Analysis

What does it take to be the best? Most people will tell you it’s a combination of hard work and talent. Ask Australian high jumper Nicola McDermott, however, and you’ll quickly realise it’s a mental thing. It’s absolute belief that you can achieve whatever you set your mind to.

After 25 years in the ministry, during which he never once considered leaving, Pastor Tim Kuperus admits that the last three years have been difficult enough for him to consider a different path.

Although they are constantly improving their preparedness for crises and disasters, modern societies find themselves powerless in the face of a growing threat: transnational crises.

The possibility of completely rewriting the rules by which we organise our lives has always captured people's imagination. However, such a reorganisation has materialised, at best, in the pages of a philosophical book and has remained, for the most part, a utopia. But there are exceptions, of course.

Martin Luther believed that he knew exactly what God expected of him, and in the tireless endeavour to please God, he came to the point of hating Him.

One of today's dilemmas disputes, dialectically, the complex reality of the Bible and the secular way of looking at the "terror of history": Is God a source of morality superior to humanism, or not?

Things happen anyway, whether good or bad. Why put extra effort into trying to respond positively when certain things happen? Why be grateful?

The end of the line for Christian perfectionism is not perfection, but atheism. This is because what we imagine to be the constant unsatisfied look of God upon us, is a burden too heavy for any human to bear.

Are you financially literate? If your financial management strategy is one of the following four, then the answer is probably no.

"I was wrong. I'm sorry"—these words can have a magical effect on a struggling relationship. But if we fail to show empathy, the apology will sound fake or hurt the offended person even more.

"We've got all you need, and so much more!" is the tagline that appears in the opening minutes of a famous animated film; a slogan that is not at all disturbing to viewers who have long since become accustomed to the commercials of consumer society.

Courage is a special virtue: unlike other virtues that can be formed and polished over time, courage only makes itself known spontaneously and fully in situations where one is required to act, proving its existence.

In the spring of 2022, I interviewed the venerable professor of Hebrew exegesis, Jacques Doukhan, for the second time. Ten years before, in our first interview, we discussed his life: his beginnings in a Jewish family in Constantine, Algeria, his studies in France, Switzerland and the United States, his work as a teacher and author. This time we talked about the study that...

The increased frequency with which doctors are encountering antibiotic-resistant bacteria is worrying. And it could affect an already precarious medical field—cancer treatment.

John the Baptist's call—"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near"—succeeded in bringing Jews "from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan" to the desert where the prophet preached, to confess their sins and be baptised. Two thousand years later, the exhortation to "repent" is buried under a mountain of pejorative associations.