Equivocation: Playing hide-and-seek in communication
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.
Seven surprising facts about chocolate Easter eggs
During medieval times, eating eggs was forbidden during Lent (the 40 days before Easter). Any eggs laid were saved and decorated to celebrate on Easter Sunday. Apparently, everyone enjoyed tucking into their eggs, too.
The thirst of the blue planet
The way we're managing our natural resources is unsustainable, but it's easy to ignore the warnings because vigilance is dormant in a society that fetishises prosperity.
Get your brain in shape
For a long time we’ve exercised for our physique. But studies are showing more and more the mind-blowing benefits exercise has on our brains.
No one deserves to have that much money
In a dilapidated shack in Nairobi, a young woman makes her confession to the BBC reporter eager to hear her story: “I don’t know why God allows some people to be poor while others are rich.”
How old is sadness?
“My sadness hears the unborn dogs / barking at the unborn people.” (Romanian poet Nichita Stănescu)
God’s children… and “grandchildren”
I once heard a Christian warn his community: "God only has children, He does not have grandchildren!" In the postmodern context of relativising values and truths, diverse, strange or syncretic religious forms have emerged and continue to emerge. This is happening to a large extent within Christianity.
When love errs…
Henry Ford is believed to have said: “Sometimes a mistake can be all it takes to make a valuable achievement.” Apparently paradoxical, the statement says a lot about us and what we consider at any given moment to be “a mistake.”
Free to be responsible
Several simple experiments have shown that certain neural processes that are activated when performing an action increase in intensity with fractions of a second or even whole seconds before conscious thinking is informed about the performance of that action.
A second chance: faith in the forgiveness that transforms us
Many years ago, while I was still in high school, our Romanian language and literature teacher assigned us the task of writing a framed story, complete with characters and a plot of our choosing.
Post-atheism and the relativisation of relativism
The end of the last century created the perfect context for postmodernism to exercise its veto over all the ethical dilemmas of the day. As a result, today, as in vitro fertilisation, abortion, euthanasia or homosexual marriage enter the legislative agendas of more and more countries, we see political correctness taking precedence over religious morality.
Christians who don’t fear old age
“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you” (Isaiah 46:4).
Costly choices
One reason, if not the reason why the story of humanity's first wrong choice, the original failure, is vehemently denounced is the brutality with which this event—a seemingly trivial "dietary" decision that turned out to be the most costly ever made by a human being—reminds us more powerfully than any other story how painful the consequences of our mistakes can be. We do...
Saint Paraskeva: History and mythology
For the crowds gathered around the casket containing the relics of Saint Paraskeva, everything is just dream and faith. Amazingly much faith. There is also something else. There is the hope of a miracle, a miracle that will cure diseases, cover debts, and make life happy.
