How Western Individualism Quietly Undermines the Solas

Last updated on: January 21, 2026 at 8:33 am By Brad Vaughn

Evangelicals love the solas. They’re short, sturdy, and hard to wiggle out of. Scripture alone. Faith alone. Grace alone. Christ alone. God’s glory alone. They remind us that Christianity is not a religion of self-improvement or of spiritual résumé-building but a means of rescue. Salvation doesn’t come from human effort, church credentials, or religious performance. Salvation comes from God. Something strange, however, has happened in the modern West. In a lot of churches, the solas don’t function as anchors for... Read more

Why Do I Wear a Guillotine Around My Neck?

Last updated on: April 28, 2026 at 7:12 am By Brad Vaughn

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“Why do you wear a guillotine around you neck?,” someone asked me. Just recently, a student gave me a guillotine pendant after we finished reading A Tale of Two Cities. I now wear it, openly, around my neck, certainly not as an endorsement of revolutionary violence, but as a reminder and a provocation to genuine reflection. In A Tale of Two Cities, the guillotine is never just a machine. It is an idea. A promise. A hope. And Dickens insists... Read more

Why Christianity Needs Individuals but Rejects Individualism

Last updated on: April 14, 2026 at 6:50 am By Brad Vaughn

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One of the great confusions of modern Western culture is that we’ve learned to use the words individual and individualism as if they were interchangeable. They are not. They name radically different visions of what a human being is. This confusion runs so deep that many Christians feel forced into a false choice: either you resist “individualism” and risk crushing the person, or you celebrate individuality and slide into expressive autonomy. However, that is a false dilemma. The biblical vision... Read more

The Gulag Theology of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Last updated on: March 16, 2026 at 2:13 pm By Brad Vaughn

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Some books wear their theology on the surface. Others do not say much about God directly, yet they force us to ask theological questions because they strip life down to the bone. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is that kind of book. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s short novel is set in a Soviet labor camp under Stalin. It follows one ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, through one ordinary day. There is no dramatic escape. No heroic revolt. No stirring... Read more

What are Essential Elements of Atonement?

Last updated on: July 21, 2025 at 1:03 pm By Brad Vaughn

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What exactly is atonement? Despite its importance, this question receives oversimplified answers that miss the biblical text’s own logic. Read more

Seeking Pleasure and Joy Via Dopamine and Oxytocin

Last updated on: July 21, 2025 at 12:45 pm By Brad Vaughn

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What if pleasure is associated with dopamine and joy with oxytocin? How might that help us understand our pursuit of happiness? Read more

How Fear of AI Makes Us Worse Teachers

Last updated on: January 11, 2026 at 6:11 pm By Brad Vaughn

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We're in a quiet crisis in education, and it's not primarily a technological one. It's a crisis of fear, especially of AI Read more

Do We Have Guilt Before All and For All?

Last updated on: June 13, 2025 at 4:15 pm By Brad Vaughn

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Few figures in literature express a more striking theology of repentance and responsibility than Elder Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov (a novel I finally read this past year). His view of guilt will stretch even the most law-oriented Westerners. Among his more arresting claims is this: “There is only one thing, one truth: to go and make yourself responsible for all men’s sins.” For many readers, especially those shaped by a Western, Protestant framework, this sounds excessive—if not outright heretical.... Read more

Can Ethnic Pride Be Rational?

Last updated on: January 6, 2026 at 7:15 am By Brad Vaughn

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In a recent conversation, someone in our group posed the question, “Is it rational to have cultural or ethnic pride? If we didn’t accomplish anything our ethnic group did in the past, and we’re just products of our parents’ biology, is it actually rational to feel ethnic pride?” For some, this seems like a nonsensical question, especially in a day when ethnicity and culture (for many people) have become idols in themselves. But it’s a fair question, one that cuts... Read more

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