Analysis

Thousands of street names changed because they referred to Christian saints, Catholic priests forced to marry, Jesus Christ described as a revolutionary—these are some of the stupefying details of the French Revolution.

Tueday, 31 March 2020, marked exactly three months since the World Health Organization, the Chinese office, was notified of incidences of pneumonia from an unknown cause. According to specialists from the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, we have not yet reached the peak of the pandemic in Europe. We hear about mild and asymptomatic cases, but also about many deaths globally.

Psychologists call it "learned helplessness". People just call it "it is what it is". Both terms describe the same phenomenon: the exhaustion that comes from trying to maintain the belief that their efforts matter.

On 17 January 1920, America officially "dried up". It wasn't a shortage of water or a prolonged drought, but a law banning the sale, transport, and commercial production of alcohol.

The epidemic of false information in this worldwide pandemic is even more infectious than the virus itself. Fortunately, there is a vaccine for this epidemic of fake news: quality information and information filters. However, not everyone has been vaccinated. Here is an immunization effort.

Five decades ago, when the World Organization for Social Psychiatry was established, many thought it was a joke. Others, being more analytical, tried to prove that mental illness can only be an individual experience; that the problem always exists only in an individual and never in a group.

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

Seventh-day Adventists consider the issue of religious freedom to be essential to their mission. “Separation of church and state offers the best safeguard for religious liberty and is in harmony with Jesus’ statement in Matthew 22:21: ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s’.”

Hope can be palpable and elusive at the same time, both reasonable and independent of logic. Yet this independence from logic is not synonymous with indifference to reason, but a victory over it. Hope has its own logic, one that changes lives for the better.

The holidays are a time of generosity, when those forgotten by the world meet those who want to forget that sadness exists and, out of the coexistence of the two needs, something good is born.

After a chance meeting of mutual friends, I was introduced to Tim and Sonia in a restaurant in central Toowoomba, Queensland, eight days before their home was washed away.

Founded on the separation of political and religious authority and shaped by the presumed liberating power of reason, contemporary society is driven by faith in progress as a substitute for faith in God. At the heart of this secularized world, a pressing question emerges: what role does the Church still play today?

It is convenient, but also superficial, to say that all religions lead to God. However, this attitude is pervasive, and usually lasts only until one has had a chance to see the difference the various religions make in people's lives.

Describing the breakup of her marriage after the birth of her children, journalist Nora Ephron writes that a child is a grenade for the couple’s relationship. After the explosion, when the dust settles, “your marriage is different from what it was. Not better, necessarily; not worse, necessarily; but different.” [1].

They have read that love lasts for two or three years, and although they’ve gathered every possible argument why it wasn't the case for them, they couldn't get the possibility out of their minds altogether.