Analysis

We have trouble understanding and accepting the image of a loving God, as we have grown too familiar with the type of love that offers itself only when it finds in a person the qualities that make them easy to love.

Before setting off to walk Papua New Guinea’s Kokoda Track, I was worried about a few things: blisters, staying hydrated, getting gastro (I’ve contracted it before in PNG—not a pleasant experience), being physically up to the challenge, having the right equipment . . . the list could probably go on. One thing I was not worried about was having a panic attack. Little...

How do you respond when someone asks: "How are you"? With a slight shrug and an unconvincing "Fine"? What else could you say, when you are not convinced that your daily life adds up to anything more than that?

When I was young, I wanted to be the first person to set foot on Mars.

A cold flash, like the strange, icy feeling after a burn, runs through his body with every breath. He feels his heart racing. It feels like it is counting down to the moment when it will explode—or, mercifully, to the moment when he will turn his pillow to the cooler side, and finally fall asleep.

In the late 1980s, Donald Trump was asked how much money it would take to make him happy. His answer? “Ten per cent more.” 

I open the window and breathe in the air, trying to guess the weather. Floating around, mixed, are scents and miasms alike; it's hard to decipher these intricate clues.

I don’t think I did anything significant the afternoon I saw the movie “Awakenings”. The feeling that I had reached the heart of the human condition strongly impressed me with the idea that we are born captive in a limited nature, and that gave me a heavy feeling of loss.

Many certainties and convictions will be swept away. Many things that we thought were impossible are happening. The day after we have won, it will not be a return to the day before; we will be stronger morally.

There have now been over 12 million cases of COVID-19 infection globally, and half a million deaths. Researchers are constantly looking for new and better information to reduce the uncertainty around the virus.

In the centuries since science has gained autonomy from religion, spokesmen on both sides have grown accustomed to looking at each other with suspicion, ignoring each other, and addressing their followers by preaching against the “others." There seemed to be little hope that scientists and people of faith would listen to each other and try to develop a common language, if not a...

Up until the Enlightenment, the idea that the miracles recorded in the pages of the Bible happened as the biblical writers described them was widely accepted. With the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an alternative theory emerged: that miracles were not possible in naturalistic metaphysics.

God uses the traits we dislike as well as our weaknesses to create something great, beyond our abilities and imagination. This is the message that pervades the pages of "The Woman with the Book", the biography of the missionary Gladys Aylward.

In a society with a pragmatic mindset, any kind of belief is subject only to practical judgments. Effectiveness, usefulness, and utility are the basic criteria by which actions, deeds or beliefs are valued.

While Santa Claus, his reindeer, and the various stories that add to the magic of the holidays easily capture children's imaginations, we may find that introducing them to the true story of the birth of Jesus is more difficult—or at least that it's not as easy to present a true story in as attractive a package as the fiction has been wrapped in.