Each year, as I wake on Christmas morning, I find myself pondering on the same quiet miracle.
The simple, astonishing fact that the Savior of the world entered it the way He did—without fanfare, power, or any of the trappings of authority we usually associate with change.
Christ did not come as a king with an army or a ruler issuing decrees. Instead, He came as a child, born to humble parents, and laid in a manger. He was completely dependent and completely vulnerable and yet, from the very beginning, He carried a message strong enough to outlast empires.
His birth is still how the world marks time.
From the start of His ministry, Christ made it clear that His kingdom would not be built the way earthly kingdoms are. He didn’t compel obedience, instead he taught that His was the better way and asked people to try it. He led by example and invited all to come and be like Him. Again and again, His call was simple and personal: “Come. Follow me.”
Even when He taught moral law, it was never framed as something to be enforced from the outside. Instead, it was something that had to be adopted inwardly. In His Sermon on the Mount, he taught that righteousness wasn’t measured by external compliance but by the condition of the heart—on how we choose to be when no one is watching.
His teachings run directly in conflict with the way worldly powers aim to lead and influence people.
Government asks us to consistently hand responsibility upward and outward—to assume that someone else should fix what is broken, regulate what is wrong, and manage what once belonged to families, churches, and communities. Charity is some abstract, tax-funded social program, and responsibility for your neighbor (and even your own family!) can always be outsourced.
But Christ taught a different model.
When He spoke of loving our neighbor, He didn’t describe a system, He told a story. The Good Samaritan didn’t wait for permission or funding or institutional backing, he saw a man in need, and he acted using his own abilities and resources.
When Christ fed the hungry and healed the sick, He did it face to face, ministering to the One again and again and again. And when He sent His followers into the world, He didn’t instruct them to centralize compassion or form earthly principalities and kingdoms. He told them to go and teach, serve, heal, and love one person at a time, following his example.
As a Christian, I have tried to model the way I teach my children after the way Christ taught his followers. That same framing underlies so much of what we try to teach through the Tuttle Twins books and resources.
When we explain that our rights come from God—not government—we’re echoing a deeply Christian truth: that human dignity is inherent. That it exists before political authority and apart from it.
Scripture is remarkably clear on this. From the beginning, men and women are created in the image of God, and they are His. They are not created in the image of the State, and they are not the property of a ruler or a system. Because of this truth, each person bears responsibility not just for their own lives, but also for how they impact the lives of others.
It’s why the teachings of the Savior can’t be reduced to policy or enforced through earthly power. The Golden Rule to treat others as we would want to be treated cannot be legislated into the human heart because real charity, the pure love of Christ, can’t be coerced.
Charity that is compelled may move resources temporarily, but it can’t transform hearts.
Christ taught that lasting change only comes through righteous exercise of agency—through willing obedience, willing service, willing responsibility, and willing sacrifice. “If ye love me,” He said, “keep my commandments.” In other words, “If you want to be like me, do what I have done.”
This Christmas Day, I hope you’ll remember that the vital work of building a healthy, humane, and free society doesn’t happen in the marble halls of government or through political maneuvering by charismatic men and women who seek to rule over others.
It happens in homes, in churches, around dining room tables, and in the quiet acts of charity and goodwill that we willingly demonstrate.
Thank you for being part of a community that still believes these ideas matter—and that passing them on to our children is one of the most important things we can do.
From my family to yours, Merry Christmas.
May the peace of Christ fill your home, and may His example guide us all in the year ahead.
— Connor
