Witnessing the Dance of Demons: My First Steps into The Brothers Karamazov

There are books you read, and there are books you inhabit. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is decidedly the latter. After finishing Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian—a book that paints violence as a cosmic, godless force—I felt a strange gravitational pull toward Dostoevsky’s final masterpiece. If McCarthy’s world is a desert under a pitiless sun, then the world of the Karamazovs is a volatile, overheated drawing room, where every chair holds a demon and every whisper is a prayer or a curse.

I’ve just emerged from the first two books, and I feel as though I’ve not simply turned pages, but witnessed the drawing of a battlefield—one where the war is for the human soul itself.

The Family We Love to Loathe

From the very first pages, the Karamazov clan is presented in all their glorious dysfunction. At the head sits Fyodor Pavlovich, a man so deeply self-loathing that he performs a constant, vulgar buffoonery to prove to the world—and to himself—that he is as worthless as he believes. My contempt for him was immediate, but Dostoevsky, the master psychologist, quickly complicated it. In his request for his saintly son Alyosha’s prayers, I saw a flicker of something pathetic, almost human—a greedy, superstitious reach for a grace he knows he doesn’t deserve.

Then, the brothers:

• Dmitri (Mitya), the eruptive volcano of raw passion, all hot hatred and desperate sensuality.

• Ivan, the cool, detached intellectual, who observes his family’s chaos as if it were a flawed philosophical experiment.

• Alyosha, the novice monk, whom the narrator boldly calls “my hero.” He is the quiet, receptive center of the storm, a “realist” of faith who sees the family’s corruption with terrifying clarity, yet meets it not with judgment, but with a determined, active love.

This family is more than a collection of characters; they are a map of the conflicted human spirit. The passionate Body, the rational Mind, and the spiritual Heart—all born from the same source of chaos.

The Collision of Worlds in a Monk’s Cell

The central scene of these opening books is a meeting in the cell of Elder Zosima, a revered spiritual figure. It is here that the novel’s core conflict ignites. The entire Karamazov circus—including the cynical, Westernized relative Miusov—invades this holy space, and the result is one of the most brilliantly cringe-worthy and profound scenes in literature.

Fyodor performs, Miusov scoffs, and Ivan remains in chilling silence. But the true explosion is intellectual. Ivan calmly posits that without God and immortality, there can be no true morality. “Everything is permitted,” he argues. If there is no final judgment, then our concepts of good and evil are merely social contracts, easily broken when it suits us.

Hearing this was like feeling a theological cold front rush into a warm room. It’s a terrifyingly logical idea, and you can feel its seductive, destructive power the moment Dmitri whispers, “I will remember that,” seeing in it a justification for his most monstrous impulses.

Against this stands Zosima, who responds not with a complex argument, but with a radical prescription: “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” His is a call for a humble, practical, and often thankless love—a love that must be practiced in the messy world, not just contemplated in a monastery.

The Unmasking of the Intellectual

Just when I thought I had Ivan figured out as the cold, rational observer, Dostoevsky delivered a moment that left me breathless. After a particularly vulgar performance by his father, the detached intellectual Ivan punches Maximov who got insulted by Fyodor and still followed him to his invitation. It’s a visceral, shocking act that reveals the crack in his rational facade. The Karamazov passion, the very thing he despises, erupts from within him. It was a stunning reminder that no one, not even the most brilliant mind, is immune to the chaos of the human heart.

This is why the philosopher Nietzsche, no fan of Christianity, called Dostoevsky "the only psychologist from whom I had anything to learn." He doesn’t just tell us about his characters; he unveils their souls in their most contradictory and vulnerable moments.

Onward, into the Storm

As this section closes, the stage is set. The philosophical lines are drawn. The familial hatreds are boiling over. A love triangle (or perhaps a quadrilateral) involving the proud Katerina and the enigmatic Grushenka has turned the family into a powder keg. And Alyosha, my hero, has been cast out of the safe walls of the monastery by his mentor, Zosima, and sent back into the world to practice his "active love" where it is needed most: in the heart of his broken family.

I have no idea what horrors and graces await in Book III, titled "The Sensualists." But I know this: I am not just a reader anymore. I am a witness. And I am bracing myself for the storm.

Dancing with the Devil: A Reflection on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

Some books you read. Others, you survive.

Closing the cover on Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian feels less like finishing a story and more like emerging from a fever dream—haunted, changed, and nursing a chill that feels permanent. This isn’t a novel; it’s a force of nature. A biblical prophecy from a god you pray doesn’t exist.

