Analysis

Thousands of cries for help are hidden every day behind extreme violence or riots. Few of them overcome the wall of our indifference and prejudice, and even fewer of those in need get a second chance. Stories like that of Sephton Henry show what it means to offer help even when change for the better seems impossible.

In the heart of the Garden of Eden, where everything seems perfect, there is an ancient struggle between freedom and restriction—a struggle we have all experienced.

Jason Padgett was exactly as one would expect someone who has no interest in school to be. He was only interested in parties and bars and was a magnet for both fun and trouble. That’s how he ended up being expelled, which didn’t affect him too much. However, getting beaten savagely changed his life forever, in the most unimaginable way possible.

There is perhaps no historical figure who is more frequently the topic of debates than the figure of Jesus Christ. Prophet or Conman? Divine or Human? Martyr or Madman?

The fact that we are able to anticipate most of the consequences of our actions is undoubtedly a blessing. However, we can also allow fear or over-cautiousness to make us anticipate events that are not likely to follow. This edges us toward a common error of judgement: the slippery slope.

As a teenager, I remember pasting a quote from Blaise Pascal on the wall of my room. It was a thought I resonated with, not without some arrogance: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

The possibility of completely rewriting the rules by which we organise our lives has always captured people's imagination. However, such a reorganisation has materialised, at best, in the pages of a philosophical book and has remained, for the most part, a utopia. But there are exceptions, of course.

Those familiar with the Bible know the story of the Good Samaritan, who helped a Jewish man who had been robbed by giving him first aid and paying for his recovery.

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.

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...

I was talking to the man I call Professor and I asked him, "I know you had reservations about getting baptised. Why did you decide to do it anyway? What was the deciding factor?"

Few books about management can be read with as much pleasure as a novel, because few are as pleasantly written. Donald Keough's book[1] falls within this exclusive bracket. It is a book about business management and, strangely, was written for people who want to fail in this field, but do not know how.

Scientific progress in understanding the DNA molecule and in deciphering the molecular mechanisms by which cells function can only be described as revolutionary. In the first of our "Genetics and Evolution" series of articles we examine the implications of these discoveries for evolutionary and creationist perspectives on the origin of life.

Dr Peter Landless presents a fascinating history of transformation within his native South Africa, a transformation which has impacted the world.

"Since you are precious and honoured in my sight, and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life." (Isaiah 43:4)