Analysis

The smell of burning food filled my tiny kitchen. “What's that smell?” I asked a friend who was sharing my house for the week. Every young man knows the smell, familiar from an early age—your first acquaintance comes from burnt toast and camping trips where, after burning everything you tried to cook, you end up eating your baked beans straight from the can.

Anyone who suffers from depression is likely to be fed up with advice from otherwise well-meaning friends who send them all sorts of online articles promising yet another secret to curing depression.

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.

They’re singing carols. Putting up fairy lights and mistletoe and fake snowflakes. The stores are full of Crosby, tinsel and Bublé. Yes, Santa’s on his way and, somehow, the list of what’s in his enormous red sack of gifts has appeared on my credit card statement. I know: I’ve checked it—twice!

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." (Ayn Rand)

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.

"All your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature" through the decisions you make, wrote CS Lewis. If the choices we make really have such an impact, how can Christians make sure they make the right decisions?

The documentary Leaving Neverland (HBO) tells the story of two of the men who accused superstar Michael Jackson of ongoing sexual abuse.

“...what matters is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment...” (Viktor E. Frankl)

Courage is not the opposite of fear, nor of caution. True courage is what you do right in the midst of fear.

From the first positive pregnancy test, parents often build up expectations for their baby. And as the little one grows, so do the expectations—emotional, cognitive, moral and academic. While it's only natural that this should be the case, as children need to be set standards, parents' expectations can often turn out to be a double-edged sword.

Happiness must come naturally – and this is true for success: you must let it happen simply by not obsessing over it.

When I became a parent, someone told me that I would learn to be a child. However, I was determined to be more of an adult than ever and not repeat attitudes that I considered wrong, including those of my parents.

"What is this life if, full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare." — from the poem "Leisure" by William H. Davies.

Exploring the internet and absorbing reliable information in order to shape our own views requires a complex set of knowledge and skills that help us distinguish between what is real and what is fabricated, between what is authentic and what is falsified.