Religion

“It was as if I were living in a fairy tale. And the most wonderful part was that I knew—hard as it may be to believe—that the story was true. None of the hardships of imprisonment touched me. The fear of the unknown no longer unsettled me, nor did the fact that, three days after my arrest, no one had yet called me...

The New Testament would have looked quite different[1] without the influence of Athanasius the Great, bishop of Alexandria and church father of the Christian Church in the 4th century.

According to a Barna Group poll, only 6% of Americans have a "biblical worldview", the percentage rising to just 21% for those who regularly attend evangelical churches. This shows that fewer and fewer Christians are turning to Scripture to answer the questions they face.

Imagine the conversation between God and Adam after Adam had sinned, seen himself naked for the first time (in more ways than one) and hidden from God. To the piercing question, "Why did you hide?" Adam replied, "Because I was naked". Reading between the lines, we detect the subtext: "I hid myself, for one cannot come naked before God."

"Lianne struggled with the idea of God," Don DeLillo’s narrator says of one of the characters in his novel, Falling Man. "She was taught to believe that religion makes people compliant. This is the purpose of religion, to return people to a childlike state… . We want to transcend, to pass beyond the limits of safe understanding— and what better way to do...

When all we have left is God and He remains silent, we need a faith that endures, even when our resources are depleted and we feel as though we have been forgotten.

It could be a perfunctory ritual, passed down through generations; a mechanically recited poem. But equally, the mealtime prayer can be a genuine spiritual exercise.

Hendel Butoy was born in Brazil and raised in southern California. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts, and was then offered a position as an animator at Walt Disney in 1979.

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.

Ultra-rich Silicon Valley tech magnate Bryan Johnson has been regularly having transfusions of his own son’s blood plasma in an effort to live longer. The treatments are expensive and are essentially still being trialled.

Forgiveness is the central idea in Christianity that sets it apart from other religions.

As a prophetic book par excellence, the Bible is often misinterpreted, its prophecies taking on fatalistic overtones or frightening attributes. Properly understood, the prophecies of the Bible do more than predict the future. They can also give the reader a clearer perspective on the present.

Between 2008 and 2021, 379 people died in selfie-related accidents. Made habitual by consumerism and social media, this cult of self-promotion is part of a nefarious cycle of narcissistic stimulation and a powerful indicator of our longing for worth and, by extension, meaning.

"God has guided my steps in life, saved me from some wrong decisions, and when I have made mistakes, He has helped me to admit my mistakes and learn from them." (Dumitru Borţun)

They say that "all roads lead to Rome". This famous saying originated in ancient times with the extensive network of roads built by the Romans to facilitate communication and travel throughout their empire.