Theology

Dr Kendra Haloviak-Valentine, Professor of New Testament Studies at La Sierra University in Redlands, California, comes from a family with a tradition of theology and research.

All COVID-19 statistics lead to the same conclusion: the young ones, our children, are at the lowest risk of getting ill or dying from the virus. That’s comforting. But the pandemic does pose a certain danger to them.

It seems that one of the requirements for any sustainable worldview, philosophy or faith is that it should have some account of origins. Perhaps we could think about it simply as a necessary element of a good story. It is certainly one of the recurring tropes of superhero sequels or sci-fi epics that at some point we will come to better understand a...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Max Lucado wrote an article summarising the spiritual lessons we can learn from an event that the news described as a "once in a thousand year flood".

Pray! If not to God, then to a god. Admit that we are defeated, because this is the first step towards victory.

I was talking to the man I call Professor and I asked him, "I know you had reservations about getting baptised. Why did you decide to do it anyway? What was the deciding factor?"

I had a ringing in my ears due to that unusual inner silence which I was paradoxically experiencing at the same time as a thought-storm that made me scream on the inside. 

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.

As strange as this question may seem, it is also difficult and has consequences that are not at all negligible. Even if it is not always phrased like this, or perhaps not even spoken out loud, this question arises in every home.

When all we have left is God and He remains silent, we need a faith that endures, even when our resources are depleted and we feel as though we have been forgotten.

Life is a stage that we enter without a script, although we are constantly influenced by forces of varying visibility: social, educational, religious, economic, and political.

“We need a Bible like this,” said Reverend Richard Cizik, Vice President of the National Association of Evangelicals in America, at the launch of the first Green Bible in 2010. Current environmental issues demand an ecological Bible, where passages about the quality of divine creation and care for nature entrusted to us by God are highlighted in green, Cizik says.

The imbalance between the requests and the thanksgiving we bring into our worship is a topic any Christian can talk about, and not just based on other people’s experience. As long as we approach praise and thanksgiving as duties to be fulfilled, we will miss the greatest blessings that can rest upon a heart full of gratitude.

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.

When I was 20, my spiritual life felt like an exam where I had been given a topic I hadn’t prepared for.