Religion

Although they are constantly improving their preparedness for crises and disasters, modern societies find themselves powerless in the face of a growing threat: transnational crises.

Carolynn Yakush inherited her taste for the good life from her Czech grandparents, and her interest in faith from her mother and the Christian schools she went to. For many years, the desire for money and a life of luxury overshadowed her spiritual and religious concerns. One day, almost without thinking about it, she entered a church again, and was amazed at 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.

One of today's dilemmas disputes, dialectically, the complex reality of the Bible and the secular way of looking at the "terror of history": Is God a source of morality superior to humanism, or not?

From an early age, we are bombarded with messages telling us to stand out, to make something of ourselves, to do something great with our lives. Many times the voices are religious in nature: God has great plans for us, He will do truly remarkable things with our lives.

Claiming justice is history’s refrain, and it has a significant echo in the Bible. We all dream of a happy ending and a fair judgement as soon as possible. Heaven itself is surprised that God has delayed His holy justice. While some wait for it, others quash even the very thought that it might come.

I’m not sure if there was ever a time when I thought Santa Claus really existed. I never came across him directly during my childhood. However, I remember wondering, while looking at the pictures from my brothers’ Christmas parties, whether any of the children, smiling at the photographer from Santa’s lap, ever wondered how real his story was, with so many incongruous and...

Its nomination for six Academy Awards and winning in two categories [1] confirmed the feeling of the public that they were dealing with a very good movie, in every way.

"We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid." (Christopher Hitchens) 

Every human being, without exception, is a potential suicide. If we look at suicide as a process of self-judgment, condemnation, and execution, every human being walks down this path, at least some of the way.

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.

Trust in God gives clarity to our thinking, so God asks us not to be obsessed with justice, but to be concerned with and delighted by grace.

I doubt there’s a person who hasn’t heard of the Boston Marathon bombing, which took the lives of three people. As runners entered the home straight, with the finish line in sight, first one then another explosion ripped through the happy, watching throng.

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

I am visiting two sick people who share the same terminal illness. Their suffering is increased by the fact that they are brothers and that a mother’s broken heart lies at the core of it all. One of them is a businessman. The other, a servant of the altar. Their mother’s greatest frustration is that her wish to take some of the suffering...