The need for meaning: life’s oxygen mask
“Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.”— Bertolt Brecht
When faith falters, and couples drift apart
Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke
What about the failures that haunt us?
A smooth sea never gave a skilled sailor, said Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that without hardship, challenges and even failures, we cannot become our best selves.
COVID-19: Inequality and the pandemic
When confronted with the pandemic, we are anything but equals.
Breathe deep: An interview on vaping with Professor Renee Bittoun
Our brain develops, unfortunately, a quirky response to nicotine. It shouldn’t really be there. It shouldn’t be in your breath, let alone you reacting to it, let alone you smoking anything or vaping anything. We shouldn’t even be near it.
The “background noise” of free will
What would you say if you read an article that tells you that the human ability to make choices freely and consciously—that is, free will—might just be an illusion? What if the article backs up its claims with scientific research? Such curiosity is sparked by an article published on livescience.com.
Teaching children how to pray
In talking to pastor Cristian Modan, the religion teacher and chaplain at Mihai Ionescu School in Bucharest, I wanted to find out how we should teach children to communicate with God.
Free to be responsible
Several simple experiments have shown that certain neural processes that are activated when performing an action increase in intensity with fractions of a second or even whole seconds before conscious thinking is informed about the performance of that action.
“When doctors don’t know what to do, it’s time for alternative medicine.” True or false?
When it comes to cases where "doctors don't know what to do," the first thought that comes to mind is usually cancer. Conventional treatment, which can prolong life for a few years and sometimes just a few months, comes at a high price in the quality of life, and patients come to prefer the "natural" way: alternative medicine.
God, armed violence and genocide
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?
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)
The fall of communism
“Communism is the only serious rival to Christianity.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
Communist prisons were filled with Christians of every denomination, from lay believers...
Costly choices
One reason, if not the reason why the story of humanity's first wrong choice, the original failure, is vehemently denounced is the brutality with which this event—a seemingly trivial "dietary" decision that turned out to be the most costly ever made by a human being—reminds us more powerfully than any other story how painful the consequences of our mistakes can be. We do...
The splendour of existence
"From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us" (Acts 17:26-27).
The One Who emptied Himself
Some moments in life fade quickly, like ephemeral portraits in the memory's archive. Others, though we have never witnessed them, haunt us and force us to reconsider our perception of life, time, and our shadow self.