Religion

In the opening scene of The Good Place, celestial being Michael (Ted Danson) explains that most world religions and philosophies get their respective understandings of the afterlife only about five per cent right.

Although we experience more positive than negative elements in life, we are still more intensely and more quickly affected by the unpleasant ones. How can we protect our joy of living despite the problems that beset us?

No one has ever seen God, but the One who knew Him before He was born on this earth taught us all to address Him in prayer.

Almost 500 years have passed since the 1524 publication of the work that one prominent leader of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, Andreas Karlstadt, wrote in defence of the Sabbath doctrine.[1] It was the first work on this subject written by a leader of the Reformation.

Christianity is fundamentally built on the belief that the life and mission of Jesus Christ on earth were a continuation and fulfilment of God’s earlier revelation, known as the Old Testament.

Many doomsayers have “cried wolf” when it comes to the end of the world. Does that mean it’s not going to happen at all?

For many Christians, the belief that souls go to Heaven or Hell after death is a cultural legacy rather than a conclusion reached through personal analysis of the biblical text.

Up until the Enlightenment, the idea that the miracles recorded in the pages of the Bible happened as the biblical writers described them was widely accepted. With the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an alternative theory emerged: that miracles were not possible in naturalistic metaphysics.

Undoubtedly, the best known of all Bible verses is John 3:16, but even this does not sound the same in its different renderings. One of these is a personalised version, sometimes employed in church settings: “For God so loved [insert your name here] that He gave His one and only Son, so that if [insert your name here] believes in Him, [insert your...

The end of the line for Christian perfectionism is not perfection, but atheism. This is because what we imagine to be the constant unsatisfied look of God upon us, is a burden too heavy for any human to bear.

It is right for you to look for what you are looking for, but it is not where you are looking for. In the land of death, you seek a happy life: it is not there. How can life be happy somewhere where there is no life? (St. Augustine, Confessions)

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Matthew 5:38,39). 

Little Welsh girl Mary Jones anxiously walked the 40 kilometres. She couldn't wait to buy a Bible in her language, as she had been saving for it for more than six years. But when she reached the shop of Mr Charles, her pastor and teacher, she found with despair that all the Bibles were either sold or already spoken for.

The Anabaptist creed emphasised the premise that Bible truth was accessible even to secular readers and listeners, who had a rudimentary education.

"Western societies have transformed Sundays into days where leisure activities have eclipsed the traditional Christian meaning of the day—to devote time to God", Pope Benedict XVI once said, reminding us that the day of rest is a celebration of God's creation of the world. Observing this day now, when there are worrying signs about the global climate, is a necessity, the Pope added.