What’s growing on your family tree?

From a distance, it looked like a simple picture of a tree: nothing very artistic—more of a sketch in subtle shades of brown and green. But as I looked closer I noticed something unusual. The tree had been constructed out of words and phrases. Someone had collected snippets of information about their family and their ancestors, and written it down to form the...

How false religious conspiracy theories came to abound

The documentary The Resurrection Tomb is based on James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici’s book The Jesus Discovery[1] and resumes a controversial topic, also published in 2007, when a similar film was released.

Redefining the impossible

The mix of emotions a family goes through when expecting a baby is both wonderful and terrifying. When everything seems to be in order, the...

From bootless boy to life-changing footballer

Footballers are often in the headlines for their off-field antics more than their on-field achievements. So, it is no real surprise that the greatest story to come out of the AFL is not about a nail-biting final or freakishly skilled player.

The Second Coming Files: A 2000-Year Inquiry | Part III: Modern Millenarianism

While the historic churches remained at least disinterested in millenarianism, the Apocalypse, and the Parousia—that is to say, when they were not hostile to them—Protestant pluralism allowed for both reluctance[1] and increasingly significant preoccupations with the research and publication of the themes regarding the end of the world.

Religion is good for you—really?

Religion has often been maligned in both the press and popular culture. But could believing give you an edge in life?

The end of the world, according to Jesus’ teaching

Much has been written about the end of the world, but, if this end coincides with Christ’s second coming, then we should enquire from Jesus Himself what he teaches about His return. We will do this by using the material of the Christian Gospels.

The Protestant Reformation: Between obstinacy and necessity

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?

Faith that endures: A survival guide for troubled times

When all we have left is God and He remains silent, we need a faith that endures, even when our resources are depleted and we feel as though we have been forgotten.

How Jesus used the Hebrew Scriptures

When we read the Gospels, we may be put off by the way Jesus Christ interprets the Hebrew Scriptures.

The God of all | The divine vision on our differences

The first part of my life was marked by multiple barriers that placed me in a minority status.

In praise of the ordinary

What image comes to mind when you hear the word success? A blue-suited CEO? Internet billionaire Mark Zuckerberg? Perhaps Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela? But if you’re like me, you probably didn’t think of a person living an unglamorous, day-to-day, ordinary life.

The sleep of reason and Goya’s monsters

"If I were tortured, I would confess to anything. I would confess to being the Sultan of Turkey," says Goya in a film by Milos Forman. "No, you wouldn't!" Father Lorenzo contradicts him, but Goya insists: "I would confess anything to avoid torment."

Does the Old Testament speak about Jesus or someone else?

The book of the Acts of the Apostles presents an encounter, supernaturally mediated by God, between Philip, one of the seven deacons, and an Ethiopian dignitary. When the Christian missionary met him, the Ethiopian eunuch was reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, one of the many Messianic prophecies, and asked Philip a question we often ignore: “Tell me, please, who is...

Is there a cure? The painful limitations of the fight against paedophilia

Little over a decade ago, a highly acclaimed British documentary filmmaker, Louis Theroux, stepped into the midst of 500 paedophiles admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Coalinga, California, trying to find out if the complex treatment the convicts had to go through was really working.