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After 27 years of marriage, billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates publicly announced their divorce in May, sending shockwaves across the globe.

I never cease to marvel at those who help, in an organized manner, troubled children, abandoned elderly or victims of violence. However, the general need for such heroic saviours reveals the failure of the social group that is apt to address these situations: the family.

If we were asked how many of the thousands of sermons we’ve listened to in a lifetime were truly memorable, the answers might not be too encouraging for those called to share Scripture. Equally challenging, however, remains the way we prepare to be good listeners of the Word.

In a study published in the journal PLOS One, researchers came to the counterintuitive conclusion that people with higher intelligence have higher levels of generalised trust.

Psychologists call it "learned helplessness". People just call it "it is what it is". Both terms describe the same phenomenon: the exhaustion that comes from trying to maintain the belief that their efforts matter.

"Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations, that all men are naturally equal and if some are more equal than...

The Jewish people walked on dry land in the middle of the water, not in the Red Sea, but somewhere in the Nile Delta. This conclusion by researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado (USA) made headlines on Reuters and the BBC in September 2010.

People have always loved and cherished music, investing time into both composing and listening to it. Journalists from The New York Times sought to find the reason behind our deep attachment to this intangible thing that, for most of us, yields no material gain.

Over the past few years, several major media outlets have been talking about the increased longevity of Adventists compared to the populations they live among (CNN,  BBC, DW, NBC, CBS, ABC, CBN, National Geographic, Time, Los Angeles Times,  Huffington Post, The Atlantic, etc.).

When confronted with the pandemic, we are anything but equals.

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).

It's probably been 15 years, but ever since I first read Nathan Brown's articles I've been struck by the conciseness and frankness of his writing, the courage with which he tackles the prejudices and superficialities of religion, and the naturalness with which he invites his readers to live a spiritual life worthy of God's generous offer.

“Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:17).

Tueday, 31 March 2020, marked exactly three months since the World Health Organization, the Chinese office, was notified of incidences of pneumonia from an unknown cause. According to specialists from the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, we have not yet reached the peak of the pandemic in Europe. We hear about mild and asymptomatic cases, but also about many deaths globally.

In talking to pastor Cristian Modan, the religion teacher and chaplain at Mihai Ionescu School in Bucharest, I wanted to find out how we should teach children to communicate with God.