Analysis

Every experience we live teaches us something about the world and God. These lessons are always perfectible. From the pain of other people, however, we learn the wrong lessons so easily.

For the first time in US history, the majority of Americans believe that even moderate alcohol consumption is detrimental to health. Just 54% of Americans say they still drink alcohol. This is the lowest percentage in nearly 20 years. However, it has taken a long time to reach these conclusions.

To what extent is ecumenism included in God's concerns? Does God's agenda include this objective?

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.

I love books as much as I love people, but if I’m honest with myself, sometimes I find a little more comfort in the company of books than in the presence of my fellow humans.

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.

You wouldn’t think so, but whether or not children do chores is one predictor of their future happiness and success. 

For at least one party, sibling estrangement can be more painful than loss through death, writes Fern Schumer Chapman, who was excluded from her brother's life for four decades.

Elspeth Muir’s brother, Alexander, died from drowning. It was 2009, and he had just turned 21. He died from drowning, but his death “was not foreshadowed by his love of water except that it explains why he was near a river, alone, with a blood-alcohol content of almost 0.25. My brother died because he was drunk, and because the drink made him stupid.”

Bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics; some butterflies and fish are developing new colours for better camouflage; and a series of laboratory experiments have revealed small but significant changes in various microorganisms. Are these phenomena conclusive evidence of evolution unfolding before our eyes?

Social interactions and the tools that facilitate them are changing the world in ways that even now, after all this time, we cannot anticipate.

The world of the homeless is the darker side of our world. It is inhabited by vagrants, drug addicts, and the powerless. This world has its own rules, customs, pleasures, and pains, but lacks meaning and peace. And those who enter this world struggle to leave it.

How can salvation be real and certain only through Jesus Christ when countless people have never even heard His name? If billions of people have no knowledge of Him, isn’t the role of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world exaggerated? And are there no other ways of salvation besides Him?

Could it be that, beyond economic, political or geostrategic difficulties, there are obstacles to the ideal of the common good that are inherent in human nature? And if something specific to human nature stood in the way of achieving this ideal, would it not lead to failure, regardless of overcoming all other difficulties?

Statistically, by now Josh should have been either in jail, living on the street, or dead. The long years in which he was abused and expelled from the families who took him in made him no longer trust anyone. But the love of adults who showed him that they cared was stronger than anything that pushed him toward self-destruction.