01/09/2026
I usually stay away from politics, and honestly talking religion creates more than enough controversy on its own, but I feel compelled to share some thoughts about the state of our society. Not to argue, not to convince, and not to draw lines in the sand, but because silence can also become a form of participation. What follows comes from concern, not certainty, and from care rather than condemnation.
N***s did not wake up believing they were villains.
They knew they were members of the N**i Party. They knew their ideology. But they did not see themselves as genocidal extremists. They did not experience their actions as evil. They understood themselves as patriots. As defenders of their nation. As people acting out of love of country rather than hatred of others.
Loyalty was framed as a moral duty. Obedience as virtue. Alignment with the party was alignment with the nation itself. To oppose the party was to betray Germany. To dissent was to endanger the future.
They believed they were restoring order. Not dismantling democracy. The seizure of institutions. Loyalty tests for government and military service. The exclusive appointment of judges aligned with party values. These were not experienced as authoritarian overreach. They were framed as necessary corrections to chaos. Corruption. Moral decay.
They believed their country was besieged. That the greatest threat did not come from foreign armies but from within. Political opponents. Journalists. Professors. Artists. Intellectuals. Cultural figures. These people were framed not as fellow citizens but as saboteurs. As internal enemies weakening the nation from the inside.
They saw themselves as victims.
Even as they sought and consolidated total power, they believed they were persecuted. Silenced. Unfairly targeted by elites. Courts. The press. Cultural institutions. This sense of grievance did not disappear with power. It intensified.
Immigrants and minorities were framed as existential threats. As invaders. As lawless destabilizing forces. As part of an international conspiracy to destroy the German way of life. These narratives were not fringe. They were central.
Under the direction of Joseph Goebbels, exclusionary policies were morally inverted. Discrimination was framed as protection. Deportation as defense. Repression as ethical necessity. Violence was not experienced as cruelty but as duty.
They believed they alone were willing to say what everyone supposedly knew but was afraid to speak. This belief gave them a sense of courage. Of moral clarity. Even as that morality was used to marginalize. Dehumanize. Destroy.
They believed time was running out. That decisive action was urgently required to prevent national collapse. Delay was framed as weakness. Compromise as betrayal.
They believed the law itself had been corrupted and weaponized against them. Vigilante violence was therefore justified. This belief was used to rationalize atrocities like the Night of the Long Knives and Kristallnacht.
Personal identity fused with political identity. An attack on the movement was experienced as an attack on their families. Their values. Their very existence.
Pluralism was rejected as weakness. Compromise was dangerous. Zero concessions were made. Absolute control was demanded.
They believed social institutions had been captured. Courts. Schools. The media. Civil service. These were framed as illegitimate and corrupted by ideological enemies. Independent journalism was dismissed as Lügenpresse, the lying press. Only the state was considered credible. Everything else was suspect.
They framed themselves as protectors of children. Youth were said to be under attack by immigrants. Educators. Leftists. Gender nonconformity. This made extreme measures feel not only justified but urgent.
One of Hitler’s first symbolic acts after taking office was the destruction of Berlin’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in 1933. Decades of research on sexuality and gender were burned in public bonfires. This was framed as moral purification. Protection. Restoration.
Meritocracy was redefined. Loyalty replaced competence. Party alignment was treated as qualification. This decision directly contributed to catastrophic military failures as experienced officers were dismissed and loyalists installed.
And through it all, they believed history would vindicate them. That future generations would see them as misunderstood. Persecuted. Heroes who did what had to be done. That any action, no matter how brutal, was justified by the end.
Historians like Ian Kershaw and diarists like Victor Klemperer document this clearly. The most terrifying truth is not that N***s were monsters. It is that they were ordinary people who believed they were doing what was right.
In personal growth, the recognition of patterns through an inventory of the past is the only way to avoid causing the same harm to yourself and others in the future. It starts with recognition and awareness. But, this is not just true for the individual, this is true for humanity.
In the United States today, we hear familiar language. Media labeled enemies of the people. Judges framed as illegitimate. Universities described as ideological factories. Immigrants portrayed as invaders. LGBTQ people framed as threats to children. Political opponents described not as neighbors but as traitors.
Under Donald Trump, institutions like Immigration and Customs Enforcement were expanded and justified through emergency rhetoric. Family separation policies were defended as deterrence and protection. Loyalty to the movement was increasingly framed as loyalty to the nation itself.
This is not a claim that America is N**i Germany.
It is a warning about how democracy erodes.
As Hannah Arendt warned, authoritarianism begins when we stop seeing each other as legitimate participants in a shared society.
History does not repeat through aesthetics. It repeats through narratives.
People rarely believe they are doing evil. They believe they are saving something they love.
The question is not whether we feel justified.
The question is who bears the cost of our certainty.
History is not asking us to be perfect.
It is asking us to pay attention.
Because when fear becomes identity, and power becomes morality, the line between protection and destruction quietly disappears.
