Theology

Rediscovering the blessing that resides in the little things of life has been one of the challenges of every season I've lived through. This is the conclusion I always come to when I take a moment to reflect.

The great challenge facing the world’s leaders right now is identifying an optimal response to a disease bearing several characteristics that make it difficult to combat.

Whether you're a practising believer, a casual believer or, conversely, an atheist, you cannot help but be taken aback by the fact that one of the earliest images of God we have in Scripture is an unexpected one for those times: the image of God writing (Exodus 31:18).

Born in Canada, in 1935, Don Richardson was a missionary who fervently carried on the Renaissance spirit of the great missionaries. Having studied at the Prairie Bible Institute and the (Wycliffe) Summer Institute of Linguistics, together with his wife, he worked as a missionary among the Sawi of Papua New Guinea for 15 years, and translated the Bible into their language. His books,...

Christopher Hitchens was not merely an atheist but, as he described himself, a militant antitheist. It was in his home, at his invitation, that the group known as “The Four Horsemen of New Atheism” first convened. Born in 1949 in postwar England, Hitchens was shaped by the politics and intellectual currents of the 1960s.

How can we protect ourselves against expecting too much of our friendships? Can we do something to prepare for the disappointment? And what does one do to deal with it?

Trust is the main currency of the age in which we live, and people seem to be changing the directions they invest in faster than in the past. How is our life of faith influenced by how we relate generally to trust?

The idea of the end of the world refers to the end of the social order and humanity; the end of the planet as we know it. But according to the Bible, these will not all come at once.

In the opening scene of The Good Place, celestial being Michael (Ted Danson) explains that most world religions and philosophies get their respective understandings of the afterlife only about five per cent right.

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.

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.

“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.

Most of our beliefs are easy to keep, as long as nothing puts them to the test. Like many others, Henry Gerecke discovered to what extent he truly believed in what he had preached for years when faced with a difficult choice.

“If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war — not missiles but microbes. We are not ready for the next epidemic” – these were the words Bill Gates said at the beginning of his speech at TED Talk conference on April 3, 2015.

Jeddah is different, at least according to its city motto. This Saudi Arabian port city on the Red Sea is home to more than 4 million people and is a gateway to Mecca: the holiest city in Islam. Millions of pilgrims come through Jeddah to visit Mecca, some 65 kilometres to the east, and Medina, Islam’s second holiest city, 360km to the north.