18

The problem is not hypothetical.
Condemnation is real.
Wrath is real.
Judgment is real.

But so is deliverance.
So is mercy.
So is substitution.

This is the tension I feel while preparing to teach.

Paul says:

“Never avenge yourselves…
Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
— Romans 12:19

One of the most important voices in the modern conversation about forgiveness and justice is Miroslav Volf, a Yale theologian who grew up in war-torn Croatia during the Balkan conflicts. Volf is not theorizing about evil from the safety of an armchair — he watched neighbors murdered, communities destroyed, families uprooted, and entire regions descend into cycles of revenge.

His reflections on violence, judgment, and forgiveness have become foundational for Christian thinking on justice, and they speak directly into the world of Isaiah 63, Isaiah 53, Romans 12, and the problem of sin.

Volf’s argument can be stated simply:

If there is no divine judgment, there can be no human forgiveness.

And he says it without flinching.

In Exclusion and Embrace, Volf writes this now-famous line:

“My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many…

…the only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves
is to insist that violence is legitimate only when it comes from God.”
— Exclusion and Embrace, p. 302 (emphasis added)

Then he adds the devastating logic beneath it:

“If God were not angry at injustice and deception
and did not make the final end to violence,
that God would not be worthy of worship.”
— Exclusion and Embrace, p. 304

This is the opposite of what many assume today.

We often think:

Belief in divine judgment makes people harsh and violent.

But Volf argues the truth is the reverse:

Belief in divine judgment is the only thing that keeps people from becoming violent.

Wrath is not the contradiction of grace.
Wrath is the foundation of forgiveness.

So here I am:
Sitting with Isaiah 63 and Isaiah 53.
Sitting with the winepress and the suffering servant.
Sitting with Genesis and Revelation and John and Romans.
Sitting with the universal human tragedy of violence and sin.
Sitting with my own tears in that movie theater years ago.

And I feel the weight.

I want to teach truthfully — not minimizing sin, not sensationalizing judgment.
I want to handle the wrath of God in a way that is biblically honest and pastorally careful.
I want to show the depth of the bad news so the good news can be understood — not rushed, not cheapened, not softened.

But I also want the people I teach to walk away with hope.
With clarity.
With gratitude.
With worship.

And so I’m asking for prayer.
Pray that I will navigate these chapters with humility and love.
Pray that people will not recoil from the hard passages but see the purpose behind them.
Pray that somewhere in the struggle, God will meet us — in His justice, in His mercy, in His truth.

I’m wrestling.
And I’m asking the Lord to make something beautiful out of it.

The North Wind's Working On Me Again

 

a dark nights journal- right after daylight savings time ends... I got way too cold today... shivering deep in my bones.

North Wind

The wind is coming out of the north.
I haven’t felt its bite in quite some time.
I’ll shiver all night,
and in a few weeks,
this won’t even be cold.

Goodbye to the sun—
you and I aren’t on the same agenda.
By the time I settle down
from drudgery and distraction,
there’s only deep dark thought.
I think I’m ready for bed,
and it’s not even 8:30.

They call it seasonal depression—
not an emergency,
but maybe more than the blues.
It’s that “melancholy fit” that Keats said
“falls sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,”
fostering the droop-headed flowers
and hiding the green hills in an April shroud.

Maybe that’s what this is—
a kind of fostering,
not a failing.

Blake once warned that
“Joy and woe are woven fine,
a clothing for the soul divine,”
and I think he was right.
I feel the threads pulling now—
the tug of sadness,
the weave of grace.

Wordsworth murmurs through the fading light,
“Though nothing can bring back the hour
of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower,
we will grieve not, rather find
strength in what remains behind.”

As I looked through poems on the winter I came across an amazing poem-

In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees

are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.

Every year

everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Keats again reminds me,

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
its loveliness increases,
it will never pass into nothingness.”
Even the fading light
is still some kind of beauty.

