Faith

The metaphor of the church as a hospital is so popular in the neo-Protestant milieu that it seems to highlight the hypocrisy of those attending church services even more. That’s what I used to believe until one day when I witnessed the opposite with my very own eyes.

“God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours—so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.”[1](Corrie ten Boom)

Nothing can prepare us in advance for the suffering we will experience in this life. But even knowing this, we often remember with guilt the moments of blissful ignorance we had before suffering hit us.

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.

Kent Hansen kindly agreed to talk to us about the most painful episode of his life, the loss of his wife. Beyond the sadness, it is a discussion rich in emotion and lessons for us all. 

Faith has brought me not only a sense of God's presence, but also evidence that He is answering our requests. Therefore, the other reasons that made me believe have become stronger.

Born into a family of surfers, one could say the love of the salty ocean air courses through the veins of his body. Named after legendary surfer Derek Ho, even his name embodies the hopes and expectations of what he was to become.

The smell of burning food filled my tiny kitchen. “What's that smell?” I asked a friend who was sharing my house for the week. Every young man knows the smell, familiar from an early age—your first acquaintance comes from burnt toast and camping trips where, after burning everything you tried to cook, you end up eating your baked beans straight from the can.

“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).

I grew up on the border between two different universes, not geographically but spiritually. There, across that fine line, lived more than half of my extended family, with a different worldview.

In our Christian experience, we strive for perfection, but we honestly admit we are a universe away from it. Our inability to live up to God’s standards can lead us to feel we can no longer benefit from divine forgiveness, at least not until we prove strong enough not to give into the sins we are battling.

Anecdotally, they say that fear of public speaking is the biggest fear of mankind, after fear of death. Everyone smiles at this order of priorities, but no one disputes or discusses the fear at the top of the ranking.

The sermons. My mother’s stories. The little sand table and Sabbath School for children. Adults’ conversations about religion. All the information I absorbed in childhood helped me sketch an image of Jesus with one major flaw: it was rendered in far too many shades of grey.

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.

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.