Theology

According to the international standard ISO 8601, Sunday is the seventh day of the week. However, many countries, including the US, Canada, and Japan, consider Sunday as the first day. Where does this contradiction come from and why does it matter if Sunday is the first or the seventh day of the week?

On May 19th, 1780, a strange phenomenon turned a sunny morning into an unexpected night. The event, known as the Dark Day, was seen as a sign of divine judgment by contemporaries and as a means of ridiculing apocalyptic expectations by sceptics.

Regardless of the form they take, crises give rise to legitimate questions about God's providence: Where is God when we suffer? Has He forgotten us? Is He punishing us? Does He still have things under control?

In cell number 8 of the prison in Pyongyang, a few frozen and emaciated prisoners had to endure an additional torture: the pungent smell and wild screams of an untamed creature.

The end of the line for Christian perfectionism is not perfection, but atheism. This is because what we imagine to be the constant unsatisfied look of God upon us, is a burden too heavy for any human to bear.

Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about our future? This is a question even specialists are concerned with, and it cannot be answered easily. It is difficult to predict what the future holds.

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.

“I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite" (Isaiah 57:15).

"From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us" (Acts 17:26-27).

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.

As intimidating as the Bible may sometimes be, especially because of its size and its sometimes difficult passages, many who have read it from cover to cover say that it has changed their lives for the better—the spiritual resources the whole Bible can provide are not found elsewhere.

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.

For me, 2022 was the year of waiting—a word that managed to define our lives, thoughts and actions to an unexpected degree.

In centuries long buried in the mists of time, the Bible was a book for which people were willing to die—whether burned at the stake or thrown into prison. There was a time when Bibles were chained to monastery walls. Today, they are printed and distributed by the millions. Yet it seems fewer people are actually reading them.

Economic capitalism has a psychological twin, one that is not as bold and brash as its profit-obsessed counterpart, but if we look into the subtle details of our interior universe we find it hidden there.