Across our communities, a profound ache has taken hold of daily life. People describe a fatigue they can’t quite identify — the feeling that something valuable in our daily routines has been unraveling. Conversations seem more pointed. Neighbors feel more distant. Families are caught between anger and resignation.
It’s as if we’re watching the core of our shared moral compass shift gradually, one small degree at a time, and we worry about what the next degree might cost.
Much of our ache stems from witnessing cruelty take hold in public life. Our current administration has doubled down on policies that use suffering as a weapon — starving families by cutting SNAP benefits, stripping food support from children through limited school lunch programs, and forcing millions to choose food and shelter over healthcare, as once again, trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without a viable replacement.
Immigration enforcement not only regulates borders but also increases hardship for already desperate families. These choices do not reflect responsible governance or economic necessity. They are designed to use cruelty as a tool to make life harder for the vulnerable. And people see it. They feel it. Even those who supported this administration are unsettled by the direction it has taken.
Families in our churches and communities are asking the same questions: How did we get here? Why does cruelty feel normal? Why does no one in power seem moved by the suffering of ordinary people? These are not partisan questions. They are moral questions. And they reveal a deep spiritual crisis — a crisis created whenever love withdraws from the public square and leaves power unchecked.
Researchers warned us for years that something like this was coming. Brené Brown’s work on shame, fear, and dehumanization anticipated the moment we live in now. She notes that when leaders model contempt, followers learn to mirror it. When public rhetoric frames entire groups of people as problems rather than neighbors, cruelty becomes an acceptable political strategy. Her research affirms what many feel in their bodies: this climate is not just stressful — it is spiritually exhausting.
People are not imagining the tension; they are responding to a documented pattern of social disconnection and moral injury.
Political scientists and ethicists echo this concern. Studies published over the past year show rising support for punitive policies even when they are ineffective; growing acceptance of violence as a political tool; and a measurable decline in empathy, especially in communities most immersed in the rhetoric of fear. These findings validate an essential truth: people are not alone in feeling that our public life is drifting toward something harsher, colder, less human.
When love refuses to act, cruelty fills the gap.
So many people today are longing for leaders who name the pain honestly and respond with moral clarity. They are longing for a love that doesn’t excuse cruelty and doesn’t just look away. We’ve come to realize that the truth is becoming impossible to ignore. But whenever love refuses to act, something else fills the space. And in our current moment, what fills that space is cruelty, and we all need a kind of love that doesn’t retreat.
State Representative James Talaric, who plans to unseat Senator John Cornyn in Texas, articulated this truth in a recent interview on Pod Save America. He delivered his comments in a way that resonates deeply with our moment. He said, “Love is sometimes confrontational… It does whatever it takes to stand up for the vulnerable.”
The Representative reminds us that Jesus did not stay silent when the powerful preyed on the weak. Jesus entered the seat of power and overturned the tables of injustice, not out of rage, but out of fierce, protective love. That is the kind of love Christians are called to embody: not passive, not polite, and willing to act courageously.
Love acts with courage.
This is why this message matters now, in this season, in this country. We cannot pretend that the consequences of political choices are abstract. Families are being harmed. Healthcare is being stripped. Groceries are rising. And compassion is being redefined as weakness. We are watching, in real time, what happens when leadership is shaped more by grievance and ego than by grace.
And yet — scripture, tradition, and the lived witness of Jesus tell us that another way is possible, by speaking with great clarity into this moment.
It’s easy to forget that Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, often relegated to weddings, is much more than sentimental poetry. Paul wrote these truths to a fractured, angry, anxious church. It is a letter to a community that had begun to value power, winning arguments, and spiritual prestige more than mutual care.
Corinth was a booming port city. Wealthy, diverse, socially stratified, and deeply influenced by Roman patronage culture. The young Christian community reflected that complexity. They were gifted, enthusiastic, and sincere, yet deeply divided. Factions had formed around different leaders, and those divisions threatened to fracture the church.
Social status, spiritual competition, theological disagreements, and ethical confusion were all pulling them apart. The church was vibrant but chaotic. Full of potential, but on the verge of collapsing under its own dysfunction.
When love refuses to act, cruelty fills the gap.
Meanwhile, these three remain: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13
But in his letter, Paul doesn’t tell the people to “feel more love.” That’s too passive. Paul tells them to act with courageous love, in ways that protect their community from collapse. Biblical love is not sentiment. It is courageous. Biblical love chooses to resist cruelty with a different kind of power.
