The Ecumenism Files III: From the Reformation to Postmodernity
The dialectical spirit of ecumenism gives rise, among other things, to a question whose full answer is still awaited: How is it that the critical spirit and rationalism of Enlightenment origin, combined with making the Bible available to ordinary people, has led to so many schisms?
The relativity of time
Time can exist in many forms—work time, free time, leisure time—and it has a lot of possessive adjectives: my time, your time, our time. The relativity of time can often lead to confusion because of the accompanying mixture of emotions, such as fear, joy, satisfaction, or expectation. It was this relativity of time that led me to need to define it in my...
Rest and leisure: no one excuses distraction anymore
Nearly four millennia after the stone ratification of the law on weekly rest, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) reiterates the right of every person to rest and leisure.[1]
The face of a love that waits at the gates of Heaven
With Jesus, it was always different. For most of my life, I could only see God the Father through a legalistic filter. But with Jesus, it was always different.
Accurate statistics and faulty interpreters
Even the most rigorously researched statistics are not immune from misinterpretation, and they can often be used in a way that obscures the truth.
The sad people at the circus
At night, the main boulevard in Las Vegas is so crowded that in order to move forward you actually have to push your way through the motley crowd. People of all kinds fill the space already suffocated by the construction conglomerate, which is equally diverse.
Rich man, poor man: The exam right outside your door
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
The great COVID-19 supermarket stampede
Last year, most of us were blindsided when we entered our local supermarket, trudged down the toilet paper aisle and were confronted with extended shelves of emptiness. Somewhat disappointed and definitely a little bit anxious (especially if we were running low on the soft, white goodness), we began to wonder how long it would be before we sighted toilet paper again.
Gentle parenting and the illusion of perfect choices
Gentle parenting—how did this seemingly wholesome phrase come to elicit such strong negative reactions as contempt, sarcasm, and condescension?
Is faith reasonable?
Science and faith, as important tools in the knowledge process, are often perceived to be in a tense relationship with each other, because of the fundamentally different worldviews that characterize them. The implications for life’s big questions are obvious—and sufficient to rob someone of the comfort of indifference towards such high-stakes conclusions.
The teachings of John Calvin | Calvinism
In 2017, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the French publication La Reforme conducted a survey to find out what people knew about two famous personalities of Protestantism: the German Luther and the Frenchman Calvin. To the amazement of the initiators, the study showed that Luther’s name was much more familiar to the French than that of their compatriot,...
The break between the Old and New Testament and the dilemma of the unchanging God
My first Bible was given to me by Pastor Damian Zamfir in the winter of 1972. Pastor Zamfir, the man who led my first steps on the path to Christ, invited me to visit him in the parish house of the Adventist church on Rodnei Street in Targoviste.
Mothering in times of anxiety
The young generations of women raised with the ideal of the family in which the man and the woman are team partners, equal both at home and outside it, discover that their expectations have taken precedence over the real course of society. The most surprised are, unpredictably, women who are highly educated.
COVID-19: Inequality and the pandemic
When confronted with the pandemic, we are anything but equals.
Chernobyl: The cost of lies
On April 26th 1986, reactor 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded. The effects were catastrophic—it was the worst nuclear disaster in history. The explosion let out the equivalent of 500 Hiroshima bombs-worth of radiation, and the area around Chernobyl—including the town of Pripyat—is now uninhabited. It will be unsafe to live there for the next 20,000 years.


























