Religion

What do you imagine heaven will be like? American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov famously said, “For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” Although I love Jesus, I think I am a bit afraid of getting bored there too. There’s a prevailing picture of heaven as being some sort of suspended animation, which may play into this.

“Jerusalem crucified the Lord, Rome beheaded and crucified his chief apostles and plunged the whole Roman church into a baptism of blood. Rome became, for good and for evil, the Jerusalem of Christendom, and the Vatican hill the Golgotha of the West. The cross was substituted for the sword as the symbol of conquest and power” [1].

These days we all need to hear good news—that life will soon return to normal and that we will be able to return to the troubles of yesterday, which now seem small to us. In the meantime, our lifestyle has seen changes that we could not have imagined just a few weeks ago.

In Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy, written in the early 14th century, hell is described as a "city of woe" and a place of "eternal pain"—metaphors of endless suffering.

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, every nine seconds, a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States. Which means that by the time you reach the end of this paragraph, yet another woman will have tragically become a victim of violence.

Christian author Beth Moore once called the book of Leviticus the graveyard of good intentions for those trying to read the Bible from start to finish. Surely, there are Christians who can point to many monotonous, bland passages and biblical chapters, confessing that they bypass them or read them out of obligation. What should we do with the “boring” Bible passages?

The field of science was flourishing, and amid its youngest and brightest, one student in particular consistently topped physics and chemistry courses, took its academic prizes and was courted with offers of scholarships by prestigious universities. His trajectory was toward the heights of the scientific world.

If science were a religion, how violent would it be compared with Christianity?

A black basalt stone found in the desert of Jordan has an inscription with the earliest known use of the name of Yahweh (one of the many names for the Old Testament God). It is one of many ancient items which confirm biblical history.

I still remember it like it was yesterday: the brightness of the sun on my skin, the chill of the water, the crowds of cheering people. We had gathered that Saturday afternoon on the shores of Lake Jindabyne, a half-hour drive from Mount Kosciuszko, Australia’s tallest mountain.

By the year 2022, I had not lost anyone close to me, but I had the feeling, as never before, that death was approaching with unexpected speed. The war that was taking place to the east of Romania, and the news that we were in second place in the world in terms of the number of deaths per thousand inhabitants, made me think...

In our Christian experience, we strive for perfection, but we honestly admit we are a universe away from it. Our inability to live up to God’s standards can lead us to feel we can no longer benefit from divine forgiveness, at least not until we prove strong enough not to give into the sins we are battling.

On November 13, the Orthodox Church celebrates one of the most famous church fathers—John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, whose name is linked to the oldest and most widely used liturgy of the Eastern Church.

The “poor of Christ”, the “poor of Lyon” or, simply, the “brothers” never called themselves “Waldenses” until they joined the Reformation. The derisive appellative was given to them by their persecutors, after the name of the man who consolidated the doctrine of the community.

Today's increasingly politically correct and very denotative way of transmitting messages of public interest tends to distort the reception of speeches that have rhetorical and expressive nuances. In this context, how do we evaluate the cryptic nature of Jesus's words?