But social security carries a risk: the risk that some will abuse the system, taking without giving. It's a risk we seem increasingly unwilling to accept. Attitudes are changing. Yet coming down hard on the unemployed also carries a risk. The risk th...
Monsters, unfortunately, sometimes refuse to stay dead. Diseases once eradicated can creep back and strike at the most vulnerable in countries least equipped to deal with them. And slavery itself blights many lives today. It's prohibited, of course,...
In the front gardens, even in the rain, I notice the first signs of spring and the greyness of winter giving way to small yellow white and purple flowers. Spring is rising in all the animals which include us humans. So we smile good mornings to our n...
To be compassionate is, if we take the word to bits, to suffer with another, to feel their suffering almost as if it is our own. So someone can work hard to relieve suffering, and be highly skilled in doing so, without thereby exhibiting compassion -...
Though it may be a small incident, it does raise the issue of personal responsibility and respect towards others, what should and shouldn't be said in public. But it seems to me that it is also another example of religious sentiment being singled out...
The argument on how to get the balance right between the right to privacy in private life and the importance of having a free press working in the public interest to expose truth is still continuing. When I look for guidance in the New Testament, I c...
William Shakespeare wrote of the seven ages of man, starting with the puking infant and the whining school boy, through the lover, the soldier, the authority of the middle aged justice, then the slippered pantaloon, ending with the dependency of old...
There is a kind of tribalism in us all which can make us feel uneasy, even threatened at times by difference. But our prejudices often tell us more about ourselves than we would like to admit. When the Quran says we have made you into nations and tri...
So, as we continued walking through the city, I played a game, trying to separate what I thought was inspired by a true faith in God, and what was not. It quickly became difficult: for every almshouse there was a wealthy patron who'd paid for it; the...
Last week, I was in Bruges. We were standing in front of yet another unbelievably stunning painting by the Flemish artist Hans Memling, in a 12th century hospital built specifically for the poor, when my daughter said: Oh no. Another picture of Jesus...