Analysis

The Methodist Church emphasised practical sanctification and mission, these aspects being necessary in contemporary Christianity as well.

An experimenter is like a hunter who, instead of waiting quietly for game, tries to make it rise, by beating up the locality where he assumes it is. – Francis Bacon, 17th-century English philosopher

Many years ago, while I was still in high school, our Romanian language and literature teacher assigned us the task of writing a framed story, complete with characters and a plot of our choosing.

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

We live in an economic system whose main fuel is loans. For this reason, the phrase “a world without credit” sounds far-fetched, to say the least.

Losing one’s health and being unable to regain it are profoundly transformative experiences. The body suddenly becomes more than an appendage of the mind, as it is treated when everything is going well, while the mind becomes its prisoner.

They say that "all roads lead to Rome". This famous saying originated in ancient times with the extensive network of roads built by the Romans to facilitate communication and travel throughout their empire.

As Christians we are interested in a perpetual spiritual, moral, general human perfecting. But can we really succeed without perfecting our way of thinking, our capacity to understand, and thus without increasing our intellectual capital?

In terms of short-term benefits to one's reputation, or monetary benefits, the illusion of deceit is intoxicating. But, in the long run, both from an individual and a social perspective, the negative effects of deceitful behaviours should be convincing enough in order to deter any and all from engaging in them.

Rape, torture, extrajudicial executions, and starvation are common practices in the North Korean prison system, dehumanising detainees to the point where they believe they deserve this treatment, according to a report published by a human rights monitoring body.

The relationship between a parent and their child is one of the most significant in their lives, with its primary role being education.

"Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings… And overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice." (Nelson Mandela)[1]

Many times we don’t have the patience to wait for an answer to our prayers, and other times we don’t even know when we've received it. For the ten Boom family, the answer to some prayers came 100 years later.

Aside from fuelling jokes about how women impose unrealistic standards on men, or how men are just grown-up children who want their wives to be their mothers, the expectations couples place on their relationship define how they relate to each other, and influence marital satisfaction.

Virtually every civilization has been characterised by religious beliefs about the end of all things, not least about the timing and the conditions that precede the end, and signs of its imminence. There are many differences between these beliefs across civilisations, but many similarities too.