Jesus

I was born and raised in a Seventh-day Adventist Christian family, so Jesus was a familiar presence in our home. Although it took me...

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.

When I ponder the statement, “Life holds potential meaning under any condition, even the most miserable,” the story of an anonymous woman comes to my mind. She made a deep impression on me and taught me about two existential states: having, and being.

"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?

In the frenzy that grips most Christians at this time of year, the coverage of Easter celebrations in the press is a good indication of how people prepare for Easter.

In the turbulent times of the first crusades to reclaim Palestine and Jerusalem from the Muslims, a Jew was born in 1135 AD in Cordoba, the capital of Muslim Andalusia. His influence would leave a strong mark not only on Jewish thought but also on Christian and Islamic thought. His name was Moses Maimonides, or Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon. 

In Europe, one in twenty people suffer from depression, and one in four will experience depression during their lifetime. In the United States, major depressive disorder affects about five percent of the population.

Sometimes, life is a succession of questions that God seems to ignore—until, at the right time, His silence provides an answer that is better than any answer in the world.

Many times we don’t have the patience to wait for an answer to our prayers, and other times we don’t even know when we've received it. For the ten Boom family, the answer to some prayers came 100 years later.

For some of the witnesses to the crucifixion, the seven sayings of Jesus, spoken while He was nailed to the cross, were filled with meaning. Others downplayed or denied their significance. His words still divide people today. But the statements made by Jesus in those few hours are an important key to understanding His message.

Jesus Christ is certainly the most fascinating and controversial person in human history, if we look at how He has been understood throughout the history of Christian thought. But how did Jesus understand Himself?

Some expectations dissolve into routine or turn into despair, while others invigorate life. The former are measured in deeds and desires, while the latter are measured in faithfulness and beliefs.

Why couldn’t God simply have forgiven sinners? Precisely because sinners cannot be forgiven until they completely understand sin, with all its far reaching consequences, or before the wages of sin are paid.

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.

Was the death of Jesus the end of an extraordinary life, or just the beginning of eternal life for those who believe in Him?