The narrative of Jesus’s Passion is infinitely rich, containing as it does the rejection and the triumph of the incarnate Son of God. It dramatizes at once the greatest atrocity mankind ever committed, and the mind-blowing reality that God used precisely that to save us. As the Orthodox liturgy acclaims, Jesus really did “conquer death by death.” We have spent twenty centuries meditating on that in works of theology, art, drama, and music — and still have yet to scratch the surface.

My mission in life has been to stand in solidarity with and serve the vulnerable, protecting them from violence. I was first inspired to walk this path by losing a daughter to a forced abortion when I was a teenager. That launched me into pro-life work even before I believed in God, much less became a Christian. Over time I’ve encountered groups of people almost as vulnerable as unborn children stripped of human rights by the state, such as victims of genocide in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. I founded the Vulnerable People Project to aid such people directly, serving those whom the powerful and prestigious crassly neglect — or even target.

The New World Order Crucified Jesus

This mission, I’ve come to understand, has its roots in that same Passion narrative, which we prayerfully read this week. Who were the powerful in Jesus’s day? The Romans, and those religious leaders who eagerly collaborated with them. Rome had imposed a New World Order, dominated by unaccountable elites for the benefit of the few. It promised order and progress, at the price of total submission and the ongoing flow of slaves to work in Rome’s mines or die as gladiators in the arena.

The powerful in Jerusalem in 33 AD saw Jesus’s message and mission as an existential threat. He didn’t grasp at worldly power. He did something even more radical: He held it in contempt. He barely deigned to answer Pilate’s questions, and wouldn’t speak to Herod at all. Instead, He showed by His words and actions that the true power, the force that had created the universe, wanted something else of us. It demanded that we reach out to the weak with our own resources and at our own expense (not via government programs or social engineering) and help them — that we act like the Good Samaritan toward life’s victims, not the prissy priest or the Levite who crossed the road to avoid one.

We Must Not Flee Like Peter

We must not flee potential suffering or persecution as Peter did when he denied knowing Jesus. We cannot run and hide as nine apostles did. Instead we must act the way a single apostle did: John, standing at the foot of the Cross.

John stood there with Mary, Jesus’ mother, absorbing the spit and the taunts that were aimed at their Lord, the whole time until Jesus died. Personally, I think the reason why he (alone of the apostles) didn’t die a martyr’s death is that he’d already endured the Passion, in solidarity with Jesus.

And that is my model for ministry and activism now. Neither I nor my organization will flee from the Cross. Instead, we seek it out — anywhere in the world that the powerful and corrupt are profiting from the weakness and suffering of others. That’s why we’re helping Afghan interpreters escape the Taliban, hiring security guards for churches in Nigeria … and fighting the Great Reset right here in the West.

As I’ve been laying out in my columns here at The Stream and in my new book, The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset, there’s plenty of persecution and injustice in supposedly “free” countries. The COVID lockdowns taught us that. So does the selective prosecution of pro-lifers, conservatives, Christians, and others who resist the utopian policies of our elites, imposed via the Anarcho-Tyranny The Stream’s John Zmirak chronicles here. From energy policies that starve the poor of heat and light to immigration chaos that floods the sex industry with victims, there are crosses aplenty right here at home where we must keep watch and stand strong.

The Ideology of Antichrist

Our enemies aren’t fools. They no longer speak in the brazen language of ancient Romans or modern Nazis, lauding power for its own sake and scoffing at injustice. Instead, the principalities and powers they serve have taught them to twist the language of the Gospel. Now they pretend that policies which line their pockets and serve their perversions are all designed to protect “victims,” and they cast those who resist them as “oppressors” who don’t favor “equity.”

The great Christian thinker Rene Girard predicted this. He warned that those hungry for power and pleasure would learn to appear as angels of light, and co-opt the mantle of Christ. He even gave this ideological confidence game a name: victimism. It’s the strategy of grasping wealth and power by pretending to serve the innocent and the oppressed.

That’s why male athletes who want to shoulder their way into women’s sports and steal their trophies are cast as “victims.” Likewise abortion doctors, immigrant traffickers, and even violent terrorists can enjoy a makeover at the hands of our sold-out, censored media and corrupted institutions. They are the Barabbas whom the elites convince the mob to choose instead of Jesus.

It is our job to stand against the mob and expose those who control it.

A blessed Easter to all.

Jason Jones is a film producer, author, activist, popular podcast host, and human rights worker. He is president of the Human-Rights Education and Relief Organization (H.E.R.O.), known for its two main programs, the Vulnerable People Project and Movie to Movement. He was the first recipient of the East Turkistan Order of Friendship Medal for his advocacy of the Uyghur people. Jones was an executive producer of Bella and an associate producer of The Stoning of Soraya M. His humanitarian efforts have aided millions in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the Ukraine, as well as pregnancy centers and women’s shelters throughout North America. Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream and the host of The Jason Jones Show. He is also the author of three books: The Race to Save Our Century, The World Is on Fire, and his latest, The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset. His latest film, Divided Hearts of America, is available on Amazon Prime.