Reasonably Faithful: believing in a secular world
People rarely leave for a single reason. Four patterns, plus a fifth closer to home: an awkward word that was never corrected. Listening, understanding without agreeing, and explicitly naming what we suppress, help more than policy. Leaving usually remains a personal choice — ours is: never be the reason, but rather the love that stays.
You don't need faith to be a good or happy person. But for me, faith adds an extra dimension: it provides a clear framework for making choices, helps to give meaning to setbacks, and offers the perspective that this life is a chapter in a larger, ongoing story.
An unanswered prayer for healing or deliverance does not mean a lack of faith or divine unwillingness. The true miracle is often not that a problem or physical pain disappears, but that you gain the strength and insight to persevere and move forward. Commandments and adversities are not there to filter us out, but to shape us and guide us to who we can become.
Feeling alone and being alone are two different things. Making God tangibly present would render faith meaningless; it is precisely in difficult moments that your choice to keep seeking Him matters.
No trinity but three persons, no original sin but personal responsibility, no marriage until death but a family for eternity. Ten points on which the Church of Jesus Christ fundamentally differs from the Catholic Church.
Those who opt for 'she at home, he at work' are nowadays quickly labeled 'tradwife' - with the implication that our church might have something to do with it. This piece explores what is true about that: research into happy believing women, what faith does to men, and the role of fathers in transmitting faith - including the question of whether this is not a placebo. Not a plea for one model, but proof that equal is different from same.
More and more people feel empty or lonely, despite a life full of social media and social busyness. That is no coincidence: when the line between man and God weakens, the line to the other must suddenly bear all the weight alone, and under that it bends. An age-old insight from Genesis and a simple triangle show why, and what small gesture can already restore that balance this week.
In 'The monsters of our time', Imam Khalid Benhaddou flawlessly dissects our divided society, but ultimately opts for a secular way out. A missed opportunity. Where he safely stores religion as a private matter, I have a radically different proposal: as a society, we need not less, but more room for religions as a shared foundation.
Bart Eeckhout relegates all faith to the corner of silence, especially when it comes to morality. The failure of authorities should not be taken as an argument for everyone's faith.
My son Laurens has autism, and lately that has been hard on me. What did I do to deserve this, I sometimes wonder. What keeps me going when an answer is lacking are not great insights but fixed habits. And this week, a good conversation with a friend and the opportunity to serve myself brought me more together than I had expected.
Last time, we left a skeptical eighteen-year-old on his way to Italy. In Assisi, he stumbles upon a statue with doves — and a memory his mind cannot place. Thirty years later, he still isn't sure what happened. But it set something in motion that could no longer be stopped.
Every Sunday, new faces appear in the church hall, and most do not return. Not because believing is difficult, but for another reason. About church as a means, not as an end, about what individualism costs us, and about the body of Christ as an answer to an emptiness that reaches much further than religion alone.
God hears every prayer, but the answer rarely comes as you expect. Four reasons why the silence after a prayer does not mean that no one is listening, with scripture references supporting each point.
As a young man, Etienne Vermeersch joined the Jesuits and left the church with an image of God that left no room for his sharpest questions. Slavery in the sacred texts and the problem of evil remain insoluble within that image of God. The restored gospel starts from different principles: freedom of choice as old as God, and opposition as a condition for a world in which growth and love are possible.
Science measures, but does not value – and yet the abortion debate often flees to facts and majorities instead of moral questions. Faith does belong at the table, provided it speaks with reasons and not with authority. Only then can we face the deepest question: what is a human worth?
Around euthanasia, the same two words always come up: courageous and sensible. But who says that courage always lies on that side of the table? I plead to dare to call those who keep fighting and keep living courageous, without putting anyone else in a corner.
Julien De Wit wrote an intelligent book about resilience and reinvention in times of crisis. It's almost right. But something essential is missing — and that absence is precisely the blind spot of our time.
Apostle Gerrit W. Gong dedicates an extensive video to AI, with clear warnings about what technology can never replace: prayer, growth through effort, true friendship, silence in nature. I believe you should pay attention to the triangle between God, others, and yourself where no algorithm should interfere.
Peter steps out of the boat, walks on water, and sinks. The classic lesson says: make sure your faith is stronger. But what if that's not the intention of the story at all? Christ knew in advance that Peter would sink — and immediately reached out his hand. No reproach, no delay. That changes everything about how we look at this story, and how we look at ourselves in a time when the water is high for many.
A second study shows that AI not only remains silent about religion but actively steers it. At the same time, Pope Leo XIV and an apostle of my own church warn against the same blind spot. My proposal: literally bring faith traditions to the table with those who build AI.
Reasonably Faithful: believing in a secular world 