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If, biologically, a person becomes a parent when their child is born—or, civilly, when they adopt a child—from a practical and even moral point of view, a person only becomes a parent when they master a series of crucial skills.

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.

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.

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?

There are two main reasons why we find it difficult to apologise, particularly to our kids.

One can hardly overestimate the role the relationship between a parent and their child plays in forming a matrix for the child’s future relationships, whether healthy or dysfunctional. The quality of the parent-child relationship is essential because it directly impacts the child’s social and emotional development, and its quality influences the child's ability to deal with future conflict.

Those familiar with the Bible know the story of the Good Samaritan, who helped a Jewish man who had been robbed by giving him first aid and paying for his recovery.

"All your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature" through the decisions you make, wrote CS Lewis. If the choices we make really have such an impact, how can Christians make sure they make the right decisions?

"My exploration of the nobility of the spirit . . . began with the realisation that, following 9/11, many intellectuals were desperate to justify what had happened, failing to distinguish between being highly critical of their own Western society and legitimising a crime, no matter the reasons. I asked myself, 'What use are so many intellectuals who know all the books and music,...

I open the window and breathe in the air, trying to guess the weather. Floating around, mixed, are scents and miasms alike; it's hard to decipher these intricate clues.

Raising a child is not easy at all. Raising someone else’s child is even harder. But raising six children who are not your own, giving up your life, sounds crazy to most of us.

It takes a brave man to stand up to a dictator and perhaps an even braver one to stand up to his church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been held up as a hero of the cause of justice and equality, and a statesman of modern Christian theology. For some readers, these two things might not seem a natural fit. But for Bonhoeffer, the two...

If shame were personified, its main characteristic would be its ability to creep into the darkest depths, avoiding any trace of light and any discussion of itself.

Isaac and Rebecca, two biblical characters, had problems in their marriage. At first they struggled to fall pregnant. Then, when she eventually got pregnant, it was a difficult pregnancy, which affected them very much—so much so that they didn't know what to do. I suppose they had all sorts of discussions about the situation, but at some point the discomfort just became too...

I don’t think I did anything significant the afternoon I saw the movie “Awakenings”. The feeling that I had reached the heart of the human condition strongly impressed me with the idea that we are born captive in a limited nature, and that gave me a heavy feeling of loss.