Religion

From the ship’s hold, 102 passengers poured eagerly onto the deck, pale after 65 days of confinement, longing to see the sky and dry land again. Their arrival in the New World might have gone entirely unnoticed had these immigrants not marked history with a first act that would come to define modern democracy.

What are the most common causes of failure to change? For clarity and efficiency of argumentation, we will restrict the definition of change to those transformations that affect living and working habits. Most often, habits stand in the way of success and performance.

Nearly four millennia after the stone ratification of the law on weekly rest, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) reiterates the right of every person to rest and leisure.[1]

“God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours—so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.”[1](Corrie ten Boom)

According to attachment theory, originally formulated by John Bowlby and later refined by Mary Ainsworth, adults’ relational patterns are formed according to the model of the close relationship they formed in early childhood with their primary caregiver, who is usually the mother.

In a society with a pragmatic mindset, any kind of belief is subject only to practical judgments. Effectiveness, usefulness, and utility are the basic criteria by which actions, deeds or beliefs are valued.

I have always imagined that well-being, bright prospects, good health and a clear purpose in life tend not to inspire questions about the meaning of life very often.

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 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.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, […] who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

The unverified stories of children dying, due to severe emotional and sensorial deprivation, despite being fed and medically cared for, spread the theory that one can die because of lack of love, although being well taken care of. However, if we look more closely at the historical and personal human experience, we find that it is not necessarily the lack of love that...

“God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21).

I grew up on the border between two different universes, not geographically but spiritually. There, across that fine line, lived more than half of my extended family, with a different worldview.

I am not an expert on the phenomenon of death. But like all of us, I have to live in its shadow, and watch the restlessness and greed it causes. The same gloomy reports that circle the planet also reach me. I feel especially conscious of this as COVID-19 claims its first victims in my country.

In the famous realist novel A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe blends the factual with the imaginary, describing the social context just before the great plague struck London in 1665. Among the reactions described, two straddle the line between religion and conspiracy.