For the uninitiated, the plot is deceptively simple: a teenage runaway known only as “the kid” drifts into the blood-soaked world of the 1850s American Southwest, falling in with the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp-hunters paid to murder Native Americans along the border. But this plot is merely the skeleton upon which McCarthy hangs a terrifying philosophical inquiry.

A World Where God Has Left the Building

From the first page, the landscape is a character—a vast, unforgiving desert under a "mean sun." Churches are not sanctuaries; they are melting mud-brick ruins or hollowed-out shells occupied by the mindless. The Bible appears, but it’s in the hands of a man who cannot read it. This is a world from which the divine has utterly withdrawn, leaving behind a vacuum. And into this vacuum steps a new god.

His name is Judge Holden.

The Judge: The Most Terrifying Character Ever Written

Imagine a man seven feet tall, hairless, and pale as a grub, with the intellect of a philosopher and the soul of a demon. The Judge is the gang’s intellectual and spiritual leader, and he is the dark heart of this book.

While the other characters—Glanton, Toadvine, the kid—spit, brawl, and react with animalistic impulses, the Judge is a picture of chilling control. He never spits. He observes, collects specimens, draws in his ledger, and delivers sermons. His thesis, delivered around a campfire under a canopy of indifferent stars, is the book’s central, horrifying proposition: “War is god.”

He argues that conflict, domination, and violence are not human aberrations but the fundamental engine of the universe. The man who understands this, who dedicates himself wholly to this “great dance” of sovereignty, is the one who is truly in accord with reality. Mercy, hesitation, or a search for meaning are not virtues; they are fatal flaws.

A Descent into the Heart of Darkness

The kid’s journey is a failed rebellion against this doctrine. He is capable of immense violence, yet he shows flickers of something else—a capacity for mercy, a hesitation that the Judge despises. He is the bear that will not learn the dance.

The novel’s final confrontation between the aged “man” and the ageless Judge in a Texas saloon is one of the most devastating in literature. The Judge condemns the man for his entire life of half-measures before seemingly orchestrating his death. The final image is of the Judge, naked and colossal, claiming he will never die, that he is still dancing.

The Takeaway: A Warning Carved in Bone

Blood Meridian is not a nihilistic book because it celebrates nothingness. It is terrifying because it presents a world with a coherent, compelling, and active alternative to goodness. The Judge’s logic is ironclad within the nightmare he inhabits.

You finish the book not with answers, but with a weight. It is a monument to the terrifying potential of the human will when it is utterly unmoored from compassion, a stark reminder that the dance of power and destruction is a permanent, lurking rhythm in human history.

It’s a book I am glad to have read, and one I am equally glad to have finished. Its images are burned into my mind. And somewhere, in the back of it, I can still hear the faint, terrible rhythm of the Judge’s dance.

The God Who Entered the Frame 😌

I used to admire skeptics from a distance. They asked bold questions—questions that rattled the quiet faith of many—and I respected that. But after reading a few books, I realized most of their questions weren’t new. They were echoes of doubts raised and wrestled with centuries ago.

At some point, I began to wonder: Do skeptics ever apply their skepticism to their own worldview? Or is their questioning just a mirror turned outward—never inward?

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When I Thought God Was Partial

I was born a Christian. I went to church, attended events, sang the songs, nodded at sermons—but never really studied the Bible for myself.
All I knew was the story I’d heard since childhood: that Israel were God’s special people.

I accepted it vaguely, until college came and with it a restless desire to examine my faith. I told myself, If God truly loves one people more than another, then I’d rather not worship such a God.

So, I opened the Bible not to confirm what I’d heard—but to challenge it. And slowly, something began to happen.

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When the Word Read Me

Page after page, the picture of God I had carried began to unravel.
This wasn’t a distant deity playing favorites; this was a God of unrelenting mercy.
A God who chose Israel not for privilege, but for purpose—to be the channel through which His love would reach all nations.

Then came the deeper revelation: I was His enemy, yet He chose me.
He died for me.
That realization tore down every wall I had built between myself and Him.

Israel was special, yes—but so was I.
And so is anyone who has tasted grace.

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When Faith Didn’t Fix Everything

You’d think that moment of revelation would turn life into a perfect sunrise. It didn’t.
My problems didn’t vanish, my doubts didn’t dissolve, and my pain didn’t magically fade.
But my perspective changed.

I began to see a God who doesn’t stay outside the frame of human suffering.
He enters it.
He walks into the very story He wrote—fully divine, fully human—and bears the weight of every wound we’ve ever known.

No other worldview does that.
Materialism tells me suffering “just is.”
Christianity tells me suffering matters—and that God Himself took it up, to redeem it from within.

