Analysis

An article in the New Yorker[1] explains why we tend to not change our convictions, not even when faced with contrary evidence. 

We often do it without even thinking. Labelling our children as shy, cheeky, fussy or even smart. In the right context, calling our children these things is innocent enough. It even helps explain certain types of behaviour. 

Five decades ago, when the World Organization for Social Psychiatry was established, many thought it was a joke. Others, being more analytical, tried to prove that mental illness can only be an individual experience; that the problem always exists only in an individual and never in a group.

I was born and grew up in Haiti, a country located in the Caribbean, about a one hour and a half flight from Miami. Haiti occupies one third of the island Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic occupies the other two thirds). 

Nelson Mandela, one of the most iconic figures in the fight against apartheid—the system of racial segregation enforced by South Africa’s white minority government—spent 27 years in prison for his commitment to dignity, equality, and justice.

Of the hundreds of carols composed and sung at Christmas, one has managed not only to survive for more than two centuries, but also to spread its message of hope to all corners of the world.

By their very complexity, situational moral decisions demonstrate that there is an absolute good that we seek. Moral principles work together for the absolute good.

My nana was my favourite person in the world. From as young as three, Mum would drop me off at church, help me put my backpack on and I’d waddle in to meet Nana. During worship, we’d cuddle through the songs. She was an amazing singer; I was tone-deaf. She’d whisper to me, “You have an amazing voice . . . you’re not...

If we take an honest look around us and within ourselves, we discover that the gulf between the mentality of those who choose prayer over medical treatment and the essence of the Christian mindset is not as deep as it seems. But it remains a gulf nonetheless.

Dr Zeno L. Charles-Marcel is an associate director in the Department of Health for the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Born in Canada, in 1935, Don Richardson was a missionary who fervently carried on the Renaissance spirit of the great missionaries. Having studied at the Prairie Bible Institute and the (Wycliffe) Summer Institute of Linguistics, together with his wife, he worked as a missionary among the Sawi of Papua New Guinea for 15 years, and translated the Bible into their language. His books,...

Related to the subject of boredom, Blaise Pascal wrote: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

“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).

"Rays of sunshine in the global economy we saw earlier in the year have been fading, and gray days likely lie ahead", says Ayhan Kose, deputy chief economist at the World Bank Group, summing up predictions for the global economy after several overlapping crises ended a nearly three-decade period of economic growth.

We’d been married only a few weeks when we discovered that growing our spirituality as a couple was going to be much more complicated than the instructions on the packet suggested.