Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic in which the United States must seemingly make the frightful choice between saving lives and saving the economy, we inexplicably have a legion of volunteer mathematicians lining up to show off how well they can make the terrible calculations to decide who lives and who dies.

How should Christians respond to the killing of someone so monstrous that their death seems to be a net gain for the world, a victory for the goods of justice, order, and peace?

For Providence readers, there are three topics of particular interest from the Prodigal Prophet’s second half: justice, politics, and patriotism.

It is sad to grow up and realize you’ve become a monster. The awareness does not change the fact that you are now a monster.

The flawed human race, trapped in a cycle of cascading pain and wrong, is what and who God is bound and determined to love. The question is, how can He do it?

For Christians, God isn’t the Santa Claus who brought the presents to the tree. He’s the Source and the Power of the love the family members feel for one another on Christmas morning. He’s found in the trust the child feels in the parent, the commitment and love the parent feels toward the child.

Most Christians, including most evangelicals, have been falling over themselves to denounce Jeff Sessions. But the way this immigration debate is carried out too often mirrors the political debate.

Christians should remember this: any political theology that treats its own people as a divinely chosen political community treads on heretical soil.

Both the Jacksonian and Progressive persuasions that Michael Doran describes exhibit symptoms of secularized politics. Neither articulates a truly Christian view of politics or foreign policy.