Frontier Road - Short Stories (written by humans)

Prologue: *Jack London first wrote this short story in 1902 for a younger crowd, giving it a safer, more hopeful ending where the man survives. But six years later, he rewrote it, sharper, colder, and truer to what he had seen during his time in the Yukon. Jack London spent time in the Yukon during the gold rush, and he knew cold like most people never will. Locals gave him advice, passed down from men who’d seen what happens when someone takes the wilderness lightly. This story is built from that kind of advice.

The man in this story is fictional. But he’s not hard to recognize. He’s confident, maybe too confident. He’s practical, but not imaginative. He knows how to move through the world, but not how to understand his place in it. Like a lot of people, he learns too late what he didn’t know he didn’t know.

This isn’t a tale of heroism or triumph. It’s about limits. Nature doesn’t care how strong you are, how smart you think you are, or how good your intentions are. It just is.

In the winter of 1840, Matthew L. Davis (journalist and longtime confidant of Aaron Burr) attends a private discourse in Washington, D.C., where he hears Mormon founder Joseph Smith speak. Initially skeptical, Davis is struck by Smith’s sincerity and calm demeanor. Drawing on his past defense of misunderstood figures like Burr, Davis writes to his wife expressing a surprising change of heart.

*Pre-Script to Editha, a Short Story
A recent report estimates that 1 in every 31 young Russian men is a casualty of war. In under three years, Russia has lost nearly one million soldiers. One million lives—sons, brothers, friends—sacrificed for what? Who will stop this madness? Who will end the senseless slaughter of an entire generation?

These weren’t just victims of Putin’s war. They were victims of a nation’s quiet surrender to propaganda, to blind obedience, to the myth that war is noble. A million young men could have resisted. Could have said “no.” Yes, they might have died for it—during a revolt, an uprising, call it what you will. But they didn’t. And now they’re gone.

This isn’t just about one man’s tyranny. It’s about a system upheld by silence. A corrupt state, a brainwashed public, and a culture that rewards compliance over conscience. No one is blaming the soldiers—but we must blame the system that convinces them to go.

In Editha, William Dean Howells captured this very dynamic more than a century ago. The title character, Editha, represents the romantic idealism that dresses up war as something beautiful and heroic. Her boyfriend, George, hesitant and thoughtful, voices his doubts. Yet when he says simply, “It’s war,” she pulls him to her and declares, “How glorious!”

Howells warns us: Idealism, unexamined, is dangerous. War is not glorious. It is brutal. It is wasteful. And it demands that we ask—before anyone else asks it for us—Is this worth a life?

In this final episode of The Beardless Jesus series, Professor Buck faces his excommunication hearing and learns the results of a decision that was already set in motion long before he entered that room. After two and a half hours of questioning, debate, and measured responses, he makes one last plea—not for himself, but for the integrity of faith itself. He lays out the history, the art, and the theology, asking the men before him a simple but weighty question: Does it matter which Jesus we worship?

Scarlett doesn’t hesitate in her support. Peter struggles with what to make of it all. And Professor Buck? He turns the page and begins again.

As Professor Buck faces his looming excommunication, he reflects on his spiritual isolation, feeling abandoned by the community he once called home. He wrestles with anger, questioning whether his lifelong loyalty to the church was worth it, while finding solace in literature and academia. Meanwhile, his students, particularly Scarlett, grapple with their own conflicts—caught between loyalty to their faith and the unsettling realization of its contradictions. As Buck traces the evolution of Jesus’ image from a humble carpenter to a Greco-Roman philosopher, he challenges his students to consider how belief is shaped by history, culture, and power. Ultimately, the question lingers: if Jesus returned today, would he resemble the God we've been worshipping for all of these years—and does it even matter?

Professor Buck is about to face a disciplinary hearing for his perceived apostasy from the Church. He’s calm, though, and even attending Sunday meetings with President Brown—the Church leader overseeing the hearing—in hopes of resolving things. The issue has stirred up public opinion, with some defending Buck and others wanting him excommunicated.

When Buck meets President Brown, the conversation starts pleasantly enough, but there’s an obvious power dynamic. Brown brings up Buck’s controversial book, The Beardless Jesus, which critiques how modern art and Church practices portray Christ. Brown accuses Buck of opposing Church doctrine, though he admits the book is beautifully written.

