Easter Monday and April Fools’ Day, together for the first time in a while.

That could be an invitation to prank the forces of evil.

Tie their shoelaces together.

Put whoopie cushions on the throne of the Enemy.

Fill buckets with water and place them over the doors they try to attack you through.

Fighting evil is like exercising and doing your chores – sometimes you have to make it fun for yourself.

Most of them time, though, you just have to roll up your sleeves and do it.

There’s no pranking here, but you might find this a fun way to build your arsenal:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

Happy Easter.

Christ has risen.

During a church service today, we had an unexpected guest – a bat flew into the church and then got stuck. It hung from one of the speakers for a while, then kept flying back and forth.

It was a perfect bat trap. By flying in through a low door into a building with a high roof, it meant it had difficulties getting out. It didn’t help that stain-glass windows aren’t exits but look like ones.

There are quite a few metaphors in there. Finding them all is an exercise left to the reader.

But I don’t blame the bat. It clearly heard the Word and the Holy Spirit moved within it.

Also, it didn’t bite or poop on anyone, which is nice.

Anyway, enjoy this holy time and try not to get stuck – not even in a sacred place of worship.

If you’d like to level up your life at all, I recommend reading this:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

You might look around and see nothing but doom.

Folks are rushing into AI that could ruin everything, even if it doesn’t go on a Terminator-style rampage.

(Seriously, the existential threat that technology poses is absurd.)

Fascism and communism are on the rise in the West.

We’re forgetting all the hard-won lessons of history.

Our air, food and water teem with poison, plastics and puberty blockers.

Worst of all, we’re re-enacting the frustrating parts of the Old Testament where the chosen people turn away from the Lord yet again. And fall into calamity yet again.

War blooms and our economies falter. People aren’t marrying like they used to, our populations stalling as everyone gives up on the future.

It’s a dark time for the world.

It’s like a full decade or two of Holy Saturday.

Christ has died and the world is lost.

But Sunday is coming.

Christ will rise again.

As Christians, we’ve seen this cycle play out before. We know how it ends. Christianity, morality, hard work and good citizenship will return – just as they have before.

It’s hard to see the long view of history from inside it.

It’s also not fair that you’re in this rough part of a cycle.

Good. Being here means you have the most power to fix things.

I’m sure you’ve secretly wished you could be at the pivotal moments of history. Showing up to Alexander the Great with some medicine, the Fall of Constantinople with artillery, or Alexandria with a fire extinguisher and a digital scanner.

Well, you are.

Historians will study this period of history.

Will they study your actions?

I wouldn’t worry about that either way.

Focus on taking care of you and yours, not on your place in history. Unless you’re already radically successful, get the basics right first.

Basics like:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

If you haven’t seen it already, check out The Spider Within. It’s a five-minute story set in the Spider-verse, free on video streaming platforms and whatnot.

It’s good.

Weirdly good for a Sony movie. This is the same studio behind Mobius and Madame Web.

Key features:

• It’s a good story.
• It honestly depicts the struggles a young man can face without ridiculing him or saying that others have it harder.
• The father is a great father – excited to spend time with his son, willing to give him space and is there for him when he needs it.
• It’s already getting great comments and millions of views, debunking some tired old clichés. Anti-woke folk aren’t racist – we like good stories that don’t ridicule us. There is no superhero fatigue, just bad movie fatigue.
• The way it uses Spider-man powers to depict anxiety – wall crawling, spider sense – is excellent.
• It’s a human look at a human character. We can all relate to Miles here.

I like a good story. I like it when a good story vindicates me too. If studios gave us movies that felt like this instead of the cartoonish, bright, symmetrical blandness of the MCU, the gritty incompetence of the DC movies or the ridiculousness of (most of) the Sony Spider-man movies, they’d break a billion bucks a pop again.

Ah well. It’s up to them all to learn from the success of this or go broke.

Plug time:

Your Story Isn’t About You isn’t just a good reminder – it’s the name of a good product.