Paul’s entire letter is a testimony to courageous love. A love that confronts division, protects the vulnerable, and insists on truth even when truth is costly. When love refuses to act, cruelty fills the gap. Therefore, we must pursue a love that acts with courage.
Those reading Gilead alongside this series encounter another model of courageous love—a love quieter than prophetic confrontation, but no less bold. Reverend John Ames, writing in the final years of his life, wrestles with what it means to love faithfully in a world marred by conflict, injustice, and human frailty. His love is not naïve. It is a love shaped through loss, disappointment, and the painful awareness of his own limitations and mortality
But Ames refuses to let cynicism define his final word. Instead, he writes with a tenderness that holds truth and grace together. He blesses a world that has not always blessed him. He extends forgiveness where resentment would have been easier. He chooses compassion toward the prodigal Boughton son, even when his past raises every alarm in him. Ames does not mistake gentleness for weakness; he understands it as a form of strength that resists the easy temptation to withhold love from those who have wounded him.
In the final chapters, as he blesses Jack Boughton on the street, Ames demonstrates what courageous love looks like in its most vulnerable form: a love that chooses mercy over fear, hope over suspicion, generosity over self-protection. He blesses Jack not because Jack deserves it, but because love demands it. In Ames, we see the kind of courage that doesn’t always flip tables—but still changes lives.
This, too, is courageous love: the kind that doesn’t make headlines, but quietly heals what is broken. A love that acts with courage.
And this is where Gilead meets our own moment. The book invites us to imagine a faith that holds firm against cruelty—not by mirroring cruelty, but by embodying a deeper, steadier strength. Ames reminds us that courageous love is not always dramatic; sometimes it is a choice we make day after day, in the shadows of disappointment and uncertainty. It is a love rooted in God’s faithfulness rather than our own control.
Courageous love is not only an ancient witness or a literary illustration—it is something we are seeing lived out in real time.
The survivors pressing for the release of the Epstein files have shown extraordinary courage. They are demanding truth in the face of enormous pressure, cultural backlash, political obstruction, and in some cases, real personal danger. Many know that speaking publicly risks harassment, character attacks, and even threats from those determined to protect the powerful. Yet they continue.
One survivor captured the heart of this entire message when she said, “We are not here for revenge. We are here because telling the truth is an act of love—for ourselves, for the girls who were hurt, and for the girls who will come after us.”
This is what courageous love looks like: Truth-telling as protection. Truth-telling as solidarity. Truth-telling as the refusal to let cruelty have the last word.
Their witness names the risk: whenever love retreats, cruelty advances. But their courage also shows what is possible when ordinary people refuse to remain silent. Their determination mirrors the very call Paul gives to the church in Corinth: pursue love—not a sentimental love, not a quietistic love, but a protective, truth-aligned, justice-seeking love.
Their example is not about political speculation; it is about moral clarity. They show us what it looks like to resist cruelty without dehumanizing those responsible—a line Paul insists the church must not cross, and Jesus himself modeled.
This week, we turn to the kind of love that does not shrink back: courageous love. Love that makes room for truth-telling. Love that defends the vulnerable. Love that stays grounded in compassion while refusing to tolerate cruelty. This is the path the early church walked. It is the path Jesus walked. And it is the path our communities need now.
In a season when cruelty too easily fills the space left by passive love, we are called back to the heart of our faith. The way of Jesus is not withdrawal or silence, but a courageous love that protects, tells the truth, and seeks the good of the vulnerable.
As we move toward Advent, may we become a community shaped by that love—steady, compassionate, grounded in truth, and unafraid to act. A love that does not retreat. A love that restores. A love that refuses to let cruelty have the final word.
Remember, Love acts with courage.
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Pastor Tommy
Our companion book for this series is Marilynne Robinson. Gilead. NY: Picador, 2004.
Brené Brown. “Words, Actions, Dehumanization, and Accountability.” Unlocking Us. © Brené Brown, Jan 13, 2021. Link.
Laura Silver, et al. “Americans’ Trust in One Another.” © Pew Research Center, May 8, 2025. Link.
Neil Fasching, et al. “Persistent American political animosity is not driven by specific election cycles.” © Science Advances, Sep 4, 2024, Vol 10, Issue 36. Link.
“Trump’s Ballroom Reno Derailed by Epstein.” © Pod Save America, Nov 14, 2025. Link.