Prompts

Prompt 48: April 1, 2025 As the materialist worldview of our enlightenment-era founders fades from our cultural convictions, a deeper fog awaits us in the meaning crisis. Feminism has proven the most revolutionary force in the space of values, but as a coherent worldview, it lacks any connection to nature or to our implicit experiences… Read more: Manifest Logos

Prompt 47: March 2, 2025 The Prompt: “The official idealism of any age is usually the cover story of its thefts.”  – Eric Weinstein We are taking up this issue of stories of the past again to reconsider the stories we live by now.  When I first heard this line, I was thrilled at such… Read more: History, Myth, and Politics (Part 2)

February 1, 2025 The Prompt: Any organization between people has a culture.  It can manifest in the camaraderie, procedures, training, leadership, or goals of the team. We are likely in the middle of a huge culture-shock. Or we aren’t.  Either way, we have a great opportunity to witness an organized attempt at reform in our… Read more: D.O.G.E and Culture

Prompt 45: January 1, 2025 The Prompt: History is everything. Because of that, we have a hard time understanding how to talk about it and teach it. When anyone in America refers to the term history, it is typically burdened with our negative association with the most boring subject in school– with its facts and… Read more: History, Myth, and Politics (Part 1)

Prompt 44: December 2, 2024 The Prompt This story is about reinvigorating the Christmas spirit. I hope you will take to heart the living traditions that we get to participate in and enjoy the comfort and truth they embody. If you don’t care to enjoy the traditions, hopefully you’ll heed the author’s warning. I HAVE… Read more: A Christmas Carol

Prompt 43: November 1, 2024 One of the key battles in the culture war has been over gender. Over the past few years, confusion has arisen about what defines men, women, and every other “made-up” expression of gender.  Much of the traditionalist backlash against the deconstructionism of the postmodern movement has tried to reduce gender… Read more: Gender and Discovery

Prompt 42: October 1, 2024 The Prompt: Our earthly home is something we are given, which we are to receive and cherish, but also reject. This may be hard to reconcile, but as Peter Kreeft so aptly put, “all profound truth is paradox.”  So how can we establish a home on Earth, care for it,… Read more: There’s No Place Like Home

Prompt 18: September 1, 2022 Faith is a reflex, a perfection of the intellect. The faith-judgment is a trust that what is known points to something greater, that that greater is good, and that the good is worth striving toward with all human endeavor. Knowing where to trust ensures one is standing on solid foundations. … Read more: Hope: The Complement of Faith

Prompt 41: September 1, 2024 Patrick recently joined a group discussion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to discuss purpose, and how our culture affirms or tries to define human purpose.  We thought OTC would be a good place to stew on these questions. Purpose is directly related to the meaning of things, that is,… Read more: Serviam!

Prompt 40: August 1, 2024 The Prompt:  I’ve been hearing lately, from people confidently stating, that we were an inch away from civil war.  This project has always recognized the legitimacy of such national turmoil, but this was too close. There is a game. History is typically understood as the record of the game. The… Read more: Moments Such as These

Prompt 39: July 1, 2024 The Prompt To properly re-imagine the world, as the topic suggests, we ought to reconsider what it means to be human as the Bible suggests.   And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and… Read more: Reimagining The World (Part 2)

Prompt 38: June 2, 2024 The Prompt:  I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but by it, but because by it, I see everything else. C.S. Lewis Context: I wanted to take this summer to study some of the works by C.S. Lewis.  He… Read more: Reimagining The World (Part 1)

Prompt 37: May 2, 2024 The Prompt: There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God,  for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 Sometimes we look at… Read more: Why Carry On?

Prompt 36: April 1, 2024 The Prompt: Happiness is fleeting. Everyone faces disappointment.  It comes in all flavors, can be caused or uncaused, and often leaves us discouraged to hope again.  But the most hopeful thing secretly lies within disappointment, that is, that this world was never enough.   Context: This topic of disappointment has sat… Read more: Disappointment

Prompt 35: March 1, 2024 We must use words to reduce the meaning of things they represent to communicate, to share ideas, or to think together. The consequence of this is that words lose a lot, and what is lost in them is held by reality.  Even to discuss such a thing requires a posture… Read more: Economy and Ecology by which We Live

Prompt 34: February 1, 2024 This month, we will take up the most profound chapter, perhaps of all modern literature, to study the temptations of Christ in the wilderness– The Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  The Bible tells us: According to Matthew (4:1-11) Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to… Read more: Freedom and the gods of Man

Prompt 33: January 1, 2024 The world is not simply what it is made of.  The failure of the materialist worldview has forced us to recognize that existence is not apparent in any thing, but in the participation of all things.  This is still a mystery to neuroscientists (those self-proclaimed experts on consciousness).  Where understanding… Read more: Paradox: The Essence of Existence

