Theology

Soviet soldier Bakhretdin Khakimov was declared missing in action during the war in Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of 15,000 USSR soldiers and more than a million Afghans. Thirty-three years later, his family found out he was alive, living as a true Afghan among his former enemies.

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)

Fines, military ordinances, police and army patrolling the streets – this is the reality we have suddenly found ourselves living in. It is a tightening reality, a rigid corset-like structure of rules.

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?

A major crisis pushes us to re-evaluate the way we see and do things in the fields of health, finance, and social interaction. But how does this crisis affect our religious practices—especially the most common of these, prayer?

A sense of meaninglessness—a void, a wilderness, a lack of direction—affects such a large number of people today that it has come to define the dominant mood of the society we live in and contribute to.

When I read “The Pitesti Phenomenon”, in my teens, I was bewildered by how cruel human nature can be. It was also then that I realized that being forced to renounce yourself, to bury your values and defining beliefs to become the reflection of a rotten system, to become inhuman is worse than being physically tortured.

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?

We love people for who they are. But there is a kind of love that is too high for us to truly comprehend in all its nuances, a love that manifests itself towards people no matter who they are or what they become. We find a love such as this in the beautiful story of Ian and Larissa.

“And Who Is My Neighbour?” asked a Jewish teacher of the Law when Jesus Christ told him that eternal life entails observing two commandments: to love God and to love one’s neighbour.

The first few seconds are confusing, voices and blurred figures buzzing nearby, and it seems to me that some clumsy hands are trying to pull me out of this zigzag between sleep and wakefulness. I clearly hear a woman's voice announcing that I'm waking up and, before I'm completely out of this state of drowsiness, I realise I'm in intensive care.

How did I begin to believe in You?

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.

I was born into an Adventist family. This meant feeling that pretty much everything I knew, including my religious tradition, was the sole truth.

Any religion’s popularity depends on the rewards it promises. While people are interested in the immediate benefits of this life, they are mostly interested in the future, the hope their religion brings, and how solid it is.