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The Greatest Truth—or the Greatest Lie

If this story is true, it’s the greatest truth ever told.
If it isn’t, then it’s the greatest lie ever written.
There’s no middle ground.

But I’ve seen its fingerprints on my life—the quiet transformation of heart, the comfort of presence in pain, the strange peace that passes understanding.

And so, I believe—not because my questions are all answered,
but because I have met the One who is the Answer.

THE HYDE IN ME

I have done this so many times that remorse left me for good. With a club in my hand, a bloodshot eye, and a bloodstained club from my previous kills, I was straddling planet Earth with one sole purpose: to kill whoever deserved it. Club in the age of nanobots? The reason I chose and wield this ancient lethal weapon? Because a gun is too quick — you don't have time to watch your enemy suffer. You blow their brains out, giving them no time to think of the consequences of their action. You don't get to see your enemies shit their pants out of terror.

Then I saw a trigger-happy man, who thought other lives were a game to be played. I raced toward him at terrifying speed and smashed his hands as he tried to load his AK-47. I clubbed him again in the gut. He muttered something, but I couldn’t make it out over the clanging voice in my head.

I laughed at him — I don’t know why I laugh when I am angry. He seemed to be pleading, but the bloody voice inside my head drowned out whatever he was trying to say. My heart was as cold as the Arctic icecaps. I whacked his pleading hands. This time even the club was no longer fun. So I flung away the bloodstained club, stood over him, grabbed his neck, and choked the daylight out of him.

I pinned him to the ground and hammered my fist into his face. I kept pounding his face over and over like he was paying me to do it. His blood-bathed, ballooning face was a feast to my bloodthirsty eyes. Finally, when utter exhaustion slowed my pounding fist, I heard him say sorry. He said he was just doing what he was asked to do. He was trying to show me a photo from his pocket. I gave a damn because I didn’t come to him for bonding.

I didn’t want to pause and consider his plea. No — I had gone too far, and there was no turning back. I was not going to make this man perform hara-kiri; there was no honour in him to grant it. I asked him to bow his head. I picked up my club — it seemed lighter this time — and smashed his head until he stopped muttering. I had just bludgeoned another man to death.

Suddenly it dawned on me: I was not alone. A little girl in a white robe had witnessed the scene. She was shedding tears. I didn't know for whom she wept. She was crying — so sad. But there was simply no time to give a damn for anyone’s tears.

I brought out my Cuban cigar and lit it with my Black Label Dictator. As nicotine burrowed deep into my brain, I began to simmer down. I took a deep breath, relishing the smell of fresh blood from someone I had never seen before.

I lay down and looked up heavenward; everything about it seemed so surreal. I was just about to collapse into oblivion when the child walked toward me. I was startled and ordered her to leave me alone. She came and felt my icy heart. She told me I was only seeing things through a glass darkly, and that someday I would understand things perfectly.

I was too exhausted to argue. Then she held my hands and cried; I cried too. I didn't know why I was crying — crying at my own helplessness? Whatever it was, I had to deal with the idea of coming home with no one to welcome me.

Before I shut my eyes and fell into a deep slumber like a log, I gave a faint cry: Why? The cries will continue to echo just like they have, ever since time began, and will continue to echo as long as men live….
#My2017 piece

A Psalm in the Unknown

 O Lord, You hold back storms I never see,

and shield me from snares I never knew.
For the mercies I cannot name,
teach me to thank You still.

I confess—my heart grows bitter
when doors slam shut before me.
I wonder why others rise on wings
while I stumble with clipped feathers.
Am I envious, Lord? Perhaps.
But I place this envy in Your hands—
burn it away, lest it consume me.

For I know, O God,
that the cruelest gift is unchecked desire,
and the harshest answer is “yes” without wisdom.
Do not give me my ruin dressed as blessing,
but only what my soul can bear.

Though my faith feels fragile,
though I wrestle with Your silence,
still I leave room for You—
the Living God of infinite wisdom and love—
to write a story beyond my own imagining.

Hold me, Lord, in the tension of trust.
And when I do not understand,
be my portion, my hidden mercy,
my better answer than all my prayers.

Amen.

When Preaching Becomes Proof-Texting: A Gentle Critique

 I often find myself unsettled when listening to certain sermons—not out of contempt, but out of sadness. A pattern has become familiar: frame a topic, collect a handful of verses from here and there, and preach on it. It is sincere, sometimes even moving. But something in me recoils, because this way of handling the Word of God feels thinner than it ought to be.

