Analysis

When you are addicted to alcohol, the whole of society is your enemy: TV shows, their commercials, your neighbours in your free time, the family at big holiday gatherings, entire aisles in shops that convey the message that "you'll feel better if you drink alcohol".

"[B]ut test them all; hold on to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

I was a sickly child. If I wasn’t catching a humble cold, it was something more exotic, like whooping cough or bronchitis.

During the COVID-19 lockdown last year, I lived with some messy people. I’d moved into a house that I shared with a wonderful couple of brothers. They were almost everything you could ask for in a set of housemates. Friendly, funny, respectful of your privacy . . . genuinely great people in almost every respect.

Besides carefree days, Christmas carols and traditional sweet breads, any respectable December also includes an evaluation of the achievements of the previous year and making plans for the future.

To err is human. “The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no ideas”, Albert Einstein said.

We often treat burnout syndrome as a diagnostic fad. In reality, overworking has become the norm, and its consequences are serious enough to urge us to identify the best strategies to prevent it.

The scenario in which God is a judge and His creatures are subject to His judgment culminates, in the Bible, with a happy ending for all lovers of righteousness. But what would be the end of a situation in which God is the accused in a trial instituted by His creatures? Whose ending would be happy?

The Jewish people walked on dry land in the middle of the water, not in the Red Sea, but somewhere in the Nile Delta. This conclusion by researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado (USA) made headlines on Reuters and the BBC in September 2010.

The inability of the mind to concentrate on what one is experiencing in a particular moment has the effect of overshadowing the joy of a day, even when the subject of the wandering thoughts is as pleasant as can be.

Over the last 25 years, the relationship between theology and natural disasters has undergone intense scrutiny, with its consequences becoming increasingly apparent as disasters have remained a key public interest.

Money is essential in our Western world. It allows us to purchase the necessities of life—food and shelter, for instance. It pays the bills for heating and cooling. There may even be enough for some luxuries.

At the age of 20, I graduated from the Orthodox Theological Seminary. I thought I was talented, I was confident, and I had a very clear idea of the path I wanted to take in life. I had all the answers. Or perhaps I hadn't asked myself enough questions.

The controversial story of Baruch Spinoza takes on a fascinating dimension with the explosive excommunication from the Jewish community decreed by the leaders of the Portuguese Sephardic community in Amsterdam—a decision accompanied by one of the most severe anathemas. This document made Spinoza one of the most reviled philosophers by both Jews and Christians, but attitudes towards him began to change after the...

Until 2013, we only knew about the existence of Batman, the famous comic book hero, but almost a decade ago the whole world also got to know Batkid, a real boy from San Francisco, USA, whose story confirms the saying that “truth is stranger than fiction.”