Essays
Essays by Arlen Vare exploring the human condition, existential freedom, moral responsibility, truth, and contemporary public life.
Essays by Arlen Vare on the human condition, existential freedom, finitude, moral responsibility, truth, and contemporary public life.
These writings examine the ideas, social forces, and moral tensions that shape how we understand ourselves and the world around us. They approach contemporary questions philosophically, seeking not merely to describe events, but to uncover the deeper structures of thought, value, and responsibility beneath them.
New essays are published regularly.
Why Is “In God We Trust” on U.S. Currency?
Why is “In God We Trust” printed on U.S. currency? Explore its history, how it became America’s national motto, and its connection to the Bible.
Arlen Vare
Can a Quote Stand Up to Scrutiny?
Arthur C. Clarke argued that religion had hijacked morality. Many agreed. But how much of his argument had they actually considered? A reflection on famous quotes, persuasive language, and independent thinking.
Arlen Vare
Our Calling as Christians | Arlen Vare
What does it mean to follow Christ after the church service is over? His love calls us to turn from sin and learn to love the people around us.
Arlen Vare
How Do You Prove You’re Not Mentally Ill? | Arlen Vare
What happens when denying a diagnosis is treated as evidence of illness? From psychiatric abuse to international human rights law, this essay asks who can protect those deprived of freedom.
Arlen Vare
Why Organizations Become Corrupt
Organizations let people achieve what individuals cannot. Yet collective power does not guarantee fidelity to purpose. From Babel to modern scandals, the deeper danger is how power, divided responsibility, and self-preservation can gradually displace mission.
Arlen Vare
God Does Not Seem to Be in a Hurry
Modern life teaches us to expect speed, results, and immediate answers. Scripture reveals a different rhythm: patience, faith, and a love willing to wait.
Arlen Vare
On the Limits of Human Choice
We often imagine that having alternatives means having choices. But what a person can actually choose is constrained by knowledge, ability, resources, history and time. Our real choices are often far more limited than they appear.
Arlen Vare
What Questions Are Worth Studying in Philosophy?
A philosophical question should face two tests: whether its claims are justified, and whether the question itself is important enough to deserve our limited intellectual attention.
Arlen Vare
Before We Ask How to Live
Before asking how we should live, we may need to ask a more fundamental question: what is the condition of our existence?
Arlen Vare
The Incompletability of Understanding Death
We can understand death, witness it in others, and come close to it ourselves. But we cannot undergo our own death and then return to understand it. Death sets a boundary that neither knowledge nor experience can fully cross.
Arlen Vare
From Open World to NPC: The Irreversibility of Action
Before we act, more than one future remains possible. Once an action enters the past, it becomes part of a history we cannot rewrite. Yet as long as life continues, the future is not fully closed.
Arlen Vare
Why Must Public Health Be Patriotic?
A historical label can outlive the conditions that produced it. This essay examines how patriotic language reshapes public judgment, consumer choice, and responsibility.
Arlen Vare
How Education Should Change
What happens when education makes people more capable without making them more trustworthy? The deeper task of education is to ask what human ability should ultimately serve.
Arlen Vare
How Should We Understand Suffering?
Suffering does not guarantee wisdom, faith, or meaning. It can shatter the world a person relies on and close the future from view. To understand suffering is not to justify it, but to ask how life can remain open when loss is irreversible and explanation remains incomplete.
Arlen Vare
Why Can the Righteous Lose Everything? | The Book of Job
The Book of Job begins with a man declared blameless and upright—and then strips him of his children, wealth, and health. What follows is not an explanation of suffering, but a challenge to the ways we explain it.
Arlen Vare
I Know
Inspired by Revelation 2:13, “I Know” is a poem about suffering, steadfast faith, and the assurance that God remains present in the deepest darkness.
Arlen Vare