Social

Over the last few decades, the picture of family life has undergone dramatic changes. The pervasiveness and normalization of divorce are just two of these changes.

Humans have been telling stories ever since the dawn of civilisation. What stories do we tell about ourselves and how do they affect our identity?

For many people, the New Year is the catalyst for making changes they didn't have time or energy for in the previous year. On 1 January, the list of resolutions grows promisingly long, but keeping them can become a real ordeal in the tangle of daily problems and deadlines. Statistics show that even before the month of snowdrops, many of the commitments made...

People have always loved and cherished music, investing time into both composing and listening to it. Journalists from The New York Times sought to find the reason behind our deep attachment to this intangible thing that, for most of us, yields no material gain.

Five seconds. And everything smells of heaven, wet grass and happiness.

When was the last time you threw yourself into something you weren’t sure you’d be good at? Recently, I was invited to join a women’s basketball team. Confession: I’m terrified of team sports. Since school, I’ve associated missed shots and undefended opponents with disappointment and anger. So my initial response was, “Nope, not happening.” 

What I need now is stability. And that can only come through sacrifice. That's what I've heard and that's what I’m doing. My family? It can wait—dear ones, too. The little joys of life? Who has time for that? I'm still waiting.

Researcher James Flynn of the University of Otago identified a surprising phenomenon: “We get far more questions right on I.Q. tests than each succeeding generation. (...) Indeed, if you score the people a century ago against modern norms, they would have an average I.Q. of 70. If you score us against their norms, we would have an average I.Q. of 130. Now this...

One night, thousands of miles apart, two young women of the same age made a decision—a seemingly trivial one, but one that would seal the fate of one of them.

Plato may have been one of the first to think this way, but in modern sociology it was Walter Lippmann who made history with the idea that people do not have access to reality in all its complexity, but operate on images of that reality that they construct for themselves.

I believe that the illusion of free time seen as a different world, separated from everyday active life, must be replaced by the image of proactive free time– just like a day of work that satisfies us.

Written by renowned church historian and Baylor University theology professor Roger E. Olson, The Essentials of Christian Thought [1] explores the metaphysics embedded in the biblical narrative.

For anyone who has spent any time in a church context or has encountered some form of Christianity, the significance of the story of Jesus is often assumed and then summarised in the single best-known Bible verse: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but...

Recently, I went trekking in Nepal. Sometimes upon returning from a trip, I feel the pressure to return with exciting stories—the near-death experiences and anecdotes that leave people wide-eyed and laughing.

As Christian parents, the most important legacy we want to leave our children is faith in God.