Analysis

More than a century ago, when the social sciences were just beginning to study the relationship between religion and health, elite scholars such as sociologist Émile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche repudiated religion consonantly, claiming that it had a toxic effect on individuals. 

Louis Zamperini experienced the bizarre smell of death so many times that he came to the verge of losing his mind. However, he survived, and by choosing to forgive the unforgivable, he was able to breathe life into an entire world.

Amid the carnage of World War II, a film was released that The New York Times called “perhaps the most significant film ever produced”.

Some houses allow you to read the owners' story on their walls and through their windows. Although it happens less and less often, the most beautiful houses are built by those who mean to live in them. Cara Brookins and her children know very well how every beam or window in their house was put up, because they built it together.

“I knew her face better than my own. Still, I had to say goodbye. I had to walk away. That’s what you do when someone dies. Except this wasn’t just someone. It was Ana, my sweet girl.”

In a society with a pragmatic mindset, any kind of belief is subject only to practical judgments. Effectiveness, usefulness, and utility are the basic criteria by which actions, deeds or beliefs are valued.

Norma Nashed has been running the Restore a Child organisation for more than two decades, helping 4,000 children in ten African countries.

For the average punter, rugby league had its beginnings in a school at Rugby, England, when one William Webb Ellis, “with fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time at Rugby school, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the rugby game.”

God's decision to reveal His intentions regarding Sodom and Gomorrah to Abraham is one of the most memorable moments in biblical history.

The final struggle of life before it slips away, through an intermezzo of agony, from the one whose body it energised, seems to carry no hint of a miracle. It's an image you'd want to turn away from until the grotesque faces of the crushing moment fade. It's a passing—rarely gentle—into the rest that follows life's final flutter of wings.

According to studies, the higher a population’s level of education, the lower the percentage of those who believe in God. A Gallup poll, for instance, shows that while 70% of people who have finished primary school say they are religious, only 52% of college graduates could admit the same thing.

Any sacrifice is hard to understand from the outside. But it's even harder to understand how sacrifice can be a choice that brings joy to the person making it. The easiest people to include in this category are, of course, mothers. For them, the sacrifices never seem too many or too hard. Even more amazing are those mothers who raise other people's unwanted...

Rediscovering the blessing that resides in the little things of life has been one of the challenges of every season I've lived through. This is the conclusion I always come to when I take a moment to reflect.

I open the window and breathe in the air, trying to guess the weather. Floating around, mixed, are scents and miasms alike; it's hard to decipher these intricate clues.

The stigma surrounding mental health issues causes many Christians to hide their conditions, resulting in an epidemic of depression, even among pastors, says Sheila Walsh, a Bible professor and internationally renowned speaker.