Stop Trying to Figure it Out

Chris Stefanick Catholic Show · Apr 18, 2026 · 7m

There's an old Greek storytelling trick called Deus ex machina—"God from the machine." When the playwright wrote his characters into a corner he couldn't get them out of, he'd just lower a god onto the stage on a crane, and boom—everything's fixed. Aristotle called it lazy writing. But here's the thing: the Bible is full of Deus ex machina moments. Not because God is a bad writer—but because we tend to write ourselves into corners we can't get out of. That's exactly what was happening on the road to Emmaus. A couple (a lot of theologians think it was a married couple—Cleopas and his wife…