Sunday, June 22 - The Threat of Resurrection
Using the Bible to defend civilization is like quoting a demolition manual to justify building a palace.
Fr. Paul’s classic lecture, The Resurrection, compels Christians to reconsider how much of their faith is grounded in Scripture versus personal conviction, theology, religion, or experience. He does not deny the proclamation of the resurrection—on the contrary, he preaches it with power—but he insists that it is a revelation from God, rooted in God’s will to judge the living and the dead, not a religious artifact to be wielded for comfort or certainty.
This stark submission to divine agency, judgment, and mercy—discarding Judeo-Christian triumphalism (today’s “rising” lions) and other civilizational sychopants of the Prince of Darkness—makes his message more urgent than ever.
The proclamation of the resurrection is not an encouragement to the living, but a threat to every human civilization—religious or secular—that seeks control, certainty, or emotional affirmation from the Bible. It is not a comforting doctrine to be domesticated, wielded, or claimed. Rather, it is an anti-civilizational summons to submit, a call to fear the words of the Lord, and a demand for an honest reckoning with the fact that the one whom God raised from the dead has been seated in judgment over all the earth. His resurrection is not a painkiller, nor a promise that you’ll be reunited with loved ones, let alone a gift for our possession—like some spiritual fountain of youth. It is an omnious warning of God’s coming verdict.
Making Any Kind of Noise
By Alla Boulos
June 5, 2025
Good evening graduates, families, and DCALS staff.
My name is Alla Boulos. I am a teacher of language, literature, and art, and today I will talk about responsibility.
I did not volunteer for the role of the speaker tonight, but was graciously nominated by my colleagues. Speaking in public is not my preference and is not exactly in my comfort zone, but I take this responsibility seriously. I am given a stage, and it is my duty as the language teacher to take the stand and deliver a thoughtful message.
In the United States, the completion of high school and the reception of the high school diploma coincide with reaching adulthood, which is the age of responsibility.
The type of responsibility I want to address today, however, does not have to do with paying the bills. It has to do with language, thinking, and education.
As a teacher, I often hear complaints about having to learn higher math or some facts of history or some discoveries in science. “I won’t use this in real life,” or “I will never need this information,” is a common refrain and an excuse to avoid doing the required academic work. What this statement misses, however, is the entire point of education.
Education is not meant to record meaningless facts in your brain; it is meant to teach you the process of formulating thoughts. Education exposes you to words, ideas, and phenomena, equips you with the language to understand them, provides the framework for you to analyze these ideas, and encourages you to evaluate them.
Education does all that through reading, showing, discussing, hypothesizing, demonstrating, puzzling out, memorizing, asking questions, and a great many other processes as well that might not appear useful or necessary.
What these seemingly meaningless tasks do is build neural networks in students’ brains that allow them to comprehend the world, form opinions, perceive injustice, and ultimately express their reasoning, their assessment, and their observation of reality.
Therefore, the fewer exercises we do with our brains, the more we shy away from difficult tasks—like reading, memorizing, writing, and speaking—the narrower our view and the poorer our experience of the world becomes.
This is not a great revelation. I am not saying anything new, and you have probably heard this argument before. So, how is it relevant now?
The biggest problem in my classroom today is not ignorance, or violence, or tragic circumstances. It is not aggression, poverty, or even mental health. The biggest problem in my classroom today is apathy, indifference, lethargy, and lack of curiosity.
Like all the other members of modern society, students spend most of their time attached to a screen. Spending ten hours a day on the phone is not surprising to anyone—it is average. Most of what we do on phones is consume comforting, slightly amusing content that keeps us passive and content.
Our phones serve as pacifiers to keep us from fussing, demanding, objecting, questioning, or making any kind of noise. The phones serve as great babysitters and tranquilizers.
We willingly give up our free speech, free thought, and creativity in order to stay in our comfort zones, which are determined by advanced algorithms that feed us useless information—and often disinformation—tailored to our specific interests.
We all know that no progress happens in the comfort zone. No one has become fit sitting in a La-Z-Boy, and no one has written a new song while listening to the same comforting tune over and over again.
The phones, however, are soon to become a secondary threat to our intelligence with the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Why do anything at all if AI can do it for you? So easy and convenient.
But have you ever stopped to think that AI has all the answers—and none of the questions—about life?
The questions are our responsibility.
The questions are what education is for.
The questions are why you should learn new words, see new things, solve math problems, wonder about the mysteries of science, read difficult books, write poems, study history, discover geography, develop a larger vocabulary, and ultimately form original thoughts and opinions about the universe around you.
Questions lead to knowledge.
Knowledge leads to seeing the truth.
And seeing the truth leads to taking a stand.
So, graduates, now that your neural networks have been created, your worldviews expanded, now that you have been trained to think and given the tools to perceive the world—what are you going to do with these gifts?
Now, when education and scientific research are under attack, when tyranny is rising to power, when literacy is being discouraged and replaced by artificial intelligence, when we are being force-fed disinformation through the IVs of social media, it is our responsibility to get outside of our comfort zones—to resist the convenience of the digital pacifier—to learn, to become curious, to question, to speak out, and to take a stand…
And your diploma, dear graduates, is your license to do that.
Thank you.
Ya Ḥussain - Israel Attacks Iran
Shepherd’s Note: Blaise delivers a haunting meditation on geopolitical betrayal and spiritual resistance, set against the backdrop of rising tensions in the Middle East. Drawing connections between the ancient martyrdom of Imam Ḥussain and the modern plight of Gaza, the piece challenges readers to consider the moral costs of political alliances and the enduring relevance of prophetic witness. As the month of Muḥarram approaches, his reflection invites both grief and reckoning.
The lexicology of ren 人
Shepherd’s Note: In this essay, Matthew challenges the prevailing western assumption of inherent human goodness by tracing the lexicology of the Chinese character ren 人 alongside the Semitic ʾādām אדם, arguing that both Classical Chinese and biblical traditions present a humbling view of humanity. Rather than exalting man, the Book of Odes likens those without virtue to rats, while Genesis 2:7 underscores humanity’s lowly origin—fashioned from dust and animated only by divine breath. This parallel critique dismantles anthropocentric ideologies, such as those of Plato and Aristotle, suggesting instead that moral worth is not intrinsic but granted and sustained by a higher order. As the Psalmist asks, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4), Matthew’s essay asks the reader to reconsider the nature and place of the human being within both cosmos and canon.
Iron Sharpens Iron
Fr. Aaron Warwick
Fr. Aaron and Jason Ewertt host Teach Me Thy Statutes on the Ephesus School Network.
Fr. Fred Shaheen
Fr. Fred hosts A Light to the Nations on the Ephesus School Network.'
