How many academics have made observations of our society in its current time and been dead wrong? The Ivory Towers are but elegant tombs that will sink into the mud from the weight of pagan man’s pride, and only you, Lord, can lift the doomed inhabitants from the depths and make them clean again.

Once, I listened to anyone and everyone except those who carried the candle of Your message. I saw only the melting wax as evidence of fallibility but never the eternal flame. I didn’t want to. Like millions, I couldn’t, for the immense heat would set ablaze the mask I made for myself as it suffocated my face. In Your mercy, you let the falseness which dominated my life run its course. You waited until, in its exhaustion, the mask formed cracks, and through those cracks, the light entered. And I saw, as it were, your infinite mercy and life-giving justice present in the world, and myself as one to live in Your creation — not knit in my mother’s womb from obligation or careless experiment, but with love that always was and always will be.

The mask fell, Lord. Another was revealed, and then another, and another, until I saw in a mirror the madness of man fallen and his propensity to master infinity, but only in the dimension of illusion where the snake feasts upon its tail and the yesterday of tomorrow is a black iron prison we’ve grown to need. Without you, Lord, we only wear masks, and when one is destroyed because of our will alone, another is created and worn. Your will alone liberates us from ourselves. Without you, Jesus, the best Ouroboros reigns supreme, and never do individuals, families, towns, nations, empires, or civilizations move towards exaltation, and the fake sages — Spengler, Campbell, Nietzsche, the like — who proclaim your children to be universal and cyclical in purpose, function, and in the rise and fall of their societies suddenly become quite real, for absolute is the truth of their observations among men who live without Your guidance. But You are Alpha and Omega, beginning and end — definition in a world where it hardly thrives. With You, the cycles stop. Death is conquered. We are born only once and never die, and only then do we truly live.

Your word —

To it, I said yes. I wasn’t, and still am not, as well-read as I should be, concerning holy scripture and theology of the one Church, but I knew to say no was to truly die, to enshrine as God forever the ideologies of man and the destruction that always follows. I said yes. There was no immediate comfort, no rays of divine inspiration shining upon my head from above. Instead, I found weariness. Anger. Frustration. Not with You, Lord — but with all that You said would pass.

Proof of concept (noun): evidence, typically derived from an experiment or pilot project, which demonstrates that a design concept, business proposal, etc., is feasible. You brought hope — truth — to a world that craved it, and for doing so, you were crucified under Pontius Pilate. You died for our sins. Satan wailed in anguish as the Light shining in the darkness was, at last, able to be seen. And as you were rejected, Lord, you warned that we, too, would be rejected by the world. Indeed, we’ve been warned quite well, and well in advance. I said yes, and found rejection. One by one, those closest to me disappeared, and never with kind words in farewell. That which I planned for myself, set aside for myself vanished like sand passing through one’s fingers.

All that You promised would happen to your followers came to pass, Lord. All of it.

The scales fell from my eyes and I found wounds to be healed, wounds I ignored for years. More interesting than Your truth held within was the world without: I found a world that hates Your name, as I once did, but only then were the reasons clear. I discovered a world, enthralled by the Enemy pulling levers behind the curtains, that will do anything to suppress your name and slander Your works, and anything means anything — even the butchering of their own children. To drown in the rivers of blood is what they crave, and those without roots are swept away with ease in the euphoric waters of Mammon.

All who have held You closer than all else have stood the test of time, despite an entire (now globalized) world rejecting them. Those who didn’t have been, or will be, cast into the desert winds to be shamed and forgotten, despite their worldly power.

Proof of concept. If one’s eyes open but a crack, the light will flood their soul and they’ll know Your concepts have long been proven. Either You are God, or an unmarried Jewish carpenter of the lowest station predicted what will happen to everyone at every social structure — individual, family, community, city, and nation — across all times, places, cultures, and civilizations if they followed his teachings and lived virtuous lives. The latter is impossible without the former.

Proof of concept. As if You only had one person in thought when you proclaimed truth in Galilee, You have shared with the entire world what would happen to me, an American man living 2019 years after Your birth, if I were to follow your teachings and proclaim You as God, and it is written for all to see, to bear witness.

That Your disciples have set in writing the course of this Christian’s life two millennia ago when man today — with his manifestos and billion-dollar crystal balls and frenzied scribbling of numbers across miles of blackboard — cannot know exactly what stares him down in the mirrors of his own home is proof of concept, Lord, that You truly are God, and as such, all glory and honor belongs to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit now and forever.