In Word or Deed

Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash Do you have a life's purpose? Is there something beyond or above yourself that influences your choices? I ask because it would seem that the current of modern culture is moving more and more toward the idea that the ultimate ethic is my own freedom and choice, with the only overarching ethic being that we should support the rights of other people to also follow their own desires. While this doesn't seem too terrible an idea at the start it does lead us down a rather unfortunate rabbit hole. Modern man is more and more losing the ability to live for anything beyond himself and what he finds comfortable, enjoyable, or agreeable. Really, this is just the natural outworking of pluralism and the post-modern mentality. We've taken away any idea of a meta-narrative, of an overarching truth that explains and pertains to every aspect of life. There is no objective truth in the philosophy of modern man and thus there is onl...

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash I used to think that everyone else was lucky. They all had passions, they all had dreams. In others I saw consuming desires that propelled them into their futures. Some wanted to be doctors others engineers, others soldiers, while I sat to the side and didn't know what I wanted to be. I used to think I was broken, that some crucial part of me was damaged or simply missing or that I'd failed to pick it up along the way. Now that I'm a bit older I've begun to wonder, was I just hoping for something to make the decision for me? Is there any inherent merit in a passion that you did not choose and a life that merely carried you along? I can't help but think that maybe what I saw as a self-propelled desire was really the outworking of a personal decision to pursue a goal. Was I longing for something that nobody actually possessed? I like to write, I love it even. I genuinely enjoy sitting down and putting tho...

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash The world often seems to be in a constant state of turmoil and distress. Opposing factions struggle for power in every corner of the world and our various world-views and ideologies combat for supremacy from the water cooler to the world wide web. People everywhere seem to be either searching for real truth or loudly proclaiming that it doesn't exist. Many have simply given up on a life that is meaningful; some of them cutting it short. Where can we go for any sense of reality, any solid foundation of real truth? We can argue back and forth about science and philosophy, we can debate theology and atheism, we can discuss anarchy vs. order, but let me propose that there is one thing at least that no can effectively deny. Humanity is flawed. It doesn't take much observation to prove this simple truth, you don't even have to look outside of yourself. You and I can look inside of ourselves and see selfishness, greed, li...

Fractured. A word that could easily and justifiably be used to describe America today. We are a melting pot that has grown steadily colder, congealing into a mass of disparate ingredients that want virtually nothing to do with each other. Worse still, we see each other as enemies. A bunch of scary shadowy groups of people that are...different. Didn't we used to be one country? Didn't we used to be unified? Didn't there used to be a generally understood consensus of right and wrong? In a word, no. Well, not 'no' exactly but not 'yes' either. The United States of American has always been a place where wildly different groups of people have coexisted with varying degrees of success. Pilgrims and Native Americans, Exiles and Indentured Servants, French and English, Irish and Italian, Black and White, Liberal and Conservative; the groups have changed and multiplied over time but the issue remains the same: how can people who are so very d...