The violence tolerated or even encouraged to please the crowds in Olympia followed naturally from worship of such a god. Deaths and injuries were extremely common. The pankration was a no-holds brawl mix of wrestling, boxing and street fighting in which kicks to the groin, deliberate dislocations of shoulders and ankles, chokeholds and breaking opponents’ fingers were all a part.
Imagine standing in the iconic Paris Olympic stadium, eagerly anticipating the 2024 Summer Olympic Games – a marvel of engineering bustling with athletes and cheering crowds. But before a single brick was laid, there existed a digital twin, a virtual counterpart meticulously mirroring every detail of the stadium.
Thirty years ago, Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years as a political prisoner, took the oath of office at the Union Buildings in Pretoria – an act that declared to his country and the world that white minority rule had ended in South Africa. On that autumn Tuesday, all South Africans were finally free and equal before the law. Apartheid was over, the transition to democracy was peaceful, and now we could boldly look at the future.
The people for whom Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are their ancestors have their own responsibilities and privileges. All of which are fulfilled in Jesus, whom they must recognise as their Messiah in order to find satisfaction for their millennia of yearning. As I noted in my previous blog post, we Gentiles are settlers to a well-established faith, the Jews (the blood line of Israel) are indigenous. We are grafted into their story. By Jesus’ blood, which has become our blood by faith, securing our
In June 2024, as a Finance Bill laden with a raft of tax proposals considered punitive to ordinary Kenyans made its way through parliament, young Kenyans poured into the streets in loud, defiant albeit largely peaceful protest. Kenya is no stranger to protest, but there were a number of striking elements about these particular protests.
We Westerners, who have only known the seventy years of peace sustained by the international order ushered in after World War Two, know little of the anxiety and fear Ukrainians and others in war zones experience daily.
With any quick Google search, Canadians of any age can access sexually explicit material. Simple, often innocent search terms can bring up websites with sexually explicit content, much of it violent and dehumanizing. It is extremely easy to access in Canada, and we are seeing the devastating consequences of this on our population, especially children and youth.
Russian propaganda that Vladimir Putin is ‘protecting Christianity’ against Satanism and neo-Nazism flies in the face of reliable reports from numerous sources of the brutal and ruthless persecution of Christians in the occupied Ukrainian territories.
Mandela entered office as South Africa’s first black president resolute to unite his divided people into the rainbow nation that Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu had been preaching about for years. Will the new Government of National Unity finally realize this dream?
On May 24, 2024, the movie Sight was released in theaters across North America. This Hollywood film is a rare non-martial arts movie with a Chinese protagonist, based on the life of Chinese-American doctor Ming Wang (王明旭), CEO of Aier, the world’s largest ophthalmology group.
In a secular society where ‘faith-based’ learning institutions are often viewed as fossils of a bygone age, education today is widely considered the rightful domain of secular governments. Should governments even allow ‘special’ religious-based education anymore? Hasn’t religion caused so many conflicts in the past? Shouldn’t education be based on scientific facts, not ‘superstitious’ beliefs? Even believers have to ask themselves, does Christian education matter anymore?
Forced displacement goes hand in hand with acute food insecurity. The 59 countries/territories with food crises account for 90 million individuals forcibly displaced from their homes. Most are internally displaced in their own countries (64 million), and the rest are refugees, asylum seekers and migrants seeking resettlement elsewhere. Behind these huge numbers are human beings – men, women and children made in the image of God. The Bible is filled with stories of welcoming and caring for those