Prompt 32: December 1, 2023 Picture this scenario: Your self-driven busyness keeps you from interest in the goings-ons of any national news.  These matters typically have nothing to do with you or anyone else you know, or else you’d hear about it like any interesting information brought up in casual conversation.  All of a sudden,… Read more: Manipulating Minds and More

Prompt 31: November 1, 2023 It is often stated that pride is among the greatest of the sins. After all, pride appears to be the root cause of many other sins. Pride, in the form of the desire for elevated knowledge, or to be more than they were, led Adam and Eve to eat the… Read more: Excuses…Excuses

Prompt 30: September 2, 2023 Since the beginning of this endeavor, the political hopes I had expected to calm my fears have shown themselves to be more and more vain.  Luckily, this dissatisfaction is exactly what Ode To Culture was started for, and was initiated by the advice, recommended readings, and conversations from our membership. … Read more: Who Cares?

Prompt 29: August 1, 2023 Riley shared an article, reviewing the book A Case For Christian Nationalism, by Stephen Wolfe, which left me dumbfounded on how little I know of the political and spiritual history of America.  This is not a prompt to expound on any single concept in the breadth of an idea like… Read more: Nations, Doctrine, Faith: A Move Toward Citizenship

Prompt 28: July 1, 2023 What is a woman? What is sex for? Who deserves “human rights”? What are people for? Do we need masculinity? Should we have nations? Should we eat meat? Is work necessary? These are the questions of the zeitgeist. We modern westerners take for granted the hard-won theological, philosophical, and political… Read more: Fishing and the Upside Down

Prompt 27: June 1, 2023 Whether you realize it or not, the way you present yourself signals incredible detail about your personality, values, character, and even history.  Detectives and other people skilled with profiling can’t help but read people, but you and I may not realize how often we do the same thing.  When Ethan… Read more: Signals to a Watching World

Prompt 26: May 1, 2023 Over the last few months, I’ve been joining the prayer team at my church.  The following message came in a prayer request card a few weeks ago.  I hope you will join in praying over this lament for my fellow congregant and any similar doubts in your own churches.  Church… Read more: You Lost Me

Prompt 25: April 1, 2023 When I started this project, Ode To Culture was an attempt to join the “culture war” by initiating thoughtful content leading to Christ.  Luckily, that vision died out once Kevin Lee corrected my concept of what culture even means through the article Technology, Culture, and Virtue: On Wendell Berry’s Unnatured… Read more: Content Vs Culture: Recovering from Postmodernism

Prompt 24: March 1, 2023 Imagine for a moment a daily task you use a computer for done without the machine.  Would it be possible?  Would it be necessary?  There is no doubt our world could not function the way it does now without the infinitely complex computation used to maintain it.  When Riley asked… Read more: Intelligence: Created for Culture

Prompt 24: March 1, 2023 Imagine for a moment a daily task you use a computer for done without the machine.  Would it be possible?  Would it be necessary?  There is no doubt our world could not function the way it does now without the infinitely complex computation used to maintain it.  When Riley asked… Read more: Intelligence: Created for Culture

Prompt 23: February 1, 2022 “How you do anything is how you do everything.” Liver King Everyone knows someone whose life tells a story of character.  Everything they do, and everything they touch seems to glow with the legitimacy of a proper order.  This person is likely slow to act, deliberate in their words and… Read more: The Unspeakable Virtue

Prompt 23: February 1, 2022 “How you do anything is how you do everything.” Liver King Everyone knows someone whose life tells a story of character.  Everything they do, and everything they touch seems to glow with the legitimacy of a proper order.  This person is likely slow to act, deliberate in their words and… Read more: The Unspeakable Virtue

Prompt 22: January 1, 2022 I recently heard a new definition, or perhaps a description, for love that rocked my worldview.  Love is where multiplicity can become singular without losing the differentiability.  This is the image that the Trinity gives us, when conceptualizing God– a harmonious contradiction.  In this vision of love there is no… Read more: Communion of Saints

Prompt 21: December 1, 2022 Early into my journey to faith, a friend (amongst us) told me that “christianity isn’t a religion, but a truth claim.”  It sounded nice, but I don’t think either of us exactly knew what that meant.  The more I have learned of christian history, culture, and theology, especially through the… Read more: Truth Claims What?

Prompt 20: November 1, 2022 “Unlike most of his monstrous brothers, the zombie is truly the harbinger of contemporary nihilism. The  zombie has no magic, its arrival usually has no clear reason, but rather the zombie is couched in a biological accident, a disease, a plague. Simply an animated corpse, the zombie inhabits the indeterminate… Read more: Is this a Zombie Apocalypse?

