Analysis

Little Welsh girl Mary Jones anxiously walked the 40 kilometres. She couldn't wait to buy a Bible in her language, as she had been saving for it for more than six years. But when she reached the shop of Mr Charles, her pastor and teacher, she found with despair that all the Bibles were either sold or already spoken for.

There are days, maybe even years, that go by without us seriously questioning the meaning of our lives or whether anything we have left behind has made anybody's life better. We are afraid of an answer because it might require us to change. For John Wood, the answer came out of nowhere, in a school in the wilds of Nepal.

The prospect of a future in which technology plays the supreme role in our lives is increasingly confirmed by the applications of scientific discoveries. In this context, it is even speculated that the nature of humanity will be profoundly changed, reaching a higher qualitative stage, so that, in the end, even the obstacle of death will be overcome.

Fathers are an important part of their children’s lives. Good dads can provide stability, protection and love in a child’s life.

We experience a feeling of urgency as a consequence of the fear of failure, or the fear of missing out (on people, opportunities, time, good things). Urgency is, therefore, a corollary of fear. Today’s Christianity, hailed by loud voices as near extinction, can easily fall into the trap of undue urgency to quickly regain what has been lost.

“In the works of Comenius one feels that a prophet is speaking; he was indeed a colossal figure, but only in recent years have his ideas received the respect they merit”.

In the opening scene of The Good Place, celestial being Michael (Ted Danson) explains that most world religions and philosophies get their respective understandings of the afterlife only about five per cent right.

One of the biggest challenges facing both parents and teachers is to help children stay motivated so that they can keep focus, persevere when they are struggling, move forward, and finish what they have begun.

The end of the last century created the perfect context for postmodernism to exercise its veto over all the ethical dilemmas of the day. As a result, today, as in vitro fertilisation, abortion, euthanasia or homosexual marriage enter the legislative agendas of more and more countries, we see political correctness taking precedence over religious morality.

On the night when heaven descended among mortals, it was not the high priests or scholars who were the first to see God, but some lowly shepherds.

No one has ever seen a thought, not even a neurosurgeon. However, today we know more about the way we think than what we were able to visualise, yet still less than we would like to know.

Two popular songs in the second half of the twentieth century have influenced entire generations, to this day, with a message we can call at least provocative: "Non, Je ne regrette rien" ("I do not regret anything"),[1] crooned to us by Edith Piaf, and "My Way", Frank Sinatra's melodic boast.[2]

What do you think of when you hear the word church? Perhaps your mind conjures up images of ancient cathedrals, resplendent with gothic spires, stained glass windows, and vaulted ceilings.

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.”

Who do we listen to? Who is right? Who is balanced? How should we react to the risk of the new coronavirus?