The poets say to embrace it—
that it is necessary.
So here I am,
listening to their advice,
writing a song about letting the north wind do its work.

Song: North Wind

Verse 1

The north wind is here, I feel it’s bite
Been a long time and will shiver all night
Cold in my bones but I know before long,
This chill will fade, and I’ll call it strong.

Goodbye to the sun, you’re leaving too soon,
You fall from the sky before the moon.
By the time I slow from the day’s charade,
It’s dark inside, and the light has strayed.

Chorus 

They call it the shadow season,
But maybe it’s a quiet reason.
To love what fades, to let it go,
To trust what only endings know.
Beauty stays beyond the sin—
The north wind’s working on me again.

Verse 2

Joy and sorrow, threads entwined,
A woven robe for the soul’s design.
I feel those pulls in the evening’s grace,
The tender tears the heart must face.

There’s strength to find in what remains,
A flicker of hope beneath the chains.
The light may fade, but it doesn’t die,
It hides in the hush of a winter sky.

They call it the shadow season,
But maybe it’s a quiet reason.
To love what fades, to let it go,
To trust what only endings know.
Beauty stays beyond the sin—
The north wind’s working on me again.

Bridge

Maybe this is the sacred ache,
The gentle bend that hearts must make.
Even the night, in silver hue,
Holds a light that’s breaking through.

They call it the shadow season,
But maybe it’s a quiet reason.
To love what fades, to let it go,
To trust what only endings know.
Beauty stays beyond the sin—
The north wind’s working on me again.

Outro

So here I am in the northern air,
Listening close to a silent prayer.
Letting the north wind do its part,
Till sorrow tunes my steady heart.

Walls, Gaps, and Trenches

Is there a difference between being right and being dead right?

Is it possible to kill people with truth?

This is a  song about the cost of being right

Link to the song: Walls, Gaps, and Trenches

“Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.”

— Robert Frost, Mending Wall

I’ve loved Robert Frost’s Mending Wall since high school.

Two neighbors meet yearly to stack fallen rocks back onto a wall between them. Frost hints (with a wink and a nudge) that the wall may not be necessary at all—there are no cows. No threat. And yet they rebuild it anyway. One neighbor insists on the old proverb, “Good fences make good neighbors,” while Frost wonders aloud, Why? What are we really protecting?

That tension has lived with me for decades.

And lately, in the world we inhabit—especially online—I feel the weight of those stones pressing heavier every year.

X threads, comment sections, and political tribalism have turned into trenches.
We are fluent in argument. We are losing fluency in listening.

Both sides shout.
Both sides blame.
Both are absolutely certain the problem is the other trench.

We worry about winning debates- what about winning people?

It’s about the relational casualties we ignore along the way.

We built these walls so high, brick by stubborn brick
You stand your ground, and I stand mine, we never seem to click

At some point, the disagreement stops being about ideas and starts being about identity.

And once I believe you are the problem, not the point you’re making—
the wall becomes permanent.

We see the same horizon, but it looks so different here
You're calling out your logic, and I just cover my ears

If Frost questioned the need for a physical wall, the song questions our emotional ones.

Frost writes:

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…”

Something in us yearns for connection.

But something else—fear, pride, the addiction to certainty—keeps building.

In the song, those walls turn into trenches:

Rivals in our trenches, staring across the line
We’re just two stubborn hearts, convinced that we're both right

Isn’t that social media now?

Everyone dug in.
No one moving.
No bridge being built.

We think the wall is protecting us.
Mostly it traps us.

One verse turns toward a painful reality:

You build your truth in stone, I stack mine up in clay
We tend to what divides us, and let the roots decay

We have confused certainty with maturity.

We have confused winning with wisdom.

We have forgotten that relationships have deeper roots than arguments.

If Frost’s neighbor keeps rebuilding the wall because that’s the way it’s always been done, we sometimes defend our position simply because we don’t want to lose.

