Gratitude can’t be neatly packaged into a particular holiday any more than religious faith can be shoehorned into a weekly Sabbath.

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Parental conversations about something as fundamental as what to teach children about God should be held before marriage, especially if one or more of the parents have strong religious views.

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A few weeks ago there was a well-publicized debate between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins. Dawkins is the controversial author of the God Delusionand an avowed atheist. Collins, a scientist and committed Christian, is Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

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A couple of years ago there was a knock at the door of my home one Saturday morning and I was greeted by an acquaintance, who asked for a few minutes. Invited inside, he proceeded to explain with some embarrassment how he had done something anonymously that was deliberately intended to hurt my reputation.

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There are two discernible questions here, so let’s take them in sequence.

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This is the kind of question that could be asked once a month and we’d never run out of things to say. It also calls for a very personal answer.

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The apostle Paul wrote that faith in Jesus Christ was “unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Cor.1:23). It seems nothing much has changed in 2,000 years except the choice of words.

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I grew up in a large port city, with more than its share of the social problems common to most big cities. I have a snatch of memory of a young woman in Salvation Army uniform, wrapped against the cold of an English winter, moving quietly in the dark evening through the pubs and taverns of the dockland to seek out the working men who would dig in their pockets for loose change. I seem to remember that she did somewhat better when asking for donations from the slightly inebriated.

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No people in history have been as successful as the Jews in retaining their roots while embracing change in an environment of hostility.

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This hierarchy of seven deadly sins grew out of the monastic orders of the Middle Ages in Europe, so even though each of these sins is present in ancient Judeo-Christian texts, the list isn’t a biblical concept.

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Mankind is hard-wired to seek improvement in his circumstances. There are exceptions, but most cultures assume that men and women are driven to seek for a basic level of material security – a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs and security for themselves and their children. This isn’t greed.

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People don’t choose a religious faith for health purposes. But as a side benefit of religious devotion, it’s a different story. There’s considerable evidence that a religious life delivers significant health dividends in faiths that integrate a health code into their religious observance – like Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons (Latter-day Saints).

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