Religion

Slapped, spat in the face, insulted, falsely accused, lashed, ridiculed with a crown of thorns, passed from judge to judge and booed by the crowd, the Son of God chose the most unusual form of defence. Silence.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I attended a university in Brisbane, Australia, two hours from where I lived. I had a friend in the city who I’d sometimes stay with to avoid having to travel back and forth on back-to-back uni days.

“Soul” is a very special term. Due to lack of space, I shall not approach it here philosophically or scientifically, but exclusively in the context of biblical theology, narrowing it even further, to a linguistic point of view.

When the fear of war overwhelms our thoughts, let us not forget that we are not alone, that God will end our suffering and give us a new and everlasting life.

From my experience and the conversations I have had so far, I have found that there are two major categories of people who come to doubt the existence of God.

With news that the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) has won the election in the Netherlands, once again there is talk of an exit from the European Union on the horizon—this time being called “Nexit”.

The stories of gods and their vengeance permeated the ancient world—but one culture changed the story to introduce a better way to relate to the divine.

When we read the Gospels, we may be put off by the way Jesus Christ interprets the Hebrew Scriptures.

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.

The danger of the novel coronavirus has given us pause to reflect. As Christian believers, apart from praying, we are expected to examine and question our beliefs in this time, and to seek answers which are rooted in the perspective of the Holy Scriptures.

“And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, you are slowly turning this control thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish one,” wrote C.S. Lewis—simply through the decisions you make. If the choices we face truly carry such eternal weight, how can a Christian ensure they are making the right ones?

God reveals Himself through the Bible, the person of Jesus Christ, nature, and our conscience. Prayer is not revelatory. If it is neither revelatory for humans nor for God, what is prayer then?

Let the one who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on their God. – Isaiah 50:10

To nothing else is the name of God so often linked in our human discourse as to suffering and deliverance. This locus is a huge and complicated intersection of our existence.

Many times we don’t have the patience to wait for an answer to our prayers, and other times we don’t even know when we've received it. For the ten Boom family, the answer to some prayers came 100 years later.