Buck challenges Brown to pinpoint where the book is apostate. He argues that his critiques of the Church’s art and institutional practices are aimed at inspiring deeper faith, not undermining it. He also emphasizes his years of devotion to the Church and the personal and familial toll this process is taking.

The discussion gets heated but respectful. Buck defends his ideas about authentic worship and criticizes how Christ’s image has been commodified, even pointing out that the famous Christus statue is more Greek art than historical realism. Brown listens but remains firm, setting the stage for a tense hearing.

A continuation of The Beardless Jesus Series:

In a Yale Religious Philosophy Class, Professor Steven Buck lectures on repentance and the evolution of Jesus's image in early Christianity. During class, an older student named Jim Hunt delivers a compelling critique of Facebook/Meta and modern control of perception. Buck connects this to the Greek concept of metanoia (repentance) - changing one's mind.

Scarlett, a student with Mormon roots, learns that Professor Buck knew her grandfather Nolan Stancik as a mission president. She and her friend Peter invite Buck to lunch at Pulse 16, where they discuss the growing tensions between progressive and traditional Mormon thought. Buck describes himself as an "unsettled believer" who still loves attending church despite disagreements.

The evening ends with Buck receiving notice of a disciplinary council that could lead to his excommunication from the Mormon Church. The charges stem from his book "The Beardless Jesus" and his public statements challenging church doctrine. He's given options to either defend himself, renounce his work, or accept excommunication.

Welcome to Part 2 of the Beardless Jesus. In this episode we continue the exploration of the controversial world of Professor Buck, the Yale academic challenging traditional Mormon perspectives with his groundbreaking lecture series and bestselling book "The Beardless Jesus".

We follow Scarlett as her faith journey unfolds, grappling with intriguing questions: Did Jesus have a beard? And more importantly, does it matter?

Through field trips to the Yale Art Gallery, discussions of Renaissance art, and connections to biblical history, this episode explores the intellectual curiosity surrounding the historical Jesus, its impact on religious inquiry, and the search for truth in unexpected places.

When Scarlett attends a lecture by the unconventional Professor Buck, she’s challenged to reconsider long-held views on biblical teachings, cultural practices, and her own religious upbringing.

Along the way, she discovers that her professor was actually a Mormon missionary, long ago, who served with her grandpa. As she considers new ideas she faces the internal conflict of a loss of certainty.

Sandra learns about the beardless Jesus—who was a Nazarene but not a Nazarite—and how this revelation shifts her understanding of Mormon thought and theology and her place in its world.

"Scarlett sat in stillness, quietly considering this new figure of Jesus. A beardless Jesus? That didn’t sit well with her. She had heard the stories from her youth—the Prophets had seen Jesus and knew what he looked like. And wasn’t there a painting of Jesus in her chapel, dressed in a red robe, that they said looked like the actual Jesus? Like the painter had contacted the prophet and asked him what Jesus looked like, and then painted him based on that description?"

Rather than celebrating the wonders of the journey, The Journey of the Magi presents it as an arduous and painful experience. The poem opens with five lines adapted from a passage in the Nativity Sermon delivered by Lancelot Andrewes, the Bishop of Winchester, to King James I on Christmas Day, 1622. Andrewes’ original text reads:

“A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter.”

This opening sets the tone, introducing the magus’ recollection of a journey fraught with discomfort and doubt. The speaker describes how, throughout their trek, a voice persistently whispered that “this was all folly.” When they finally reach the infant, the magus seems underwhelmed by the child yet profoundly aware that the Incarnation has fundamentally altered the world.

The speaker reflects:
“…were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?”

The birth of Christ, he realizes, marked the death of the old world—of magic, astrology, and paganism. Speaking in his old age, the magus admits that the birth not only ended his way of life but left him with little to do but await his own death.

During the journey, the Magi witness “three trees against a low sky.” This single image is rich in symbolism, hinting at both the historical future—the crucifixion, an allusion to a pivotal biblical event—and the spiritual truth of what is to come. The lowering skies suggest heaven opening, foreshadowing the transformative significance of Christ’s life and death.