Analysis

Crouched in the trenches of the horror of old age, modern individuals no longer wish to recover anything from the natural ageing process that their ancestors practised with such serenity. On the contrary, the first signs of physical decline become the raw material for a wide range of efforts (from picturesque to sickly) to forge a youth that the mirror refuses to restore.

What if change is given to us to use only as long as we continue to work for it?

One of the mind’s most pleasant and, at the same time, most tormenting occupations is to dream of a better life. How many times have we tried to generate a change for the better by means of a new purchase, new friends, new house, new job, new relationship or other ideas for a fresh start?

You wouldn’t think so, but whether or not children do chores is one predictor of their future happiness and success. 

"If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them" (James 4:17).

Some statistics circulated by the international press have created an increasingly negative image of Christians and Christianity. How well-founded is this image, and how should those targeted by it deal with it?

I was twenty when I first became curious about God. I was fortunate to see His presence in the lives of my friends and longed for that same presence in my own life.

In the early decades of the 18th century, America was in the throes of an identity crisis. The new American lifestyle had earned New England the nickname of “the new English Sodom.”

Isaac and Rebecca, two biblical characters, had problems in their marriage. At first they struggled to fall pregnant. Then, when she eventually got pregnant, it was a difficult pregnancy, which affected them very much—so much so that they didn't know what to do. I suppose they had all sorts of discussions about the situation, but at some point the discomfort just became too...

Traditional communities are like rivers, while modern societies are like oceans, said Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Consider that a river—deeper or shallower, faster or slower—always has a direction, as traditional societies usually direct the lives of their members. The ocean is a different story.

Our dreams must be stronger than the unfortunate circumstances in which we find ourselves.

When I watch chicks hatch in a nest and begin to perform the instinctive behaviours of their species, I think about what we might understand about ourselves, the human species, if we had the perspective of such a privileged observer.

The perspectives we acquire as children about ourselves as individuals, about the world, and even about God, become beliefs that filter and guide the choices we make as adults. Some of these beliefs are helpful. Others are not. In fact, many of the obstacles we encounter in adult life are caused by these filters.

"To feel that you have meaning is to feel immortal," psychology professor and author Clay Routledge wrote in 2014. Is this the only kind of immortality we will ever have?

When I look at the lives of some people, I can't help but wonder if they are cut from a different cloth to most of us. Their courage in the face of challenges, their resilience, their vision and their achievements are so impressive that my imagination wonders what the world would look like if their passion were multiplied.