You might like it:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

Younger generations probably can’t relate to this:

Back when folks wore watches, there was this curious and common phenomenon. Not everyone experienced it, but it was widespread enough that you could raise it in a group and someone would nod along.

Maybe this happens with smartwatches too. I don’t care enough to look into it.

But with watches – and I’m as guilty of this – there’s this weird quirk of the brain where you check your watch three times in a minute and still have no clue what the time is.

My experience is it’s like my brain goes, yep, that’s a valid time, excellent without absorbing what the time is.

For anyone who lacks the ability to see nuance – this doesn’t happen every time. It’s not the typical experience, so it’s not like my brain is so broken that I can’t tell the time.

But sometimes I’m tired, distracted or just plain goofy.

I don’t know. There’s probably a metaphor in there or something.

All I know is this is one of the few problems that Your Story Isn’t About You won’t help with:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

Hey, the commandment is to Believe, not to Never Question.

I often think about the miracles Jesus performed. They were very much a product of his time. In an age when everyone was hungry and sick, he did a lot of miraculous feeding and healing.

Sometimes I find myself thinking… isn’t that a bit basic? He’s the king of Creation, surely he can do more than conjure up a few fish. With a snap of his fingers, he could have created new oceans or continents.

It doesn’t take me long to realise how foolish I’m being.

For one, I might call healing a blind man “basic”. It wasn’t basic to the blind man, though.

Also, Jesus didn’t come down to Earth to fix all our problems. He demonstrated His power, gave us hope, then told us how to fix them ourselves. It’s a teach a man to fish moment.

I also sometimes think of what Jesus would have done if he came to Earth today. Not as in the Second Coming, but if He made His first appearance in 2024. Since his miracles solved the common problems of his time, I imagine he’d clean up pollution, banish social media and heal anxiety.

… wait a minute.

That last one – I can sort of do that already. I was the first person I saved from anxiety. I wasn’t the last.

That must make me Christ-like, assuming my absurd guesswork about what a modern Jesus would do is right. Which it isn’t. But if you don’t care about my ridiculous speculation but do care about overcoming anxiety, then heed this:

Your Story Isn’t About You teaches you how to understand others better.

That, alone, cuts off a lot of anxiety at the source.

It’s not a panacea. And you will need to read, reread and apply what you learn.

But it’ll do more for you than just ease your anxiety:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

A haggard-looking NASA representative stands in front of a crowd of journalists. Her hair is wild, her clothes are stained and her eye keeps twitching.

NASA Rep: And so we… uh… we’ve discovered that Jupiter’s pronouns are she/her, while all of its… I mean, her moons use they/them pronouns.

Excited murmurs from the audience.

NASA Rep: Saturn, of course, is xe/xim. And the moons alternate between he/him and she/they pronouns, based on distance.

Journalist: Fascinating – I can’t wait until the new astronomy textbooks get published. People need to know this, especially those bigots who say planets don’t need pronouns!

Angry murmurs.

Journalist: Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Keep telling us about the other planets.

NASA Rep: You… want to learn the pronouns…? Of the… other planets?

Excited murmuring.

The NASA Rep’s twitching gets worse.

NASA Rep: Okay, i-it’s… I… well, the trick to remember… I…

Journalist: … Scientist of unspecified gender, are you alright?

The NASA Rep’s face contorts into a tortured grimace.

NASA Rep: Oh my <censored> <censored> <censored>, what on earth is wrong with you people? This was a joke! All of it! None of this pronoun stuff is real! Of course sex is determined by biology. I mean… genetics and hormones and…!

Audience is stunned into silence as the NASA Rep makes a noise like a boiling kettle.

NASA Rep: I thought for sure you’d get the joke when “gender studies experts” started talking about trans pets. Trans pets, are you <censored> <censored>? Are you stupid? We had to keep pushing the boundaries further and further – each time, I thought for sure we’d push it too far. Only you all went along with it! Based on… what?

