Social

More and more people are choosing cohabitation over marriage. Many young people believe that cohabiting helps them to make better decisions about marriage by giving the couple a chance to "practise" before making a lifelong commitment. There is also a belief that cohabiting before marriage reduces the likelihood of marital problems or divorce.

In America, conservative Protestants seem to divorce at least as often as people of other religious orientations. The idea has become an opportunity for finger-pointing and accusations of hypocrisy, but this is only proof that the statistics are misinterpreted.

I love books as much as I love people, but if I’m honest with myself, sometimes I find a little more comfort in the company of books than in the presence of my fellow humans.

"Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love," said Mother Teresa. Hearing such words from a stranger might seem meaningless. They could easily be dismissed with the well-known proverb, "One swallow doesn't make a summer." But uttered by Mother Teresa, they take on immense power.

What do you do when things go wrong and everything around you seems to crumble? Do you keep your eyes forward and try to find a solution? Or do you fall into endless complaining?

In an argumentative discussion each party involved must be able to express their point of view without constraints, discrimination or other interferences. This is, in fact, an important prerequisite for the effort to overcome differences of opinion. In practice however, often things are far from this ideal. Not only do interlocutors not respect each other’s right to free speech, but they also resort...

When we think of gratitude and a lack of gratitude, the biblical scene that comes to mind is the healing of the ten lepers, of whom only one, a Samaritan, returned to thank the Saviour, worshiping and praising God in a loud voice (Luke 17:15-16).

When a closed window shade becomes an SOS sent by those used to living on their own but afraid of dying alone, something has fundamentally changed in a society that not long ago valued human relationships.

If you’re looking to make someone (even yourself) feel better, sit down and write a gratitude letter.

"The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice" (Peggy O'Mara).

Compromise is always present in relationships. It may pull us down, but it can also be a good reconciliation exercise when there are differences that cannot be resolved in any other way.

In 1867, when Edson White was 18 years old and working at the Adventist type-room in Battle Creek, Michigan, he had a transformative conversation with Mr Bell.

I clearly remember the days following the Revolution of 1989 in Romania. Whoever you met would speak about freedom: “Now we can say what we think out loud. We no longer have to whisper. We are free!”

Every generation of parents loves their children and searches for the best ways to support them and prepare them for a successful start in life. Modern parents, however, often take this effort to extremes, complicating their children’s lives (and their own, just as much) in an attempt to clear a perfectly smooth path for their still-uncertain steps.

"Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations, that all men are naturally equal and if some are more equal than...