Faith

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.

Trying to describe a dying church like the one he was called to serve, Pastor Chris Lewis uses the image of a car "turned over, in a ditch, covered by weeds and beer cans, with a rusted out engine, and a couple of bodies in the trunk."

The journey "through the valley of the shadow of death" has never been easy. However, it has become increasingly lonely as our unfamiliarity with death has made us awkward and reserved when interacting with the dying.

Richard Dawkins is arguably the world’s best-known atheist. His 2006 book The God Delusion was a runaway success and widely influential. That’s why theologian Alister McGrath was surprised when a young man told him he became a Christian after reading The God Delusion.

"The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" (Genesis 22:7).

There is a poignant poem by the young Nicolae Labiș, a profound thinker and visionary who tragically passed away at the age of 21, that warns of the danger of wasting one’s life.

"To feel that you have meaning is to feel immortal," psychology professor and author Clay Routledge wrote in 2014. Is this the only kind of immortality we will ever have?

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?

“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me” (Habakkuk 2:1).

Hendel Butoy was born in Brazil and raised in southern California. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts, and was then offered a position as an animator at Walt Disney in 1979.

Living one day according to God's plan is a good idea to start with. But learning to live in such a way every day is something else.

“All I can do is pray and hope.” With those words, I ended an article on infertility. After years of marriage and not one pregnancy, I did one of the only things I could do to help me process the fact that my wife and I might never have children: I wrote about it. 

I was in the park with my little girl when a heavy summer shower began, driving us home. My little girl wanted us to stop for a moment in the stairwell of our apartment building to watch the rain. After standing there for a few seconds, I heard her whisper, "God, You're getting soaked."

I was a pagan as a child. Not by choice, but as a consequence of lacking any access to the Word of God. In the 1980s Romania, catechizing an Orthodox child (whose parents were members of the Communist Party) was a highly unlikely event Pavlik Morozov’s myth, the hero-child that denounced his own father, generated caution.

"Religion is what is in my soul. No one can take away what is there. But in public we have to comply..."