Top

I once served on a jury and, to my surprise, was voted foreman. The accused was charged with manslaughter, a serious crime with quite a harsh penalty; while driving an aged-care minivan filled with pensioners, he’d hit and killed a pedestrian. The defendant was a facility volunteer who had been taking a group of pensioners shopping. His vehicle collided with the deceased in...

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.

Money is essential in our Western world. It allows us to purchase the necessities of life—food and shelter, for instance. It pays the bills for heating and cooling. There may even be enough for some luxuries.

It is crucial to realise that while words can be seductive and magnetic, they can also put us in great danger if we let ourselves be carried away by their charms, driven by emotional impulses without reason.

You really don't realize what your thoughts about God are until you have nothing left but the conviction expressed in the book of the prophet Jeremiah: My Father, my friend from my youth (Jeremiah 3:4).

Roberto Badenas is a Seventh-day Adventist who specialises in Bible studies and is a New Testament teacher, with a theological leadership career that reflects his concern for people.

It’s not hard to misinterpret the Bible. I’ve done it, most people I know have done it and if you’ve read it enough, I’d bet you’ve done it too. It isn’t surprising then, that throughout history many have misinterpreted the Bible, especially when it comes to complex ideas like the end of the world and Jesus’ second coming.

Some people may feel particularly inhibited in social situations. Meetings cause them stomach-aches, conversations overwhelm them with shyness, and anxiety does not allow them to utter a single word.

All COVID-19 statistics lead to the same conclusion: the young ones, our children, are at the lowest risk of getting ill or dying from the virus. That’s comforting. But the pandemic does pose a certain danger to them.

In the centuries since science has gained autonomy from religion, spokesmen on both sides have grown accustomed to looking at each other with suspicion, ignoring each other, and addressing their followers by preaching against the “others." There seemed to be little hope that scientists and people of faith would listen to each other and try to develop a common language, if not a...

Measuring more than nine metres tall, the pale granite carving of Dr King that is the centrepiece of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial, just to the east of the National Mall in downtown Washington DC, makes it easy to forget that he was a relatively short man. His iconic likeness towers over visitors as his words carved into the stone walls around...

Lucy is an 8-year-old girl who has a range of interests broader than that of an ordinary adult. She is enrolled in an international school, where classes are taught in French by native speakers. Her classmates are children of expats from different cultures, which amuses her nanny, who, when picking her up from school, says that she "took her from the children's UN."

When one pays attention to the finer details, any life story can be interesting. When you go into detail, any common or mediocre story that could have been summed up in only a few words, becomes a confession. I realise that my own story is no exception, although it has often seemed to me that I live a banal and predictable life.

When what someone says can be interpreted in multiple ways, we are in danger of coming to an understanding which is different to their intended message.

What feeds our fear in times of crisis, such as this pandemic we are in? How can we avoid letting fear paralyze our search for information and our ability to make the right decisions?