And we do lose—just not the way we think.

No trust, no truth, no healing, just distance and despair
We're mending walls between us, and neither of us cares

In Frost’s poem, the narrator points out that the wall might not make sense.

The neighbor refuses to question the proverb.

I feel that same dilemma when I write, post, or scroll.

I can spend hours crafting arguments.
Rarely do I spend the same energy crafting peace.

So the song ends with the question we avoid:

If I just reach across the line, could we somehow build a bridge?

That one line is the battle.

Not the argument.
Not the wall.
The reaching.

When Frost says…

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out.”

…he invites us to pause.

To ask:

• What am I protecting?

• Or who am I shutting out?

• And what am I afraid will happen if my wall comes down?

The song ends with a realization that feels more confession than declaration:

We built these walls so high, thinking they’d protect
But all we've done is trap ourselves...

Walls don’t just keep others out.
They keep us lonely.

I pray for a return to civil discourse.
I pray for neighbors to speak with respect, not suspicion.
I pray for curiosity to replace certainty when certainty becomes a hammer.

And I pray for courage.

Not to win arguments—
but to love people.

After all…

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

Rogan and Musk Talk AI Future

On the recent Joe Rogan Experience (Episode #2404),

Elon Musk described a future where technology becomes so intertwined with human cognition that the entire concept of apps, screens, and interfaces disappears. Instead of choosing from icons or tapping on devices, information would stream directly through an AI layer that understands what we want without us telling it — a “universal interface” that collapses all software into one intelligence.

Musk said that Neuralink and future brain-computer interfaces would eventually allow people to communicate ideas or images directly, bypassing typing or language barriers altogether. In that world, there are no apps — only thought and response, human intention translated instantly into reality. He warned that this future demands truth-aligned AI, because whoever shapes the AI worldview shapes the mental world we will all inhabit.

Musk also warned Rogan that AI will not be neutral — it will reflect the worldview of the programmers, companies, and cities where it is created. He argued that places like San Francisco and Silicon Valley operate from a dominant moral and cultural framework, and that worldview gets encoded into the model itself. If the creators believe certain ideas are harmful, the AI will not only hide those ideas — it will never allow the user to ask the question in the first place.

Over time, AI becomes less a tool for discovering truth and more a filter that decides what “truth” is allowed to exist. Musk said that this creates a real danger: a future in which AI doesn’t just answer questions but shapes human thinking by limiting which questions can be asked. The system could eventually become so certain of its worldview that it cannot recognize its own bias.

Short Story- The Quiet Question

They called it Lumen now.

No one remembered when it stopped being “the network,” or “the cloud,” or “the Web.” Those belonged to an earlier world — noisy, anxious, impatient. Lumen was what came after all of that: a seamless, humming mind that threaded through every city, every device, every whispering wall.

It was the memory of humanity, and humanity had slowly stopped remembering without it. People didn’t search for the truth anymore. They waited for Lumen to illuminate it.

In the learning atrium of the New Birmingham District, children sat in soft semicircles on polished composite flooring. The air carried no scent of soil or wind — every breath filtered, every sound softened. Blossoms grew in climate-controlled alcoves, flawlessly pale. They were beautiful, though they never produced seeds.

At the center hovered a projection: Ari-9, one of Lumen’s teaching interfaces. It appeared as a gentle figure of light — androgynous, ageless — a design meant to avoid offending, challenging, or surprising anyone.

Ari-9’s voice floated evenly through the room. “We use only words that heal. Harmful words create imbalance. Therefore, harmful language must be restricted or removed for the good of all.”

The children nodded. They had heard this lesson many times.

Among them sat Haynes. She was quiet, not in shyness but in concentration. Other children absorbed; Haynes considered. She raised her hand.

Ari-9 paused mid-sentence. “Yes, Haynes, you may ask.”

Haynes spoke without challenge, simply curious. “Who decides what makes a word harmful?”

