existence on Neighbors

Once, there was a devout woman who prayed every day in her small apartment, expressing her faith loudly and fervently. Her neighbor, an atheist, often overheard her prayers, which drove her nuts. When...

Adapted from Ch 4 of On Getting out of Bed. Why is Existence Good? Living for the sake of living—doing things so that you can continue to efficiently do things—begs the question, Why live? To live...

A few years ago, a priest working in a slum section of a European city was asked why he was doing it, and replied, 'So that the rumor of God may not completely disappear.”

Who, then, are we, we prideful late-twentieth-century creatures? Lord knows, we no longer think of ourselves as belonging to anyone or anything. We do not belong – we own; we possess. And that, to say...

Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which em...

One of the universal experiences of life is questioning whether God really exists or if we are ultimately, alone in the universe. The great British theologian (this isn’t meant to be taken seriously) ...

Last week, an atheist came up to me and asked how I could believe in a God who made parents eat their children.  Naturally, I was a little confused. A lot of people have odd ideas about God, but ...

I’m a paranoid agnostic. I don’t think God exists, but I’m sure there is some sort of force out there working against me.

The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. (For Contrast).

The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as “Christians” will become disciples—students, apprentices,...

What are we hear for in the first place? The fundamental answer…is that we we’re “here for” is to become genuine human beings, reflecting the God in whose image we’re made, and doing so in worship on ...

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered ...

You may remember the old “village atheist” trick of putting a watch on the podium and saying, “Now, if there is a God, in five minutes he must strike me dead.” Not a single person who has given that c...

Reason and Knowledge have always played a secondary, subordinate, auxiliary role in the life of peoples, and this will always be the case. A people is shaped and driven forward by an entirely differen...

Many have heard of the polymath and famous atheist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), whose career as a public intellectual touched on a variety of disciplines, including philosophy (he is considered one o...

It was true, I had always realized it—I hadn’t any “right” to exist at all. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. I could feel nothing to myself but an inconsequential ...

Faith is seeing the invisible, but not the nonexistent.

So, while the long history of religious oppression and hypocrisy is profoundly sobering, the earnest seeker must look beyond the behavior of flawed humans in order to find the truth. Would you condemn...

The South African politician Nic Diederichs—a prominent leader during the apartheid era—once made a rather provocative observation: God, he said, dislikes deadly uniformity. I hate to admit that I lik...

Pastor: Satan and the powers of darkness seek to divide and destroy. And all too often God’s people either run from the battle in fear and defeat, or pick up the wrong weapons in the fight, relying ...

Many of us westerners are familiar with the stories of the first Apollo missions and the “space race” with Russia. What we are less familiar with is the experience from the other side, from the Russia...

Sofia Cavalletti is a researcher who has pioneered the study of spirituality in young children. She finds that children often have an amazing perception that far surpasses what they’ve already been ta...

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as wat...

The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering...but in the development of the soul.

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest...

Man is the creature with a mystery in his heart that is bigger than himself.

Recently I was watching a children’s television show on YouTube with my kids, when the host asked, “What is the meaning of Life?” His response was typical: “I don’t know,” but what he said next made m...

A source of the intensest pleasure earthlings can experience, sex has also been a source of vexatious trouble for the human family since the beginning of history.

In an article entitled, What the New Atheists Don’t See , the British author Theodore Dalrymple shares his honest struggles with atheism. The subtitle of his article is fascinating, “To regret re...