Religion

Living one day according to God's plan is a good idea to start with. But learning to live in such a way every day is something else.

It’s not hard to misinterpret the Bible. I’ve done it, most people I know have done it and if you’ve read it enough, I’d bet you’ve done it too. It isn’t surprising then, that throughout history many have misinterpreted the Bible, especially when it comes to complex ideas like the end of the world and Jesus’ second coming.

Salvation is not a concept Christianity discovered. In a broad sense, salvation means rescue from any danger or adverse situation.

Seventh-day Adventists have the deep conviction that Jesus Christ will soon return, and the desire to keep His commandments as they were originally written in the Decalogue.

"I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me" (Proverbs 8:17).

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to tour south Te Waipounamu (the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand). Flying first into Invercargill, I made my way north, excitedly anticipating iconic tourist spots such as Queenstown, Milford Sound, Wanaka and more. However, on the way, the sleepy town of Te Anau caught me by surprise, captivating me in a way that I didn’t...

“We need a Bible like this,” said Reverend Richard Cizik, Vice President of the National Association of Evangelicals in America, at the launch of the first Green Bible in 2010. Current environmental issues demand an ecological Bible, where passages about the quality of divine creation and care for nature entrusted to us by God are highlighted in green, Cizik says.

The question in the title is a protest which expresses a fair amount of suspicion towards God. It is a barely concealed condemnation of God and His actions, the strange rebellion of a world that sees itself as morally superior to God. People forget Scripture's words in the book of Job: Beware lest wrath entice you into scoffing (Job 36:18, RSV).

Plato may have been one of the first to think this way, but in modern sociology it was Walter Lippmann who made history with the idea that people do not have access to reality in all its complexity, but operate on images of that reality that they construct for themselves.

“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them” (James 4:17). Yet Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?” This question highlights that good cannot be done just any way or against a person’s will. Jesus shows that human will must be respected before God’s power can address sickness.

Sometimes, I wonder what I would be like if I were more like Jesus. Above all, I wonder how He would act in my situation. I have to admit that these questions sometimes leave me feeling lost.

We have trouble understanding and accepting the image of a loving God, as we have grown too familiar with the type of love that offers itself only when it finds in a person the qualities that make them easy to love.

Ever since Thomas the Unbeliever, Christians have wanted to see with their own eyes what those who have been with Jesus at key moments of His mission saw.

Who was Jesus really? While His historical existence is no longer questioned, many people believe that He was at best an exceptional personality of His time, a reformer whom His disciples later transformed into a deity. Why is neo-atheism concerned with promoting such a Jesus, and why is He nothing more than a new form of doubt?

“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me” (Habakkuk 2:1).