Analysis

It is known that many Jews, some even contemporaries of Jesus, claimed to be the expected Messiah. Of these, only Jesus of Nazareth is the name that has endured over time. Still, too few of His contemporaries[1] recognized and accepted Him as the Messiah, and this reality raises a question: why was Jesus rejected?

I was talking to the man I call Professor and I asked him, "I know you had reservations about getting baptised. Why did you decide to do it anyway? What was the deciding factor?"

But why do our ambitions of self-improvement rarely stick the way we hope they will?

Western society has a fascination with cults. The word itself conjures up imagery of a seedy leader sporting dark aviator sunglasses and captivating a group of conservatively dressed people with his every syllable. The word brings a subtext of utter devotion but also absolute brainwashing or mind control.

Any large-scale phenomenon, such as a pandemic, activates our instinct to preserve our state of being—especially when we feel like we are losing it.

“And Who Is My Neighbour?” asked a Jewish teacher of the Law when Jesus Christ told him that eternal life entails observing two commandments: to love God and to love one’s neighbour.

Our planet may be fittingly compared to the 1994 film, Speed: A bomb is planted on a bus and rigged to explode when the bus slows to less than 80 kilometres per hour. The bus barrels through Los Angeles, hitting obstacles and endangering the lives of passengers and pedestrians until a solution is found.

I have two reasons for writing this article on identity crisis. First, I am the father of four children, three of whom are very different teenagers (14, 17 and 19 years old) and I think I have a vague idea of what it means to deal with teens. Second, in the studies I’ve recently taken up, I was surprised to discover that most...

In our everyday lives we ​​often resort to simply repeating what has been said or done before. But not everything that is old is authentic or correct. When we refer to tradition with full confidence that the way it was understood and acted on in the past is self-evident, we are committing the logical error of appealing to tradition, or false induction.

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.

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, every nine seconds, a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States. Which means that by the time you reach the end of this paragraph, yet another woman will have tragically become a victim of violence.

Starting with biblical stories, moving on to myths and legends, and finally reaching the contemporary film industry, people have always been fascinated by heroes. But what makes us look for heroes? What do modern heroes look like and what do they mean to the contemporary world?

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.

I was descending from Omu Peak, in the Bucegi Mountains, with a few dozen young people. It had not been an ideal hike, and we were behind schedule. The forest made the darkness even thicker as it began to cover the mountain, and slowly, our minds as well.

Most of us have been urged since we were little to not give up, to carry on, and to “go our own way”. The idea that giving up is a negative choice, a synonym for failure, or a sign of cowardice or inability, is deeply embedded in our minds.