Religion

Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about our future? This is a question even specialists are concerned with, and it cannot be answered easily. It is difficult to predict what the future holds.

I was twenty when I first became curious about God. I was fortunate to see His presence in the lives of my friends and longed for that same presence in my own life.

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.

To know God is an aspiration inherent in the rational being who recognises His existence.

Edinburgh Castle sits proudly on the hill overlooking the city. Buildings and tourist shops crowd its feet, right up to the gate, where the square is being prepared for the famous Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

Centuries ago, the German theologian and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz used the term “theodicy”1 for the first time—“God’s justification”. By theodicy, Leibniz meant the ultimate reality of justification, once and for all, of God and all of His ways before the whole universe.

When I was at high school, I played basketball a lot—most days at school, then team training sessions and often two or three games each week. At university, I played on the best team I have been part of. We trained and competed regularly over two years, and twice won our league championship.

Aurelius Augustine (354-430) is known for the stirring Christian experience he described in his Confessions and for the seminal theological thought that has shaped theology to this day.

Are we at risk of turning Christianity into just another consumer product?

When we are isolated with our family, problems that are sometimes easy to ignore become more acute, and the need to receive and offer forgiveness to those around us becomes increasingly evident.

When a visitor walks into your church, what will they see? What will they hear? How will they feel?

Sartre may have been right when he said Hell is other people. Yet, for some, their first step toward Heaven is meeting the God who shelters in someone else's soul.

During my adolescence, a Swiss author, Erich von Daniken, made waves with his theories about extra-terrestrial influences on early mankind. His most important book was called Memories of the Future. Of course, his ideas have no support today, but the idiom remains: memories of the future. Something from the past says something about what is to come.

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?

Faith is a commonly used concept, but it is rarely understood in its rich semantics and philosophical implications. Christian faith rises above being defined by lists of doctrines, beliefs, moral principles, commandments, and liturgical rituals in the communicator's mind for its nature and content to be faithfully represented.