Simply put, you must read this book: Stay Alive, My Son, by Pin Yathay. I’ve never had a book elicit such visceral anger and grief. At times I was literally vibrating with rage at the author’s unbearable suffering, which he recounts with the detached demeanor of one who has lost everyone dear to him.

In a nutshell, the book is Yathay’s account of the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power in Cambodia in the 1970s and how nearly every member of his family was systematically destroyed in the regime’s maniacal plot to rid the nation of any they perceived of as a threat to their establishment of a socialist utopia.

Although Cambodia is known for the “killing fields”, where 20 percent of the nation’s population was exterminated, what struck me even more than the overt violence of the Khmer Rouge is the dehumanizing strategy of their worldview. In an attempt to create loyalty and dependence on the regime, people were removed from their homes, family relationships were severed, children were taken away for brainwashing, books were destroyed, education was banned, personal possessions were stolen and redistributed and every aspect of daily life was controlled—all under the guise of ensuring equality. The result, of course, was not equality, but universal poverty, starvation and social disintegration.

Read “hard” books like this. They will motivate you to pray for, give to and advocate for those who have no access to the freedoms we take for granted.

First, this is not sacreligious to discuss. It is of interest to anyone who considers the Incarnation a pivot point in history, the moment at which the fullness of God was supernaturally compressed—like a ball of molecules at absolute zero—into two human cells with a few frail strands of human DNA and an immediate death sentence.

The question (which I hinted at several days ago) is whether Mary contributed an egg to the incarnation. I say “no,” and here’s why in 200 words.

Jesus was the “second Adam,” created by God, with no human father or mother. Both were representatives of humanity: one, whose transgression plunged all of his descendants–with one Exception–into sin; the other, whose sinless life, death and resurrection overcame the actions of the first Adam and present a prototype for true humanity. As Athanasius compellingly argues, Jesus had to be human. I agree, but humanity is not theologically defined as sharing genetic material with a human mother or father–or Adam would not have been human.

In his genealogy of Jesus, Matthew refers to Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba as “mothers”, but does not refer to Mary as Jesus’ mother (“… Mary, of whom was born Jesus …”). Of course, elsewhere in the Gospels, Mary is referred to as Jesus’ mother, but Matthew’s is an interesting choice of language.

If Mary contributed an egg to the incarnation, who contributed the sperm? If God did, doesn’t that make Jesus a hybrid–part divine, part human?

I’m running out of words, so I’ll just say this: God created a body for Jesus, and Jesus entered the world through a human woman and lived in a human family, but he shared no genetic material with the woman or the man who served as His earthly parents.

Here’s the big hole in my argument: Besides the references to Mary as Jesus “mother,” if I’m right, Jesus was not an actual descendent of David in the biological sense. Isn’t this a problem?

President Obama’s recent “apology tour” has highlighted the guilt many Americans feel for power we wield in the world. Of course, it’s a bit more nuanced than Obama or his conservative critics would have us believe.

Alongside the botched military campaigns, misspent aid, and other assorted acts of hubris, our soldiers have disproportionally bled on foreign soil for others’ freedoms–even when our own have not been threatened. American citizens have given billions–perhaps even trillions–of dollars in foreign aid through voluntary charity and tax dollars. Thousands of Americans have given up comfortable suburban life to serve in non-military roles in troubled parts of the world as Peace Corps members, missionaries and other NGO workers.

Interestingly, the complex and often contradictory aspects of America’s relationship with the rest of the world were not adequately reflected in our president’s legitimate acknowledgment of our faults. And it was particularly telling when he made these remarks in the presence of dictators and autocrats who themselves have such a low view of freedom and human life.

My recent reading (Tony Horwitz’s A Voyage Long and Strange and Jon Meacham’s American Lion, among others) has helped me see that, if anything, the injustices of America have been inside–not outside–our borders. Historically, our relationship to other nations has been uncharacteristically benevolent for a country of our size. (Contrast the colonial aspirations of France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the UK as they were at their apex.)

What is unconscionable is our treatment of native peoples and black slaves, and–dare I say–millions of unborn children. These qualify as systematic acts of injustice and genocide that cause recent international incidents to pale in comparison. Their impact and consequences are still being felt by the victims and the descendants of the perpetrators.