The Catholic church taught me about the “7 Deadly Sins” which are surefire way to the fires of hell. They are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. I think pride, greed, envy, and anger are more destructive with direct interpersonal implications than, say “weaker” sins called lust, gluttony…

Asking you to own up and appreciate your uniqueness can sound like a pious platitude or a psychological ploy to assuage the anxiety you feel about being so small and insignificant in a vast universe. When you are told not to compare yourself to others, you are less inclined to…

Seeing diversity as divinity being distributed all around us, can be extremely helpful in understanding the nature of intercessory prayer. When we ask someone to pray for us or we offer to pray for someone else, what does that mean? How does that work? Traditionally, it is understood as praying…

As a Catholic, I grew up believing that the Catholic Church is the only true religion. The words of my catechism teacher, “outside the church there is no salvation,” still echoes in my mind. He was repeating the official teaching of the Church, originally proposed by Cyprian of Carthage in…

For me something so simple and mundane as observing my wife doing a jigsaw puzzle is enough of a divine revelation. Judy loves Jigsaw puzzles. She would open a puzzle box of a thousand pieces and dump them on the dining table and, each day she would put a few…

There are three common ways of dealing with diversity: hate it, tolerate it, or accept it. Hitler was not a fan of diversity. I know many people who merely tolerate diversity. When an African American family moved into our mostly white neighborhood, my neighbor told me that he was not…

While living in India, the word diversity was not part of my vocabulary. Everyone around me looked alike, spoke the same language, ate the same kind of food, and belonged to the same religion. The caste system among Hindus in some parts of India and the denominational differences among Christians…

If you are disinterested in engaging in the exasperating task of studying the 32,000 plus verses of the Bible, or the 6,236 verses of the Quran, or the 700 verses of the Bhagavad Gita or you just want to dismiss them all, a heavenly life is still available to you…

“Divine revelation comes in two volumes: Nature and Scripture”, said Thomas Aquinas. For a believer who always looked inside the Bible first for answers, this quote was a jolt to his systems. Which came first, Nature or Scriptures? The answer is obvious. God’s creation existed before the Bible did. In…