By DAVID YOUNT, Scripps Howard News Service

During World War II, English novelist Aldous Huxley persuaded himself that human behavior could be modified and humankind's aggressiveness stemmed.

Although partially blind from an accident in his youth, he undertook rigorous eye exercises and was successful enough to get a driver's license.

A century ago, the American philosopher-psychologist William James affirmed that "if any medical fact can be considered to stand firm, it is that in certain environments prayer may contribute to recovery and should be encouraged as a therapeutic measure."

The roles we play in life, however responsibly, can disguise the persons we are beneath our posturing. Although God formed us in our human nature, he did not create the roles we have come to play in life. Typically, our scripts were thrust upon us by circumstances or by others.

Jesus' parables defy traditional categories of storytelling. They are neither tragic, humorous, heroic, sentimental nor even especially uplifting.

Moreover, they are not the sort of stories you or I would be inclined to read to children at bedtime or around a campfire. His tales are too terse to be suspenseful or even very entertaining.

So what makes them so memorable?

Gabrielle Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly remain prominent public persons despite having suffered a traumatic change in their private lives.

She continues to be a member of Congress from Arizona and he is a retired astronaut. It was a year ago that a gunman at a Tucson supermarket killed six people, wounded 12 others, and left Giffords with a severe brain injury.

In his poem, "Dover Beach," the Victorian English poet Matthew Arnold lamented that "the Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full ... But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating ...."

There are no cookie-cutter Christians. Despite the moral traits they have in common, the saints themselves possess distinct personalities. What they share is the habitual determination to think and act like Jesus himself. Not all of Jesus' followers were pious and perfect, but the majority embraced lives of integrity and service motivated by love for God and humankind.

New Year's resolutions tend to favor self-improvement -- lose weight, exercise more, go to bed earlier and rid ourselves of bad habits. Better resolutions consist of helping other people with their lives.

I have yet to see a sign on American highways directing drivers to the nearest crematorium. But such markers are common in Canada, Britain and continental Europe, where cremation has fast become the favored way to prepare for eternity.

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, confessed that, "despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, the great question has never been answered: 'What does a woman want?'" In pre-feminist 1925 he noted that "women oppose change, receive passively, and add nothing of their own."