Remedies for “immediatism”

We live in an era defined by speed, where everything, from information to personal gratification, seems to be just the push of a button away.

What should we do about prejudice?

We walk into a room full of people and from the first second, we draw a conclusion about how we will feel in their company. And often what we intuited happens. How is this possible?

Called to attention

We live in a world in which the news is far more pervasive than the events it reports. An event happens in one place but is almost instantly repeated and echoed in millions more. And while the event might be shocking, tragic or horrifying, a wider and sometimes greater toll is exacted by its reportage, by the slow-motion replays, by the breathless punditry...

The end of a matter is better than its beginning

Most of us have been urged since we were little to not give up, to carry on, and to “go our own way”. The idea that giving up is a negative choice, a synonym for failure, or a sign of cowardice or inability, is deeply embedded in our minds.

What exactly lies within us?

“What is mankind that you make so much of them, that you give them so much attention, that you examine them every morning and test them every moment?” (Job 7:17-18)

Courage in the deluge

After a chance meeting of mutual friends, I was introduced to Tim and Sonia in a restaurant in central Toowoomba, Queensland, eight days before their home was washed away.

I’m here! | friendship and interest in each other

I'll leave my heart as payment among the coins, and pass... – Nichita Stănescu

An encounter with kindness

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.

The slumber of the proud

One of the best-known stories told by ambitious entrepreneurs today is that if you work hard, you will have a lot.

The kind of romance that destroys our relationships

Twenty-first century people are bombarded with fiction about romance.

Is there a cure? The painful limitations of the fight against paedophilia

Little over a decade ago, a highly acclaimed British documentary filmmaker, Louis Theroux, stepped into the midst of 500 paedophiles admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Coalinga, California, trying to find out if the complex treatment the convicts had to go through was really working.

The pain of other people

Every experience we live teaches us something about the world and God. These lessons are always perfectible. From the pain of other people, however, we learn the wrong lessons so easily.

Good people, bad people

I have always loved family photographs, especially old ones. They allow you to wander freely through the stories of times and lives that are little known yet also familiar.

War does not carry toys in its backpack

When war steps out of the pages of history books and into the real world, it resonates with a harsh, cutting tone, becoming a seismic record of humanity’s darkest nightmares. The recurring faces of war’s hideous nature show that, no matter how advanced human civilization becomes, moral evil doesn’t disappear—it merely gets passed down from generation to generation, patiently waiting for the right...

Love doesn’t give up, regardless of the prognosis

Lace-edged rumours wafted through the student campus in Sagunto, Spain: Devin, one of the American boys who had come to Spain for a year of study, was dating Teresa, a second-year theology student who was hard to miss. Her striking beauty and cheerful nature attracted gazes like a magnet. No one suspected then, not even the protagonists of this relationship, that their love...