Gerardo Franco

Have you seen the bumper sticker: “If it feels good, do it?” In many ways, that slogan characterizes the approach of human experience fostered by contemporary society. A stream of books, articles, commentary, advertisements, and dialogue points to feelings as the basic measure of happiness, as the truest aspect of one’s self. Although, feelings are important, they are continually represented as central to self-fulfillment and the development of one’s potential. A popular psychiatrist-author states the “modern” perspective in no uncertain terms: “Being in touch with your feelings is the only way you can ever become your highest self; the only […]

It seems to me that much of the things we care for most depends on stamina, the power to see it through. No one escapes situations where all of his or her chances for positive creative living depend not only upon what he or she can do, but upon what he or she can stand – whether they throw in the towel or see it through. Take for example Handel before he wrote The Messiah. One of his biographies said of him, “His health and his fortunes had reached the lowest ebb. His right side had become paralyzed, and his […]

There is an old movie based on the beginnings of the Chinese communist revolution. A Chinese mob breaks into orphanage run by a Catholic priest. The communist officer, a big bully type, tries to assault a pretty young orphan girl. The priest, at the risk of his own life, tries to defend her. While two or three soldiers were holding the priest, the man slaps him saying: “Your Christ recommends turning the other cheek”. The priest complies. The officer slaps him on the other cheek too. The priest then in great anger lands a carefully armed punch at the belly […]

One of the marks of a learned person is that he knows he doesn’t know very much. Isaac Newton was that kind of a person. He was one of the major scientific minds of the last 300 years, and yet he once described himself as a small child on the sea shore, picking up a few pebbles, all the while surrounded by a vast ocean of the unknown. Albert Einstein was like that, also. In our modern world, his name is a symbol of genius; and yet he said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious, the […]

What is God’s intention for families? What part does God mean families to play in human life? Only when we understand what God has revealed about the family can we hope to find solutions to the problems families face today. The clearest statement of God’s plan for our family is the one that comes right at the beginning of the Bible in the account of the creation of man. We often miss the point of this account. Living as we do in a highly individualistic society, we’re used to thinking of humanity as a mass of individuals. Consequently we read […]