And then, there's Christian Nationalism
Christian nationalism is not new. It is an ancient pattern with modern language. The moment Christianity is fused with state power, it stops being the way of Jesus and becomes a tool of empire. This transformation begins with Rome. When Constantine the Great legalized Christianity in the fourth century, the faith of a persecuted minority was absorbed into the machinery of imperial control. Within decades, Christianity shifted from a movement defined by humility, service, and voluntary devotion into a state sanctioned system of authority. Rome did not become Christian. Christianity became Roman. The cross was lifted onto banners, Jesus was reframed as a divine emperor, and obedience to God blurred into obedience to the state. Once Christianity became the religion of power, dissent became heresy, difference became threat, and violence became justified.
Jesus explicitly rejected empire. He refused political domination, rejected coercion, and renounced the sword. He taught that God’s reign operates through love, sacrifice, truth, and solidarity with the vulnerable. Rome taught the opposite. When religion became inseparable from state power, faith no longer needed to persuade hearts. It could compel bodies. Conversion stopped being an invitation and became a requirement. This is the root logic of Christian nationalism.
History shows that forced religion always produces violence. When belief is enforced by law, punishment, or fear, atrocities follow. Under imperial Christianity and later Christian nationalist movements, people were tortured to save their souls, communities were destroyed to protect orthodoxy, and violence was reframed as divine obedience. This logic fueled some of the darkest chapters in human history.
During the Crusades, military conquest was framed as God’s will. Killing became sacred duty. Entire populations were slaughtered in the name of reclaiming holy land. The theology was simple and devastating. God is on our side. Our enemies are enemies of God. Violence is righteous. Christian nationalism follows this same structure. Only the borders and the enemies change.
The Inquisition fused church authority with state violence. Torture and ex*****on were framed as mercy. People were burned alive to protect doctrinal purity. This was not Christianity defending truth. It was power defending itself while wearing the name of God.
Colonialism carried this logic across the globe. European empires used Christianity to legitimize the theft of land, the destruction of cultures, the enslavement of peoples, and the forced conversion of entire populations across Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Indigenous spiritualities were labeled demonic. Resistance was framed as rebellion against God. The result was immeasurable suffering whose consequences are still with us.
Even in smaller societies, the pattern repeated. The Salem witch trials show how fear, religious absolutism, and state power merge. Accusation replaced evidence. Suspicion replaced compassion. Ex*****on was justified as obedience. This is what happens when belief is weaponized.
The Holocaust may not be directly synonymous, but there are definitely parallels. It was not caused by Christianity as a religion. It was carried out by a N**i state driven by racial ideology. But it did not arise in a vacuum. Centuries of Christian antisemitism prepared the cultural soil. Jews were long framed as Christ killers, outsiders, and moral threats. When nationalist myth fused with moral absolutism and state power, genocide became imaginable. What happens when political power forces a belief system on its people? The lesson is that religious dehumanization makes atrocity possible.
Christian nationalism follows the same structure as these historical disasters. It fuses faith with national identity. It frames the nation as chosen. It treats dissent as betrayal. It sanctifies power and turns Jesus into a symbol of domination rather than a teacher of love. Once faith becomes a requirement for belonging, violence is never far behind. Not always immediately, but inevitably.
Jesus warned against this directly. He rejected forced belief, political domination, and religious violence. He said his kingdom was not of this world. He taught that love is the measure of faith, not control. Every time Christianity has tried to rule instead of serve, it has produced suffering. Every time faith has been enforced rather than offered, horror has followed.
Christian nationalism is not a defense of Christianity. It is the betrayal of it. It repeats the sin of Rome. It replaces love with control, truth with dominance, and Jesus with empire. History has already shown us where that road leads. Not to holiness, but to blood.
Rome distorted the message of Jesus to fit its narrative, and now the United States is doing the same. Jesus taught a way that stands in direct opposition to empire, coercion, and domination. He taught love of neighbor without condition, including the foreigner, the outsider, and the enemy. He taught that power reveals itself through service, not control, and that greatness is found in humility, not authority. He rejected violence as a tool of righteousness and refused to align God with any nation, flag, or throne. He warned against religious leaders who burden others while excusing themselves, and he exposed how easily faith becomes corrupted when it seeks influence over truth. Jesus taught that God’s reign grows through compassion, forgiveness, justice, and mercy, not through lawmaking, punishment, exclusion, or fear. Any system that uses his name to enforce conformity, elevate one group over another, or sanctify political power is not carrying his message forward. It is rewriting it.
Can you not see it? Are you too attached to your social identity, biases/presuppositions, and prejudices to see the truth?
This is not about winning arguments or labeling enemies. It is about remembering who we are before fear taught us otherwise. History does not condemn us for making mistakes. It condemns us for refusing to see them. The invitation before us is not to double down on certainty, but to recover our humanity. To choose curiosity over contempt. Compassion over control. Love over loyalty. Jesus did not ask us to conquer nations, protect ideologies, or defend power. He asked us to see each other. To love without conditions. To refuse the easy path of domination in favor of the harder work of transformation. The future will not ask what side we were on. It will ask who we protected, who we excluded, and whether we had the courage to resist becoming the very thing we feared.