Stunned muttering. The journalist speaking clears their throat.

Journalist: Uh… are you saying NASA’s position on pronouns is -?

NASA Rep: I don’t work for NASA, you twice-warmed over bucket of seal vomit. I only said that so you’d listen to me about the pronouns of the planets. Pronouns of the planets! What does that even mean?! Why are you all listening to this obvious garbage?!

Journalist: I don’t understand. Why are you saying the pronoun issue is a joke, when it’s the most pressing scientific issue of our age?

Journalist 2: Except the climate crisis.

Journalist: Obviously.

NASA Rep: Scientific…? The science is, and always has been, that there are only two –

<SIGNAL LOST. Search engines erasing all references to planetgate in 3… 2… 1…>

In my weaker moments, I fantasise about the woke admitting this was a joke that got out of hand.

But it won’t happen. It’s not a joke – it’s a real ideology, based on the (obviously wrong) hierarchy of oppression that dominates the minds of the woke.

They believe this stuff.

And, unless it collapses under its own madness, they’ll start assigning pronouns to the planets. And then acting like you’re the idiot for not following along.

That’s why you need to fight them with all you have.

Starting here:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

Easter can be a challenging time.

For one thing, there’s the saturating of egg-based puns. Everything is an eggs-cellent eggs-stravaganza. Yes, we get it, very clever.

Then there are the final temptations. It can feel like Lent has gone on forever.

But all that’s fine – you can handle that.

The real struggle comes from what makes this time of year so special: it’s a holy, sacred time, celebrating the greatest act of love and sacrifice in the universe.

It’d be wonderful if everyone saw it that way.

Instead, we get casual heresies from folks who owe their liberty and education to their Christian forefathers. Few cultures through history saw the individual as important or the world as worth saving – it’s why Christians fought (and fight) against slavery, and built the first universities.

Even so, while blind to the story of Chesterton’s Fence they find themselves in, they think we can just do away with all that religion stuff and keep the benefits.

Ultimately, it’s their choice – and their loss.

But it’s not always easy to be so stoic.

If more you adore Jesus for what he did, the harder it can be to stomach indifference towards it.

Stomach it you must, though.

All you can do is defend the faith in your own way.

And it helps if you equip yourself with the right psychological tools.

Shields to protect yourself and beacons to light the way for others.

Things like these:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

On a quest to slay a dragon, most of the time is spent looking for comfy ground to sleep on and dealing with saddle sores.

In your quest to overthrow the evil king, you’ll have to deal with the worst sort of office politics.

Getting good enough to even attempt a quest like that will take years of drudgery.

Glory is boring.

Mostly.

The final, dramatic climax of your quests is worth it, but that doesn’t mean it’s all fun. No, most of it will be so tedious you want to quit and fall into distracted passivity.

And that’s good. Glory wouldn’t be worth anything if it were evil.

Besides, it filters out all the real heroes from the would-be heroes. The skills you learn along the way will help you with what comes after:

A bigger, more epic quest.

In the meantime… here, take this, adventurer. You’ll need it on the road ahead:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay

Well, do you?

You have to wonder what folks were thinking back then. Putting leaves and vegetables in a suspension of gelatine is right up there in the highest echelons of just because you can, that doesn’t mean you should.

Some ideas are just so ridiculous that they don’t last long.

That’s why I like the antifragile approach – an old idea that survives is either part of human nature or it’s useful.

A person can believe any nonsense, but generations erode ideas. Only thoughts that fit snuggly in our brains or keep those brains ticking can endure.

It’s an oversimplification, but it explains a lot.

Like why no one eats gelatine salads anymore.

And why the best life advice usually comes from ancient sources.

You already know what it takes to be successful. More information won’t tell you much, since it’s the fundamentals that matter – like living virtuously, prioritising your health, serving others and having a mission.

Getting on with others helps too.

That’s where a program like this can help:

https://christianhypnotism.com/ysiay