Tending the Garden Episode 13 – “The One Who Holds”

In this climactic episode, the AI hosts reach Chapter Twelve of J. Daniel Alejos’ Tending the Garden, the chapter toward which the entire series has been building. After tracing the reality of morality, the inevitability of formation, and the consequences of misalignment, Alejos brings the framework to its ontological center: Truth is not an idea—it’s a person.

The hosts explore how Alejos presents Christ not as a sentimental addition to the argument, but as its necessary conclusion. The logic of the book demands a source that is both transcendent and personal—something that can hold coherence without collapsing under the weight of contradiction. Drawing on Colossians 1, Alejos identifies that source in Christ: “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

The discussion walks through Alejos’ use of the “closed systems decay” analogy, showing how moral entropy inevitably consumes any structure that relies solely on human will or reason. The only open system—the one that remains alive—is the one connected to an external, unbroken source. That openness, Alejos argues, is not weakness but design. Humanity was made to be held.

From there, the hosts unpack the incarnation as the resolution of moral geometry: in Christ, every moral tension—justice and mercy, authority and servanthood, truth and grace—holds together without fracture. They highlight the line, “He carried justice without vengeance and holiness without performance,” as the distilled image of coherence embodied.

Alejos redefines alignment as relationship: coherence isn’t a structure to master, but a presence to walk with. Grace becomes the restorative force that absorbs fracture, not by overlooking it but by entering into it. The gardener himself steps into the ruin to restore the garden.

The episode closes where the book began: with formation and dependence. To “tend the garden” now means to abide—to live in steady relationship with the One who sustains reality. The gardener still walks, and He holds.

“Truth became flesh so that coherence could become communion.”