Moderately Religious: believing in a secular world 
Recently, the never-completely absent euthanasia debate has flared up again. To be honest, there is a lot of debate about preconditions and not enough about what it is really about. Who owns your life? Can faith provide an answer to that?
As a self-proclaimed moderate feminist, I call for a reappraisal of both traditional and modern roles of women. I draw on religious principles and contemporary insights to defend women's freedom of choice, so that they can live their lives as they wish, inside or outside the home. There is a need for respect and recognition for all women and I advocate...
Do I sometimes have doubts? Of course, is my answer. More than that, my faith cannot exist without doubts. But I understand that this is not the case for everyone.
It is often seen as a cliché, but during the Christmas period it is essential to reflect on the deeper meaning of this holiday. We are inundated with images of family gatherings and gift exchanges, and while these traditions have their own value, they represent only part of the Christmas story. The true spirit of Christmas goes beyond...
I read an article in De Standaard about the mass of the W boson. As a scientist this fascinates me enormously, as a believer it makes me jealous. The fascinating thing is that this is really fundamental science. We cannot see this particle. We can devise very difficult experiments, plug the results into difficult formulas and then calculate a probable result using...
Science is driven by ignorance. After all, if we thought we already knew everything, we would stop searching. It is precisely because a scientist knows that he does not know something yet that he starts formulating hypotheses and developing theories, in the hope that he will first find a lot of peers who believe that his assumptions are correct. Once the scientist...
I would love to be a lawyer in the US to use this famous phrase again and again, but now I have come across it in a video to which I simply say amen in response. Anyone who knows me knows that I love the fact that for me religion and science are not opposites, but different windows into the same truth. One provides more answers to how questions, the other...
Three weeks ago I was suddenly struck by a brain haemorrhage. Can I be angry with God for a moment?
There are days when puzzle pieces that have been in your head for a while suddenly come together and show you an image that you never suspected, but that gives you an aha experience that you will never forget. I had one of these this week and while the title suggests I learned something about wrestling, it's more like I could...
Kevin and I recorded an episode of “The Closet of Mormon” a few weeks ago in which we dared to talk about the burkini ban in swimming pools. As believers, we understand the need to have the freedom to practice your religion, but we also understand the opposition to Islam. I'm not going to repeat our position here, anyone who wants to know that should just...
There is a proverb that says “to stand still is to go backwards”. As a person I believe that is very bad. Not in the sense that it is wrong to never think about something. This is actually very necessary to make better progress afterwards. Every now and then you have to look at where you come from. But I very much believe in the task of making progress and learning, especially from your...
Yesterday Stephen Hawking, physicist and scientist, but above all myth and cult figure, passed away. It will probably not be appreciated by many for saying this, but the combination of a fantastic brain in an extremely vulnerable body has contributed to the fact that he is spoken of in superlatives yesterday and today. He is often mentioned in the same breath as Einstein...
Sometimes you are confronted with something that you consider obvious, but is put back into the spotlight through a different perspective. I had that feeling very strongly recently with the words that prophets speak to us. To a Mormon that all sounds obvious. We believe that our church is led by Christ, but He does so through His prophet. Mormons consider the president of...
In the Bible we read that Christ looked up to children, loved them and commanded us to be like children. Today I learned for myself that children can give us the most beautiful lessons there are. Today I heard a young girl speak so beautifully and so honestly about the love of Christ, about how He accepts everyone, that she touched my heart forever. Today she told...
I am regularly asked whether this all works in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: no paid clergy, so everyone can do or say something during the speeches? Today I saw once again how someone can say something fantastic in all its simplicity, so that there is something valuable in it for those who listen carefully. So today I have a completely new...
This week it was awarded for the umpteenth time in a row in just a few weeks: a frontal attack on people who are religious. This time, surprisingly enough, it was Straffe Hendrik of the CD&V who launched the proposal that people belonging to a religion with a market share of more than five percent should no longer wear ostentatious religious symbols in the political space: Hendrik...
Bam, immediately a statement that will stand out. In Sweden, the Lutheran Church led by Archbishop Antje Jackelen has decided that God is now gender neutral. Six million baptized Swedes will no longer refer to God as “He” or “Lord.” But I don't participate in that: I know He is still a man, because He is my Heavenly Father. ...
It's always similar things that push me to go into defensive mode about my faith. Also today. A simple tweet about how awful and idiotic faith is hurts me, because I think faith can also be beautiful. I only know Wim from Twitter and I don't want to judge his statement at all. I can only speculate as to why he did this...
I read a beautiful story about peace on Linda's blog. Children were playing war and their grandfather said that war brought a lot of pain and that they should play peace. However, the children asked him a very good question: “How do you play peace, grandpa?”. A question to ponder during this peace week, because grandpa didn't know the answer either. It's...
Angels really exist. I saw them this week. They may not look the way you think. I saw no wings and they did not fly on a cloud. Neither did they hold a harp, nor did they hear a multitude of angelic voices. The first sound they made was simply “ding-dong”. So they didn't suddenly fly in. Suddenly ring the doorbell and get straight to the point. She...
Moderately Religious: believing in a secular world 
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