How to forge friendships from resilient material

The whirlwind of activities and deadlines that adult life throws at us often makes us resistant to closeness. We abandon old friends and neglect building new relationships until inevitably, the day comes when we start feeling pressed against the self-erected walls of loneliness.

A fulfilled life in the presence of God: the picture

A fulfilled life is built on the foundation of faith and the desire to imitate the character of God, in a world conceptualised around the truth.

Pope Leo XIV: the relationship between the first American pope and US politics

Pope Leo XIV, who was born Robert Francis Prevost, was elected the 267th Supreme Pontiff. Born in the south of Chicago in 1955, he is the first North American pope. Despite this, his relationship with US politics is more complex than his biography might suggest.

What if I don’t need God?

Far more terrifying than persecution, ideologies, and militant atheism put together may be the hidden force behind the seemingly innocuous statement: "You don't need God!"

Solidarity: a key to human vulnerability

Natural disasters, financial crises, pandemics, wars and social unrest—each striking society in increasingly rapid succession—serve as stark reminders of our vulnerability.

Is Jesus Christ the only Saviour of the world?

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?

Prayers of thanksgiving and praise

When we think of gratitude and a lack of gratitude, the biblical scene that comes to mind is the healing of the ten lepers, of whom only one, a Samaritan, returned to thank the Saviour, worshiping and praising God in a loud voice (Luke 17:15-16).

Why is everyone so angry all the time?

"Why is everyone so angry about everything all of the time?" That was the title of a Sydney Morning Herald article by journalist and academic Waleed Aly. The question was originally tweeted by Sally, a viewer of the BBC’s Question Time.

Aurelius Augustine

Aurelius Augustine (354-430) is known for the stirring Christian experience he described in his Confessions and for the seminal theological thought that has shaped theology to this day.

Why I am a Christian

To believe is not to close one's eyes to questions or to abandon reason in favour of illusory spiritual comfort.

Overcoming trauma and the role of forgiveness in family life

Studies indicate that most people experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime, whether physical or psychological.

The only death that can be avoided

"If there is anything more heartbreaking than a body perishing for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from hunger for the light." (Victor Hugo)
brain

More than a brain in a jar

Michael Paterniti is the man who crossed America in 1997, carrying a jar containing Albert Einstein's brain in the trunk of a rented Buick. This journalist is not the only man who can brag about this memory, because riding shotgun was Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who had stolen the brain of the great physicist, in the hope that he would be able to...

Where has love gone?

Born in 1999, Alex is on the cusp of the millennial generation. We're 12 years apart, but we have a lot in common. One is an unhappy time at school. Back in my day, it was called being an "emo": a kid who was too sensitive, too sad, too lonely, too shy, too everything.

Hamstrung by belief

Faith and sports are strange bedfellows, and with the FIFA World Cup just around the corner, it is perhaps the only time in the world that more prayers are offered up to any god, as nearly half the planet will tune in to watch the tournament. Like most committed sports fans, I will be one of those billions hanging on to every moment, making earnest,...