Analysis

Plato may have been one of the first to think this way, but in modern sociology it was Walter Lippmann who made history with the idea that people do not have access to reality in all its complexity, but operate on images of that reality that they construct for themselves.

1. I remember that day, 9/11. It was chaos. Violence, shortage of food. For several days, it was uncertain if there would be more...

“Imagine there’s no heaven ...” sang John Lennon. “… and no religion too.” The implication is that the world would be a better place without religion. Wrong. Christianity has changed the world in dramatic and positive ways.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, […] who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

Making any choice denies the possibility of at least one other choice. When confronted with this truth, young people often find themselves unprepared for life’s big choices.

I consider myself a fairly honest person. But when someone asks that innocent question, “How are you?” I’m often tempted to twist the truth.

In recent weeks, Afghanistan has become a tender spot for the whole world. The Taliban's new and newly offensive rise to power is a novel situation for the international community, and every international player wants to know how to position itself in this new pattern of dynamic, bewildering forces.

Where there's fear, there's shame, says a Romanian proverb. What the proverb doesn't say (and what many of us don't know) is that the folds of shame hide a multitude of emotional problems and dysfunctional relationships that are passed down from one generation to the next.

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.

One of today's dilemmas disputes, dialectically, the complex reality of the Bible and the secular way of looking at the "terror of history": Is God a source of morality superior to humanism, or not?

Five hundred years ago, Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. How are the motives that led to the Reformation viewed today?

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.

Unlike all the great founders of religions, Jesus of Nazareth is unique in both life and death, and nature and character. Only superficial researchers can consider him to be just a popular sage, a great prophet, or a revolutionary moral genius. Jesus is different from everyone, even in His birth.

Jim Elliot was 25 years old when he headed to Ecuador as a result of the answer he sought from God regarding his future.

Should my child’s photos be displayed on Facebook—even if I were to amp up my privacy settings? Before Elliott, my son, was born, I was adamant that all online footprints of him would be non-existent, or at most, kept to a minimum. I knew anything I posted on the internet featuring Elliott would stay there forever, and I didn’t want him living with...