Columns

  • Fear of God as wisdom

    Jan 05, 2018

    Why don’t we preach hellfire anymore? That’s a question asked frequently today by a lot of sincere religious people who worry that too many churches and too many priests and ministers have gone soft on sin and are over-generous in speaking about God’s mercy.

  • Five New Year challenges for the Church

    Jan 05, 2018

    So here we are, already days into 2018. And contrary to the expectations of some ahead of the New Year, the end of the world hasn’t arrived yet!

  • From a dim Christmas in Bethlehem to a “new Jerusalem”

    Dec 22, 2017

    Many Christians outside the Middle-East are often surprised to find out that Bethlehem does not lie in Israel but in Occupied Palestine.

  • The real tragedy of sin

    Dec 22, 2017

    The real tragedy of sin is that, often, the one who is sinned against eventually becomes a sinner, inflicting on others what was first inflicted upon him or her.

  • Is the end of the world nigh?

    Dec 15, 2017

    When President Donald Trump, without consulting many other nations, decided that the United States would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,

  • Reticence and secrecy as virtue

    Dec 15, 2017

    In all healthy people there’s a natural reticence about revealing too much of themselves and a concomitant need to keep certain things secret.

  • Christmas cheer – for whom?

    Dec 08, 2017

    Now that we have entered the season of Advent, for some the ‘Christmas spirit’ is already in the air. My phone messaging system is filled with photos and videos of Orchard Road in Singapore being transformed into a fairyland, lights from elaborately decorated trees flickering in KL department stores, and the streets of London turned into a dazzling winter wonderland.

  • Playing loose with the truth

    Dec 08, 2017

    It can be quite disheartening to watch the news these days. Our world is full of hatred, bigotry, racism, and over-stimulated greed and ego. The gap between the rich and poor is widening and random, senseless violence is an everyday occurrence. One lives with hope, but without much optimism.

  • Time to strengthen the frayed bonds of solidarity

    Dec 02, 2017

    Time to strengthen the frayed bonds of solidarity

  • God’s closeness

    Dec 02, 2017

    There’s a growing body of literature today that chronicles the experience of persons who were clinically dead for a period of time (minutes or hours) and were medically resuscitated and brought back to life.