Tag: faith

I grew up on the border between two different universes, not geographically but spiritually. There, across that fine line, lived more than half of my extended family, with a different worldview.

Let's go back in time to the day when Jesus spoke His apocalyptic words. At that time, rather than giving a revelation about the future, He was more concerned with warning about the dangers of deception.

Ultra-rich Silicon Valley tech magnate Bryan Johnson has been regularly having transfusions of his own son’s blood plasma in an effort to live longer. The treatments are expensive and are essentially still being trialled.

Religion has often been maligned in both the press and popular culture. But could believing give you an edge in life?

"History shows how surpassingly difficult it is for Christians not to forget Christ," says Professor Chris Green. Forgetting does not mean losing sight of His existence, but rather losing sight of His way of being, His values, and His way of relating to those around Him.

What is the future? The question may seem trivial. But when you think about it, you understand better what St Augustine confessed: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know".

Elspeth Muir’s brother, Alexander, died from drowning. It was 2009, and he had just turned 21. He died from drowning, but his death “was not foreshadowed by his love of water except that it explains why he was near a river, alone, with a blood-alcohol content of almost 0.25. My brother died because he was drunk, and because the drink made him stupid.”

“No doubt equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men have made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might; so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good....” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts)

In The Simpsons episode entitled “Homer the Heretic,” Homer Simpson has a conversation with God.

Motto: "Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision." (Winston Churchill)

In the famous realist novel A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe blends the factual with the imaginary, describing the social context just before the great plague struck London in 1665. Among the reactions described, two straddle the line between religion and conspiracy.

"With architecture we build buildings, with mechanics we build machines; is there no place among the sciences for one dedicated to human beings? Ethics is capable of working out the principles according to which a person must be 'built' in order to be truly human" (Traian Herseni).

From my experience and the conversations I have had so far, I have found that there are two major categories of people who come to doubt the existence of God.

Although grief is a universal experience, we respond differently to its onslaught, so it's no wonder that words meant to comfort often add more suffering to an already heavy burden.

John the Baptist's call—"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near"—succeeded in bringing Jews "from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan" to the desert where the prophet preached, to confess their sins and be baptised. Two thousand years later, the exhortation to "repent" is buried under a mountain of pejorative associations.