Religion

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.

Life is a stage that we enter without a script, although we are constantly influenced by forces of varying visibility: social, educational, religious, economic, and political.

Some time ago, an older friend, now a parent, was telling me how the way his father treated him in childhood caused him unnecessary suffering. Now, as an adult struggling with anxiety, he has spent much time in a psychologist’s office.

The December days that start with the number 2—that is, starting from the 20th—are like a train with batteries on a closed circuit. They pass, with the twinkle of LEDs, like carriages loaded with emotions about the past, about the future and about the present, with nostalgia and regret, with delight, and with fear and worry: a mixture that we enjoy with the...

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.

We often say God is good, especially when, after threatening to go dangerously off track, life resumes its regular course. But what is left to say when all that remains of our dearest dreams is a handful of shards that can no longer be glued together?

When I read how a non-religious mother felt she needed to calm herself down at the thought that her child might begin to believe in God, I was surprised and almost offended.

How can one explain that laws attributed to revelation are found in the legislation of other ancient peoples? How can the similarities between biblical thought and ancient culture be explained? How is the biblical God compared to the gods of other peoples?

Broken blade. Shaking hands. Clouded mind. “I could have killed him.”

Along with the rising death toll due to coronavirus complications, a usually latent aspect of our fear becomes harder to ignore. Despite the fact that it is the only certainty we all share, realising that our own end is a reality we might need to confront sooner than we had thought leaves many of us fervently searching for consolation.

Revenge is a trap the wise do not fall into, goes the diplomatic saying. Still, wanting to give someone a taste of their own medicine is a common desire.

I had a ringing in my ears due to that unusual inner silence which I was paradoxically experiencing at the same time as a thought-storm that made me scream on the inside. 

Every time I look through the lens of a microscope, I am struck by the realisation that beyond what the naked eye can see lies a universe far deeper and richer.

Concern for the planet's climate and its ecology has occupied the world's attention for many decades. In the 1980s, the ozone layer depletion caused by chlorofluorocarbons and similar gases was observed, and in 1987, the Montreal Protocol was finalised.

One reason, if not the reason why the story of humanity's first wrong choice, the original failure, is vehemently denounced is the brutality with which this event—a seemingly trivial "dietary" decision that turned out to be the most costly ever made by a human being—reminds us more powerfully than any other story how painful the consequences of our mistakes can be. We do...