What about the 21st century?

Regardless of what is said about the predictive nature of the words traditionally attributed to Malraux—"The 21st century will be religious or it will not be"—the truth is that almost two decades of this century have passed, and we don't really know where we are going.

COVID-19 vaccine: risks, benefits, recommendations and precautions

Vaccination allows the creation of an effective and long-lasting defense of the body against the disease. In the confrontation with the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination, with its pros and cons, is currently one of the solutions that science has offered to humanity.

The suicide plant

My brother and I were thrashing through the bush en-route to a peak overlooking Airlie Beach in far North Queensland. A short hike that was only meant to be 800 metres seemed to go on forever. We stopped every person returning from the lookout to enquire about how much longer it would take for us to get there. “Oh just another 10 minutes,”...

The portrait of Jesus (I): Jesus, the Saviour

Salvation is not a concept Christianity discovered. In a broad sense, salvation means rescue from any danger or adverse situation.

Hungry for youth and immortality

Crouched in the trenches of the horror of old age, modern individuals no longer wish to recover anything from the natural ageing process that their ancestors practised with such serenity. On the contrary, the first signs of physical decline become the raw material for a wide range of efforts (from picturesque to sickly) to forge a youth that the mirror refuses to restore.

Why touch matters

Immigrating to the United Kingdom was a bold move. As a Latina, I had a lot to get used to, from cars driving on “the wrong side of the road” and the constant weather talk to the beautiful, fluffy texture of Yorkshire puddings. But one of the most shocking elements of my new culture was how seldom people hugged each other. During my...

Mindfulness: Little Red Riding Hood does not live in the present moment

"It was dark inside the wolf." Like a chef who reinterprets a traditional dish for an expensive urban restaurant, writer Margaret Atwood proposed to the students of her masterclass a reinterpretation of the story "Little Red Riding Hood", in line with the most current tastes and attention skills: a Little Red Riding Hood that lives in the present moment.

Staring death in the eye

"In films you often get dying words – someone gasping out things like 'Please tell Jim I love him', which sort of makes me laugh. I've never seen that happen," says psychologist Lesley Fallowfield, highlighting the discrepancy between how people usually die and our misperception of how life ends. Not only is the transition from life to death usually slow, involving a period...

No one deserves to have that much money

In a dilapidated shack in Nairobi, a young woman makes her confession to the BBC reporter eager to hear her story: “I don’t know why God allows some people to be poor while others are rich.”

Being your best you

A week before he left for college, megachurch pastor Steven Furtick’s oldest son asked him, “Out of everything you’ve taught me, what’s the best advice you can give me right now?” 

Freedoms on the verge of extinction

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." (Ayn Rand)

Thanksgiving and praise, ingredients of the prayer that changes us

The imbalance between the requests and the thanksgiving we bring into our worship is a topic any Christian can talk about, and not just based on other people’s experience. As long as we approach praise and thanksgiving as duties to be fulfilled, we will miss the greatest blessings that can rest upon a heart full of gratitude.

From Charon’s skiff to the tomb of Lazarus | Part 1

Belief in life after death is present in many religions and cultures and has always been an important aid in accepting the tragic reality of death. However, rather than speaking of the intrinsic immortality of the soul, the Bible speaks of the future resurrection of the dead.

All juiced up

I have a mentor friend at the gym who I catch up with every now and again between sets. He’s one of those massive dudes who everyone in the gym knows—his walk from the locker to the dumbbell rack consists of greeting and fist-bumping pretty much every guy on the way.

Did Martin Luther really believe in Sola Scriptura?

For ten years Luther read the Bible twice a year. His first Bible was so thoroughly read that he "knew what was on every page and where every passage was found." Martin Luther is the most prominent name among those who brought about the Reformation and took Bible study to a new level.