Self-Reflection
Few are unfamiliar with the constant weight of day-to-day activities. Whether it be working in a vocation, completing chores around the house, or running errands, the routine activities of life consume swaths of one’s time. In the most recent publication of the American Time Use Survey, the United States Department of Labor found the average…
We Are All Marionettes
I pull at the string connected to the center of my heart and like a marionette hung at an obtuse angle my back arches unnaturally and my head rolls back passive to the insistence of my hand and unrestrained longings of my heart I hang there limp and frozen like an advertisement of a ballerina…
Sweet Poison
I have drunk the sweet poison of fantasy it is not deep or meaningful or existential or maybe it has glimmers of all those things I can taste the nectar from my stomach and can feel the fragrance seeping into my blood and lulling me into a dream my body morphs into an amorphous dome…
Redefining Self Interest: Christianity and the Prisoner’s Dilemma
Game theory is a field which seeks to quantify and predict outcome to “games” of strategic interaction in fields like economic and international relations. These formal models of human interaction – and particularly one called the Prisoner’s Dilemma – reveal fundamental problems humans face and set us on a search for solutions. The theoretical setup…
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Interview with Dr. Russell Moore
Dr. Russell Moore is a Public Theologian and Director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today. He formerly served as the President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Moore is also a critically acclaimed author of Christian thought, publishing works such as The Courage to Stand and…
Who You Say I Am: Satisfying Our Need for Self-Knowledge Through The Gospel
Whether we realize it or not, we’re all on a quest to discover who we are. We categorize ourselves in a multitude of ways: gender, race, generation, college major, career, political party, zodiac sign, Enneagram number, Hogwarts house. We take tests to tell us which of just sixteen personalities we are, what our learning style…
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An Exploration of the Western Self
“Hitler had won” — or so perceived the aged Holocaust survivor Kivas Rieff in his final days.1 The world had become graceless — the West was now contemptible on account of its cultural decay, and there was something tumultuous permeating the climate in the 21st century which Kivas sensed with perfect clarity — he had…
The Slowing of Self
Imagine a Vanderbilt student on a late August day: more running than walking to class, glistening with sweat in the late morning sun, entrapped internally in racing thoughts yet subject externally to the growing buzz of campus. This was me. The pace of my sneakers hitting the pavement exemplified my belief that if I was…
Pursuing Self-Denial
Ingrained in our culture is an unapologetic focus on self. From social media to self-help books, and even casual words between friends who say the phrases, “Focus on yourself,” or, “You do you,” we are indelibly reminded of the centrality of a positive focus on self. Jesus disagrees. His word on the matter is simple:…
Hope and Healing in a Mental Health Crisis
According to the National Institute of Health, twenty percent of adults in the United States experienced mental illness in 2019.1 Suicide was the second highest cause of death for individuals aged 10 to 34,2 and out of every age group, mental illnesses were most prevalent among young adults aged 18 to 25, accounting for 29%…
Beauty in a Broken World
We are surrounded by beauty in this world, even on the days where the world feels most broken. In nature alone, we experience the changing of leaves in the fall, the sound of crashing waves, blooming of flowers, and the scents of fresh fruit. Beautiful artwork is displayed in museums all over the world and…