The story of our country began as a single, unified narrative—all men created equal in the eyes of God, equipped for the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness—and we fought wars to protect that narrative.
Read moreSo About That Column in the Newspaper...
On August 18, 2019 I wrote my first column for the Valdosta Daily Times….Whether my column appeals to people with a strong, clear voice is up to me and the craft. Whether it performs some function of change and reform is up to the Maker.
Read moreIn Defense of Poetry
"Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.” ~Percy Bysshe Shelley
Read moreOn the Childishness of Cynicism
Some adults never mature through the adolescent problem of dread, so they adopt a view of cynicism as a coping mechanism against their inability to see the world as redeemable, which view they convince themselves and others is a more elevated and intellectual view of life. It’s my argument that this bullying of hope is simply selfishness and weakness and is only overcome by humility and the Gospel.
Read moreMy Suffering Led Me to Question God, and That Led Me to Sin
Call me Icarus. My God-given name is Adam, and what’s unfortunate is I’ve always lived up to that name. The miracle came when God broke my rebellion and named me Christian, but when I began to suffer, the miracle seemed like wishful thinking.
Read moreIntegrating Faith and Work for a Meaningful Life
Hugh Whelchel’s book How Then Should We Work? just keeps on giving. I was reviewing my notes and came across quotes that seemed to answer the very same questions I’d been asking recently. It was uncanny.
Read moreMy Personal Creed
Teaching the mind the way to go, and making sure that path is absolutely correct—overemphasizing nothing, leaving nothing out—is a task only accomplished by Christian creeds. It's time to make your own personal creed.
Read morePutting the Mental Monkey to Bed: A Case for Creeds
The mind is a power for great good and great evil, and it is our obligation to master it, to teach it the way it should go, otherwise it will lead us astray; and the main way to train and lead the mind is through developing and memorizing creeds.
Read moreThe Black and White Fallacy, and the Christian Gospel
It’s a little hard to believe that life is really just about a single choice. Actually, sometimes it’s impossible to believe—because often there is a third way. But what the Christian Gospel claims is that there is no third way, that among the millions of layers of complexity in life, there really are only two paths you can take. This, to the secularist, is illogical—the perfect example of the black and white logical fallacy.
Read moreIsrael, the Church, and the Spiritual Battle of Faith
We Bible readers often like to make fun of Israel because they are so pathetic. They’re easy to make fun of. But sometimes it hits a little too close to home.
Read moreThe Christian Manifesto, Or, What it Means to be a Christian
For me, being a Christian, one of the hardest questions to answer is also the most important question people can ask me: What does it mean to be a Christian? It’s like asking a hippopotamus what it’s like to be a hippo.
Read moreIn Pursuit of Rest, Dreams Can Get in the Way
A while back I wrote on the Sullenness of the In-Between, exploring the emotional angst of the crossroads in life, and I naïvely thought that was that. But life continues to frustrate me: my dreams get dashed, my hope wavers, my faith flames out, and I often wonder how to go on—specifically, how I’m supposed to keep dreaming.
Read moreDeath, Grief, and a Firm Foundation: In Loving Memory of Haddie Hardeman
I just had to look at the ground. The lady in front of me was wearing knee-high black leather boots that had a little metal tag on the back with fine print that read “The Frye Company” and I thought how nice they were, and then I thought how Haddie will never wear those.
Read moreWhat Skeptics, Bored Christians, Immigrants, and Church Kids Can Teach Us About Life
I’ve been having this debate with myself for a while about skeptics. If you spend any time at all reading and listening to skeptics, you’ve probably asked yourself the same question I keep asking myself. What makes them so desperate and earnest and, I guess, alive?
Read moreThe Biblical Imagination: Turning Trees into Theological Reminders
There’s this big, old oak tree on the outside of the long corner of North Oak Street Extension that has a big scar on it from where this guy my dad went to high school with crashed his car into it over 30 years ago.
Read moreRedemption: Finding True Healing from Sin
Our culture is on a rampage to promote sin and destroy goodness—the great irony is it doesn't realize it's hacking off the very branch its ladder is leaning on.
Read moreWhat Does it Mean to be Alive?
I can count on one hand the amount of times this has happened to me. I’m just sitting there minding my own business when suddenly I feel as if I’m watching myself, as if the rubber band of my imagination breaks and my consciousness is left spread out in space....And it’s in those rare moments that I glimpse the truth about my life, about my existence.
Read moreThe Sullenness of The In-Between
The sun rises, the sun falls: waves roll in and out with the tide. Heat comes in Summer and cold in Winter, the wind chilling the earth. We know the patterns of life, and we even expect them to flow, but sometimes they don’t—sometimes they get stuck.
Read moreReviewing 2015 for AdamSetser.com and Exploring My Calling to Write
2015 was the first year for AdamSetser.com and my push to publish something regularly. I’ve had a hard time figuring out what writing means and how I am to go about doing it, and that has led me into some really dark places. But before we get there, let’s recap.
Read moreDocumenting 2015 in Mental Pictures
Some of my most thoughtful reflections from 2015 on life and the human condition in this Fallen World in a broken set of mental pictures.
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