Field notes & essays
The Night the Neighborhood Comes to You
The history behind Halloween and why Christians approach it differently.
Two Churches, Days Apart
On October 9, junta jets destroyed a Presbyterian church in Mindat. On October 12, soldiers torched a Baptist church in Banmaw. What the original reporting actually says.
Wrestle With Your Son
Throw a football. Shoot baskets. Get on the floor together. Physical play gives a father and son room for challenge, affection, and strength under control.
Nigeria's Middle Belt, Village by Village
Plateau, Benue, and Southern Kaduna by name: the massacres, the kidnapped clergy, Leah Sharibu and Deborah Samuel, what the United States has actually done since the October 2025 designation, and the half-million people living in Benue's camps.
Accusation Is the Weapon
How Pakistan's blasphemy laws work in practice: the Zia-era statutes, the accusation-loudspeaker-mob pattern from Gojra to Sargodha, the entrapment rings exposed since 2024, and the debt and forced marriages that hit Christian families hardest.
The House Church
How the Islamic Republic of Iran tolerates Armenian and Assyrian churches while prosecuting Persian-speaking converts, from the 1994 murders of three pastors to the post-war arrests of 2025.
The Registered Pulpit
How China's Communist Party governs churches by license, from the 2018 religious regulations to the 2025 online clergy code, told through Wang Yi, Jin Mingri, the eight Zion Church leaders still held, and the Catholic bishops the Party will not recognize.
The Worst Place on Earth to Own a Bible
North Korea has ranked first on the World Watch List every year since 2002 except one. What the UN, the State Department, and Korea Future have documented about how the regime punishes Christians, their children, and refugees sent back from China.
Freedom of Religion Acts
India's state anti-conversion laws, the incident counts that have climbed every year since 2021, Manipur told with both its ethnic and religious dimensions, and why Washington keeps declining its own commission's advice.
Open Your Mouth for the Mute
The practical toolkit for Christians who want to stand up for the persecuted church: the US religious-freedom law you can press on, how named-prisoner advocacy works, how to write a letter that helps instead of hurts, and one case to raise with Congress this week.
The Perfect Book Problem
The street claim that the Quran is preserved to the letter while the Bible is corrupted, tested against Islam's own canon and manuscripts. The copies are excellent; the absolute claim is what fails.
The Uncreated Word
Islam fought a fifteen-year inquisition over whether the Quran is created, and a Christian monk posed the decisive dilemma a century earlier. What the createdness controversy opens up for a conversation about John 1.
Answering Islam's Questions
The three questions every Christian eventually hears from a Muslim friend, answered from the sources: the corrupted-Bible claim, the three-gods claim, and the challenge that Jesus never claimed to be God.
The Crucifixion Problem
The Quran denies the crucifixion in a single sentence written six centuries after the event. What happens when that sentence meets the method historians use to establish any ancient fact.
Abrogation and the Two Books
Islam's doctrine of abrogation from inside its own sources: what Quran 2:106 establishes, how far classical scholars said the sword verse reached, and what happened to the one reformer who tried to reverse the order.
What Happens to Reformers
Every serious attempt to reform Islam from inside, and its documented fate: a hanging, an assassination, a constitutional excommunication, a collapse. Why the survivors all live in the West.
The World Before Islam
Before any Muslim army moved, Rome and Persia spent 26 years destroying each other, and Arabia was already full of Jews and Christians. Part 1 of a sourced history: what Islam actually spread into.
The Conquests
One Arabian city in 632; an empire reaching from Spain to the Indus by 750. What the documented record of the Islamic conquests actually shows, and what popular history gets wrong in both directions.
Who Built the Golden Age?
The Islamic Golden Age was real, and so is the question of attribution. Syriac Christian translators, Sabian scholars, Persian and Central Asian scientists, Jewish physicians, and Abbasid patrons all belong in the ledger.
The Crusades in Context
What primary sources and working crusade historians actually establish about the First Crusade: the real provocation record, the charter evidence on motive, the massacres of 1096, and the sack of 1099.
The Slave Trades Nobody Taught You
The Islamic world's slave systems moved millions of people over thirteen centuries, from the Sahara to a fishing village in Ireland. An honest accounting, with numbers that survive hostile fact-checking and a ledger that indicts Christendom too.
The Long Divergence
In 1000 AD, Córdoba and Baghdad led the world; by 1800 the reversal was nearly total. The two explanations Christians usually repeat are myths. The real story is institutional, and it is more hopeful.
Sacred Ground: What Conquerors Do to Holy Places
From the Dome of the Rock to Hagia Sophia to the church for sale down the street: what the historical record actually shows about conquest and holy places, in both directions.