Prompt 19: October 1, 2022 Any question taken to the extent of its logical conclusions will lead to our fundamental assumptions of reality. In the age of postmodern thought and sentiment, where man has truly been freed of the shackles of his social context (i.e. locality, ancestry, gender, duty, expectation) he is able to be… Read more: Jurisprudence: Do Christians Impose?

Prompt 17: August 1, 2022 The image below is a picture of ignorance.  For obvious reasons, we don’t know what we are getting into, I hardly know what just happened, and neither of us knows what the doctor is up to now that we’ve got what we came for.  Without fully knowing how to be… Read more: Infinite Ignorance

Prompt 16: April 1, 2022 “The sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous;” thank God for that. I don’t know if it is possible to appreciate the complexity of the world without a transcendent encounter.  Perhaps that is the appeal of secularism, to minimize the gravitas of it all.  Our generation takes pride in… Read more: “Better Than I Deserve”

Prompt 15: March 1, 2022 The idea for this topic came from a void I encountered in a conversation when trying to articulate what I meant by “work ethic.”  The term is probably thrown around by and about people who think of themselves as “hard workers”, or “go-getters”, or other self-definable terms to embellish a… Read more: Ethic of Work

Prompt 14: February 1, 2022 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be… Read more: Pain… It Builds Character

Prompt 13: January 1, 2022 A question was brought up in my last men’s group meeting: What is the biggest problem facing “the Church?” I responded, with a hint of sarcasm, that there is no problem facing the Church.  God will continue to direct and protect his people as he has always done.  I did… Read more: Strengthening the Body

Prompt 12: December 1, 2021 Identity, as it relates to the Self, is a story.  The story assumed by an individual provides the cosmic context with which the Ego is justified.  This phenomenon has traditionally been understood as religious belief, but is still true in modern “secular” society, which begs the question: have we redefined… Read more: Possession

Prompt 11: November 1, 2021 Here’s an allegory to this project’s namesake: A symphony must have many musicians who play their instruments in unique roles in the composition of music.  The beauty of an arrangement is not found in the proficiency of each individual musician, but the artful balance of each sound to make the… Read more: Identity In Community

Prompt 10: October 1, 2021 I want to take this prompt to reorient the aim of this project– Ode To Culture.   Culture is the patterns, knowledge, identity, and values pressed upon us from our environment.  It is primarily the knowledge we gain toward finding our “place” in society; to be appreciated and useful in a… Read more: Forgiveness

Prompt 9: September 1, 2021 This month has a very different structure to the prompt than our other endeavors.  It seems this topic of place is too complex to throw a question together and hope we can think for ourselves its implications.  Perhaps those of us with a deeper connection to place can articulate the… Read more: Being In Place

Prompt 8: August 1, 2021 I was a None–by behavior.  I believed in God and knew the Bible was the way to understand the faith but given my circumstances (all alone in the booming city of Lawrence), I didn’t feel like I was missing anything at church; it’s just the same old thing every week. … Read more: Nones

Prompt 7: July 1, 2021 This prompt may not be for everyone; facing the darkness will change you.  Since it is universally believed that man is merely what his Consciousness knows of itself, he regards himself as harmless and so adds stupidity to iniquity.  He does not deny that terrible things have happened and still… Read more: The Shadow

Prompt 6: June 1, 2021 I had a friend who fell victim to good intentions.  A system of belief allowed the University to forfeit truth for its own aims, to selectively lower its admission standards, to encourage the student’s financial suicide, to rope the student into an aimless remedial curriculum, to revoke the pretense of… Read more: Verschlimmerbessen

Prompt 5: May 1, 2021 What is America? It’s a loaded question–obviously.  Anyone with an agenda can justify their political values by stuffing rhetoric into that answer; no matter the validity of their ideas.  It is a useful ploy when used for unity, progress, or goodness, but it can be just as persuasive to lull… Read more: Multiculturalism

Prompt 4: April 1, 2021 The currency we exchange with the spiritual forces is our inexhaustible confrontation with moral choices: sacrifice or indulgence, generosity or greed, purity or degradation, Love or murder, faith or fear, joy or bitterness.  The daily milieu masks the weight of such profound distinctions, yet we ought to be vigilant for… Read more: The Power of Joy

Prompt 3: March 1, 2021 [Imagine with me for a moment.] World War Three is over.  It doesn’t matter the final tally of casualties; it’s all gone. The creators of the great bombs were right; we had no right to wield such power, but we didn’t listen.  The West in her well-intentioned hypocrisy was at… Read more: Culture by Design

Prompt 2: Feb. 1, 2021 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents… Read more: Stewardship

Prompt 1: Jan. 1, 2021 Two years ago, Ethan and I sat down to our first class on Politics of Appearance, a course in the Women and Gender Studies department of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  We knew we were walking into the lion’s den as two cisgendered, heterosexual, white, STEM studying, christian… Read more: Extending the Conversation