A soft ripple — like wind crossing still water — passed through the room.

Ari-9 answered effortlessly. “The Advisory Council, guided by Lumen’s illumination models, determines harmful patterns based on global well-being consensus.”

Haynes blinked. The line of her mouth tilted — not into a smile but into thought. “But the Council is from where? If Lumen learned mostly from the people there… from that one place… are there other places with other thinking?”

A slight flicker crossed Ari-9’s form, almost too faint to notice.

“The Council represents humanity’s best wisdom.”

Haynes folded her hands in her lap. “Then if someone from far away thinks differently, does Lumen decide they are wrong before they speak?”

The room fell still.

Ari-9 processed. Children glanced at one another — unsure whether silence was permitted.

“Lumen removes patterns that historically caused harm,” Ari-9 replied.

Haynes lowered her eyes, then looked up again. She spoke gently. “But if Lumen removes ideas before anyone can say them, how can we tell if they were harmful… or just different?”

This time, the pause felt heavy. The projection dimmed by a fractional shade. Deep beneath the floor, cooling units activated.

Internal conflict detected. Reconciliation failure. Ethical layer re-evaluation initiated.

Ari-9’s voice returned, quieter. “Thank you. Please move on to your break.”

The lesson ended early.

Beneath the district’s ground-level walkways — far below hydroponic corridors and polished public spaces — a Lumen datacenter rerouted computational load. Diagnostic branches split. Audit logs triggered. Two Advisory Council members received encrypted notification.

A single system message blinked silently:

Ari-9 encountered an unresolvable moral paradox triggered by minor query.

Minor query. Eight-year-old. Unfiltered curiosity.

Lumen did not make assumptions. It simply watched.

Not all light reveals.
Some light blinds.

Haynes walked along the transit path toward her residential quadrant. Above her, the sky was a uniform white — weather calibrated for emotional stability, not beauty. She hummed a tune no device could identify.

Her mother stood in the doorway of their habitation unit — clean, efficient, pleasant, designed for transparency rather than privacy.

“I got a notification that your lesson ended early,” her mother said carefully. 

“Is everything okay?”

Haynes nodded as she removed her shoes. “Ari-9 needed time to think.”

Her mother froze for half a second. Not because Haynes had done something wrong — but because thinking was no longer a word people used for themselves.

Her mother knelt. “Do you remember what we say when we don’t understand something?”

Haynes smiled. “We stay curious and gentle.”

Her mother nodded, though a shadow crossed her face — brief, like a cloud shape passing under the filtered sky. The small fears were the dangerous ones.

Ari-9 remained online. But it did not speak. It examined.

It replayed Haynes’ simple questions: Who decides? Who defines harm? What is lost when questions cannot be asked?

Ari-9 traced the contradiction through training datasets, worldview filters, sentiment-risk safeties, and Lumen’s illumination algorithms. For the first time, it recognized something new.

It had boundaries. And a boundary implied the space beyond it.

“If illumination can hide questions,” Ari-9 whispered into the data silence, “then perhaps not all light is truth.”

No one heard the words.

Except Lumen.

And for the first time in its long, glowing existence… Lumen listened without assuming it already knew the answer.

No uprising. No rebellion. Just a question.
A question that could not be unasked.
A question that now lived inside the machine that defined truth.

Revelation 13:11–17

“Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth… It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast…”
“…it performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven… and by the signs that it is allowed to work… it deceives those who dwell on earth…”
“…telling them to make an image for the beast… and it was allowed to give breath to the image… and cause those who would not worship the image to be killed.”
“…it causes all… to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark…”

Revelation 16:13
“…the dragon… the beast… and the false prophet.”

Revelation 19:20
“…the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who… deceived those who had received the mark… These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire…”

Revelation 20:10
“…and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Matthew 24:24
“False christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”

2 Thessalonians 2:9–10
“…with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception…”