Meet Your Muslim Neighbor
How many Muslims actually live in America, where their families came from, and why the country on a passport tells you less than you think. Part 1 of the Your Muslim Neighbor series.
How to Talk About Jesus With Muslims
A practical guide to sharing the gospel with Muslim friends: the common ground the Quran already grants, the fault line you can't soften, and the table manners that keep the conversation alive. Part 2 of the Your Muslim Neighbor series.
The Questions That Open Doors
Nine questions Christians can ask Muslim friends, why each one works, and where the conversation goes — from assurance of paradise to the Sana'a manuscript.
The Ex-Muslim Mission Field
Roughly one in four Americans raised Muslim no longer is. Where the leavers go, what leaving actually costs them, and what a church has to get right to receive a convert well.
Praying for the Persecuted
What the persecution of Christians actually looks like in the data (the honest numbers, Nigeria in depth, the blasphemy-law map) and what a family in a safe country can concretely do about it.
What the Quran Actually Is
What the Quran is, how Islam says it was compiled, what the earliest manuscripts actually show, and an honest comparison with the New Testament that neither side's apologists will love.
What the Hadith Are (and Why They Run Everything)
The five daily prayers aren't in the Quran. A guide to the hadith canon — the Six Books, isnad chains, what 'sahih' certifies, and what the most authentic collections actually contain.
The Muhammad of the Sources
What can actually be known about Muhammad: the 7th-century witnesses that establish he existed, the 200-year gap behind his detailed biography, and his military career stated exactly as Islam's own sources report it.
What Sharia Actually Is
Sharia, fiqh, the five law schools, the five ruling categories, and the real Pew numbers: a precise, sourced answer to what the word means before anyone argues about it.
The Many Islams
Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi, Ahmadi, Ismaili, Quranist, cultural, reformer. A sourced map of Islam's internal divisions, and why the fates of its dissidents show where each tradition's center of gravity sits.
The Jesus of the Quran
The Quran honors Jesus as virgin-born Messiah and coming judge, yet denies the incarnation and the crucifixion. Why Jesus is the original fault line between Islam and Christianity, and why he is also the door.
A Shepherd, Not a Spectator
The opening article of the Shprd Pillars series: Scripture treats shepherd as a real job with real duties (leadership, protection, provision), and in too many homes the watch stands unmanned.
Go First
Leadership at home means going ahead of your family: Deuteronomy 6 puts the words on the father's heart before they reach the kids, and Joshua answers for his house. A weekly practice for going first.
Lead the Table
A 15-minute family huddle agenda a six-year-old can follow, a Sunday-night look-ahead run like a Navy watch turnover, and the research on why the dinner table is where discipleship actually happens.
Know Your Sheep by Name
The shepherd calls his own sheep by name, and Proverbs says to train a child according to his way. Leading each kid by season and bent instead of running one generic program — including the dad of daughters and the dad going it alone.
Keep Watch
Protection is a standing watch, not a reaction. How to threat-model your household (physical, digital, spiritual) and drill it like a Navy engine room, because nobody rises to the occasion.
Strong Enough to Matter
Physical readiness is part of a father's charge, not a vanity project. What Navy damage control, Paul's honest ranking of bodily training, and the data on men's declining strength say about the minimal standard any dad can hold.
Guard the Gate
The primary threats to your kids now arrive through screens you paid for. What the evidence actually shows, what's still contested, and a family tech covenant that binds the father first.
Feed the Household
1 Timothy 5:8 was never the overtime verse. Provision means feeding your household body and soul, and if you aren't planning that menu, a recommendation engine is.
Build for Generations
Proverbs 13:22 says a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. Four accounts make up that estate: skills, money, paperwork, and faith. Money is the smallest, and the rest transfer deliberately or not at all.
Carry the Load
The synthesis of the Shprd Pillars: sacrificial care as the manner of leading, protecting, and providing, and what the research on the household's invisible load says to men who can't see what they're not carrying.
The Shepherd's Test
We made silence a virtue and called it politeness, and it cost us the ability to know who stands with us. The capstone of the Shprd Pillars series: why the man who keeps the watch at home doesn't get to go silent outside it.
Degraded Mode: How I Build AI Agent Systems That Don't Fall Over
The disciplines that keep large, life-or-death systems reliable — protocols, redundancy, degraded-mode operation, and leading people — are the same ones I use to build production AI agent systems at Genesis Labs.
Life and Faith Belong Together
Why I left a career in complex systems to build faith-centered software for families and the church — and the conviction underneath all of it.
The Growth Tool I Turned Down
I had a one-click way to add a referral program to my app. It would have quietly handed off my users' contacts. Here's why I built it myself instead.
You Are the Product. It's Time to Be the Platform.
A case for digital sovereignty: why you should own your data, your identity, and your digital self—and how I'm building the infrastructure to make it possible.
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