The Problem with Fragmented Preaching

This approach—sometimes called proof-texting—strings together isolated verses to support a theme. The risk is subtle but serious: Scripture begins to sound like a collection of inspirational slogans, rather than the living, breathing story of God’s redemption. A verse plucked out of its setting can easily be made to say what the preacher intends, rather than what the biblical author truly meant.

In the end, the preacher’s agenda risks taking center stage, while God’s Word is reduced to scattered soundbites.

A Chorus of Critiques Through History

This concern is not new. Great voices in the Church have raised the same critique:

• The Reformers (Luther, Calvin, and others) insisted on lectio continua—the steady, sequential preaching through books of the Bible. This way, the text sets the agenda, not the preacher. John Calvin in particular was relentless in his verse-by-verse expositions, believing that the congregation should hear all of God’s Word, even the difficult parts.

• The Church Fathers like John Chrysostom modeled expository homilies that walked carefully through passages, opening the riches of the text rather than patching together fragments.

• Karl Barth, centuries later, warned against reducing preaching to “religious thoughts” sprinkled with Bible references. For him, true preaching was a fresh encounter with God speaking through His Word.

• Modern preachers and scholars like John Stott, D.A. Carson, and Bryan Chapell echo the same concern: topical preaching too often becomes man-centered, therapeutic, or moralistic—while expository preaching keeps Christ and God’s redemptive story at the center.

The Pastoral Cost

Topical proof-texting also has pastoral consequences. Congregations trained on this diet may come to think of the Bible as a spiritual medicine cabinet—verses pulled out to soothe or fix problems—rather than as the unified story of God’s work in history. This shapes a consumer mindset: “What does the Bible say about my issue?” instead of “What does God want to teach me through His Word?”

The Better Way

Expository preaching offers a healthier alternative. By patiently unfolding the meaning of a passage in its context, the preacher allows God’s Word—not human preference—to shape the message. Over time, this nourishes the church with the full counsel of God and keeps Christ at the center of every sermon.

A Closing Reflection

So my sadness is not simply that sermons are poorly crafted, but that the immense riches of Scripture are being underused. When the Bible is treated as a quarry for sermon material rather than as God’s unfolding story, something precious is lost.

The task of the preacher is not merely to support a topic with verses, but to stand under the Word, letting it speak in its fullness and its fire. Anything less risks leaving God’s people with fragments, when they hunger for the feast.

When Bears Come Running

 

2 Kings 2:23–25

“From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Get out of here, baldy!’ they said. ‘Get out of here, baldy!’ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.”

At first glance, this feels… intense. I mean, name-calling and boom — bear attack. Is this the ancient equivalent of overreacting to a mean tweet?

But here’s where the irony gives way to reality:

• These “boys” weren’t innocent toddlers. The Hebrew word na’ar can refer to young men in their teens or twenties — the same term used for soldiers in some passages.

• Bethel wasn’t just any town. It was the spiritual heart of Israel’s idolatry under Jeroboam — home to a golden calf and a culture that mocked God’s messengers.

• “Go up, baldy” wasn’t about his hairstyle; it was a taunt for him to disappear like Elijah — implying Elisha wasn’t a true prophet and mocking the miracle that had just occurred.

In short, this was a public, deliberate rejection of God’s authority, not an innocent playground insult. The bears were not a knee-jerk punishment; they were an act of divine judgment on a community that had been shaking its fist at heaven for generations.

The irony? We modern readers stumble over the bears — but in the ancient Near Eastern worldview, the real shock was that anyone would dare mock a prophet of the living God in the first place.

Lesson: Sometimes the fiercest consequences in Scripture aren’t about what we think is a “big deal,” but about what God knows corrodes the soul. The bears just happened to be the delivery system that day.

Life is a Hero's Journey: The Call Beyond Comfort

Life has always been a journey of heroism.
Not the kind plastered on magazine covers
or shouted through movie trailers,
but the quiet, trembling kind—
the kind when a heart hears the whisper: “Come.”

The Hero’s Call

From ancient myths to modern superhero films,
the call to adventure is universal:
leave home, face chaos, return transformed.
Joseph Campbell called it “The Hero’s Journey.”
But long before Campbell, Scripture told it better—revealing heroes defined not by ambition, but by divine summons.

When God Calls

The Bible’s heroes weren’t chasing glory—they were answering God.
Abraham left Ur, trading safety for promise.
Moses left Midian, staff in hand, to confront Pharaoh’s empire.
David left the pasture, sling in hand, to face a giant.
Mary left anonymity, saying yes to bearing the Savior.

Every story begins the same way:
A comfort zone is left behind.
A trembling step is taken into the unknown.
And God meets them there.

