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For at least one party, sibling estrangement can be more painful than loss through death, writes Fern Schumer Chapman, who was excluded from her brother's life for four decades.

Your friend, who is suffering from depression, needs you. What should you tell them in such moments, and what should you not? No matter how well-intended they are, your words can become emotional weapons, whether you like it or not.

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.

Judging by the headlines in the press over the last weeks, the world seems ready to have a discussion about sin.

In a world of many predetermined things, friends are the family we choose for ourselves. Often, their presence is what keeps us going. In Vital Friends, Tom Rath says that many of those who end up on the streets, divorced, or addicted to overeating, struggle with inner demons precisely because they are alone. They feel excluded, abandoned, unloved.

Slapped, spat in the face, insulted, falsely accused, lashed, ridiculed with a crown of thorns, passed from judge to judge and booed by the crowd, the Son of God chose the most unusual form of defence. Silence.

In a world dominated by artificiality and instant gratification, we are becoming masters at controlling our circumstances and environment.

Mainstream culture has tried to airbrush guilt out of everyday life. It’s the ultimate social faux pas, it seems, to make someone feel guilty—How dare you judge me! Or maybe it’s the penultimate faux pas, because what’s even worse than making someone feel guilty inside is to shame them in front of others.

A major crisis pushes us to re-evaluate the way we see and do things in the fields of health, finance, and social interaction. But how does this crisis affect our religious practices—especially the most common of these, prayer?

Aurelius Augustine (354-430) is known for the stirring Christian experience he described in his Confessions and for the seminal theological thought that has shaped theology to this day.

In centuries long buried in the mists of time, the Bible was a book for which people were willing to die—whether burned at the stake or thrown into prison. There was a time when Bibles were chained to monastery walls. Today, they are printed and distributed by the millions. Yet it seems fewer people are actually reading them.

Biblical interpretation is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges for the Bible reader. What are the essential hermeneutical principles we need?

In the opening scene of The Good Place, celestial being Michael (Ted Danson) explains that most world religions and philosophies get their respective understandings of the afterlife only about five per cent right.

Sometimes, I wonder what I would be like if I were more like Jesus. Above all, I wonder how He would act in my situation. I have to admit that these questions sometimes leave me feeling lost.

It’s important to grant our kids their independence, but would they know what to do in an uncomfortable, tricky or dangerous situation?