Theology

"Where is God?" is the question that arises in the face of inexplicable tragedy. When even a high-ranking clergyman is plagued by this question, the natural response is to conclude that something does not add up.

In order to communicate effectively, our speech must be clear and unambiguous. That is why believers tend to view the language of the Bible as a report: black and white, exact, without embellishments; just a dry sequence of facts.

Whether we are cooking, repairing things, or solving life's problems, we are always learning from each other. However, when it comes to certain areas, including church life, the interchange of experiences is lacking. Communities often keep their ideas, and especially their mistakes, to themselves. Can we rediscover the deeply biblical nature of knowledge sharing?

“The Christ of Nicea is obviously a far cry from the historical Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant apocalyptic preacher in the backwaters of rural Galilee, who offended the authorities and was unceremoniously crucified for crimes against the state. Whatever he may have been in real life, Jesus had now become fully God.”

Nearly four millennia after the stone ratification of the law on weekly rest, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) reiterates the right of every person to rest and leisure.[1]

Sartre may have been right when he said Hell is other people. Yet, for some, their first step toward Heaven is meeting the God who shelters in someone else's soul.

Who do you need to forgive?

Let's go back in time to the day when Jesus spoke His apocalyptic words. At that time, rather than giving a revelation about the future, He was more concerned with warning about the dangers of deception.

If you’ve ever been to a Christian church, there’s a good chance that you’ll have experienced a unique ritual involving bread and grape juice: the Lord’s Supper, or as we’ll refer to it, Communion. Depending on the denomination, your experience may vary wildly. You may be offered a cup that everyone collectively sips out of, accompanied by a piece of bread. Others will...

What do you imagine heaven will be like? American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov famously said, “For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” Although I love Jesus, I think I am a bit afraid of getting bored there too. There’s a prevailing picture of heaven as being some sort of suspended animation, which may play into this.

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?

My first Bible was given to me by Pastor Damian Zamfir in the winter of 1972. Pastor Zamfir, the man who led my first steps on the path to Christ, invited me to visit him in the parish house of the Adventist church on Rodnei Street in Targoviste.

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."

In Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy, written in the early 14th century, hell is described as a "city of woe" and a place of "eternal pain"—metaphors of endless suffering.

Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive. – C.S. Lewis