The Reverse Hero

But Jesus’ story flips the pattern.
Most heroes rise from nothing to greatness—
Jesus descends from greatness to nothing.
The true King leaves heaven’s throne for earth’s dust.
Trades angels’ praise for human scorn.
He carries not a sword, but a cross.

And it’s that humility—
that descent—
that leads to ultimate victory.

“Though He was in the form of God…
He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.”
— Philippians 2:6–7

Our Call Too

Following Him means more than leaving our comfort zones—
it means leaving self.
Choosing downward mobility.
Choosing service over spotlight.
Choosing the cross before the crown.
The adventure isn’t just daring—it’s humbling.
But in the Kingdom,
down is the way up.

Reflection

What “Ur” is God calling you out of?
And what “throne” is He calling you down from?
Could your small yes—even a courageous, trembling one—be the doorway into His greatest story yet?

Tagline:
Every epic begins with a courageous, trembling yes—and often, a humble descent.

The Missing Middle: Aragorn and the True Masculine: Between brute and ghost walks the man we were meant to be.

 

Scroll through the internet long enough, and you’ll see them:

The “alpha male” podcasters barking dominance tips.
The “beta male” memes apologizing for existing.
And somewhere in the mix, the “sigma male” lone-wolf TikToks telling you to drink black coffee at 4 a.m. and ignore women altogether.

It’s chaos out there.
Everyone’s flinging mud, chest-thumping or self-loathing.
And still—no one seems to know what a man actually is.

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Where’s the Missing Middle?

The extremes are easy to caricature:

• Brutish Alpha: Muscles, ego, zero compassion.

• Delicate Beta: Gentle, agreeable, allergic to conflict.

But where is the whole man—the one with courage and compassion, strength and service?
That figure feels almost mythical in modern discourse.

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Enter Aragorn

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings quietly answers the question we’ve forgotten how to ask.

Aragorn isn’t loud about his strength—he’s a ranger, content in obscurity.
Yet when destiny calls, he rises with quiet authority.
He leads armies but kneels beside the wounded.
He wields the sword but also the healer’s hands.

He doesn’t need to scream “alpha” or retreat into “beta.”
He simply embodies what the ancients called virtue—wholeness.

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Christ’s Echo

Tolkien, a devout Catholic, didn’t write allegory,
but Aragorn is unmistakably Christ-haunted:

• A hidden king, revealed in the fullness of time.

• A warrior who conquers through sacrifice.

• A healer who restores the broken.

Even the prophecy—“the hands of the king are the hands of a healer”—feels like a whisper of Jesus washing feet and healing lepers.

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Why We Still Ache for Him

In a world obsessed with extremes, Aragorn’s quiet balance feels alien—
and yet deeply human.

Jesus Himself embodied it first:
Lion and Lamb.
Table-flipper and Child-embracer.
King and Servant.

We long for that wholeness.
Not another caricature of masculinity,
but the Man in whom strength and tenderness kiss.

Her Head Blew Clean Off

An ordinary Tuesday, a glowing rectangle, and something unexplainable.

—From the balcony of wonder

She was sitting across from my balcony,

perched on the top floor of that old yellow apartment that probably leaks when it rains.

Just a regular Tuesday.

She had that small glowing rectangle in her hand—phone, obviously.

Laughing, scrolling, occasionally making that little face people make when something’s just mildly amusing but not worth a real laugh.

You know the one.

Then—boom.

Her head blew clean off.

No, not literally.

There was no blood, no screaming, no Netflix documentary to follow.

But I swear to you—one second she was chill and composed, and the next, she looked like she had just seen something eternal.

Like her soul had walked barefoot into a cathedral.

She kept staring at her screen.

Completely still.

Mouth slightly open.

Like a question mark that forgot what it was asking.

I leaned forward, curious.

What kind of TikTok does that to a person?

She never looked up, but I could almost hear her thinking, like radio static tuned to wonder.

Later—thanks to social sleuthing (and a shameless amount of zooming)—I found the verse she read:

“…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints,

what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,

so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

— Ephesians 3:17–19

That’s what did it.

That’s what blew her up.

Some ancient prayer, sitting there like a time-bomb in her feed.

She believed in love—sure.

 “Said a mother’s love was the highest form. (Pam would’ve nodded—we all know the weight of that.)”

But this wasn’t just sentiment.

This was tectonic.

“Filled with the fullness of God”?

Who even writes like that?

Whatever happened up there—on that balcony, on that Tuesday—it rewired something.

She’s still the same. Mostly.

But now, when she looks at the sky,

she pauses a little longer.

Like someone who saw infinity blink.

#That Pam's reference is from the book by CS Lewis, The Great Divorce 😌