Every generation returns, in one way or another, to the same enduring questions. Why are we here? What does it mean to be human? How do we make sense of evil and suffering? What is a good life? What is freedom for? What do love, work, responsibility, sacrifice, and faithfulness ask of us? The list runs the length of our lives. These are not questions for specialists or academics alone. They belong first to ordinary people trying to live meaningful lives. They arise around tables with family and friends, in seasons of suffering and loss, in the sacred work we undertake in every job, in the raising of children, and in those quiet moments when attention gives way to wonder and we begin to ask what our lives are truly for.
As an educator, my deepest longing has always been to help people learn to think and live in such a way that joy and goodness might mark their lives in every season. My simple answer to how this might be experienced is that the Christian life is more than we can imagine and offers a joy that knows no end. No one can plumb the depths of its truth, measure the breadth of its beauty, or exhaust the love and peace that are found in communion with Jesus Christ. And yet the Christian life is also full of mystery, questions, and seeming paradoxes. So as we go further up and further into this sort of life, our holy attention to it gives rise to greater awe, wonder, gratitude, and surrender.
The Christian life is an ongoing invitation to renewal, again and again, in every season of life
The Christian life is an ongoing invitation to renewal, again and again, in every season of life, as we learn to see more clearly what is true, love more deeply what is good, and take up our place in God’s story with greater hope and courage. There is not a square inch of the created world over which Christ does not declare, “Mine.” So many answers to these perennial questions are discovered not in abstraction, but as we participate joyfully in the ordinary and seemingly temporal realities of our extraordinary lives.
In 1905, G.K. Chesterton wrote a piece for the Daily News on government and politics. In it, he observed, “The State can only free society from the criminal; the Church sought to free the criminal from the crime. Abolish religion if you like. Throw everything on secular government if you like. But do not be surprised if a machinery that was never meant to do anything but secure external decency and order fails to secure internal honesty and peace.” He then goes on to address the deeper question beneath our human affairs, whether in government, economics, politics, or elsewhere: “The answer to the question “What is Wrong?” is, or should be, “I am wrong.” Until a man can give that answer his idealism is only a hobby.”
I find myself agreeing with Chesterton. What is wrong with the world? What is wrong in my world? In the most immediate sense, I am. And yet the Christian life offers the most hopeful and demanding response to this terrible problem we all find ourselves in. If we are, in part, what is wrong, what then can we offer the world? We can offer lives devoted to holiness, lives set apart not for our own glory, but for the glory of God, for the love of our neighbor, and for the joyful renewal of all things. We do not offer God our perfection, for we have none to give; we offer Him our repentance, our obedience, and our imperfect but earnest commitment to faithful contribution in every square inch of our lives, until Christ is all in all.
Over our first ten years, Pacifica discovered how deeply adults are longing for places where meaningful conversation like this can happen. Places where honest questions can be asked, serious ideas can be explored, and lives can be formed for the better in community. Through our The Great Conversation events, pastors, economists, historians, theologians, and public leaders have engaged thousands from throughout our Southern California community on ideas of real consequence. The annual C.S. Lewis Dinner has brought leading Lewis scholars from around the world into conversation with our community. Pacifica Book Clubs have gathered adults on campus to read and discuss great works of literature and philosophy in ways that are substantial and accessible to first-time readers and seasoned readers alike. Homer, Dante, Lewis, Milton, Plato, and Augustine have all become companions through these groups. Together, these offerings live under the banner of the Pacifica Forum and are available to the wider Orange County community.
The Porch is the next expression of our commitment to being a trusted resource for thoughtful reflection and human formation. Each issue will offer a single argument-driven essay that engages an enduring question or idea and invites conversation through shared reading. Our hope is to awaken what is best in us: deeper thought, truer creativity, stronger character, and a more hopeful sense of vocation in the one life we are given.
Each essay will conclude with a brief “Take It Further” section, offering a simple question to spark conversation and a short Christian practice to carry the article’s themes into daily life. The point is to offer ideas that can be discussed, tested, practiced, and passed along.
Along the way, The Porch will surely engage ideas that invite disagreement. That is not a problem to avoid, but part of the work. Serious engagement requires the ability to wrestle with disagreement honestly, thoughtfully, and charitably. Aristotle observed that an educated person should be able to consider an idea without immediately accepting it. Christians are called to something deeper still: to love their neighbors as fellow image-bearers of God, even when convictions differ sharply.
Fewer friendships make room for patient dialogue. Too often, public life rewards reaction over reflection, signaling over persuasion, and victory over understanding.
That matters because one of the clearest signs of strain in our common life is the loss of shared conversation. Fewer people read common works or engage with shared questions. Fewer friendships make room for patient dialogue. Too often, public life rewards reaction over reflection, signaling over persuasion, and victory over understanding. We have not simply grown more divided; we have also become less practiced in the habits that make meaningful conversation possible.
The Porch hopes, in its own small way, to help recover those habits. It wants to engage hospitably with the enduring questions that men and women, and Christians in particular, have wrestled with across the centuries. Again, these questions belong not first to the academy, but to people seeking to live good and purposeful lives and The Porch is meant to serve people desiring more of that in their life and work.
For that reason, The Porch will not attempt to speak to every topic. Wisdom requires not only knowing what to say, but also knowing what is ours to take up. This publication will write within the bounds of Pacifica’s mission and from the foundation of its Christian convictions. Its aim is not to chase every controversy or cultural trend, but to offer what is true, helpful, and fitting for the kind of human formation and flourishing we are called to advance.
This, then, is the conversation The Porch hopes to foster: thoughtful but accessible, rooted in conviction yet marked by humility, honest about disagreement yet committed to charity. In a noisy age, that may seem like a modest offering. But modest offerings, faithfully given, can still strengthen a home, a friendship, a school, a church, and even the shared life of a community.
So let more friends and neighbors gather on our porches. Let them come as fellow travelers, ready for conversation, honest reflection, and the joyful work of learning to think and live well together before God. Let them come with hope, with humility, and with a shared desire to contribute meaningfully to the renewal of all things, until Christ is all in all.
LET’S TAKE IT FURTHER
The questions we keep returning to often reveal where God may be inviting us to deeper wisdom, trust, and faithfulness. Ask Christ to help you see clearly, receive truth humbly, and respond with courage.
A Question: What is one enduring question you find yourself returning to in this season of life, and where are you looking for wisdom?
A Practice: Invite a trusted friend, spouse, mentor, pastor, or family member into the question you are carrying. Ask them not simply for advice, but to help you discern what faithfulness might look like in this season, trusting that God often gives wisdom along the path to obedience.
Do you want to read with us this year?
The Pacifica Book Club invites parents, alumni, and friends to join us in one of the oldest and richest human endeavors: reading great books in the company of friends.