I am concerned that introducing Biblical ethics in a high school class of this sort would only serve to legitimize certain religious agendas: to keep gay marriage illegal, to repeal abortion laws, etc. I worry that bringing the Bible into a high school setting under the pretense, genuine or not, of studying law will re-enforce the appropriateness of Biblcal ethics as basis for law when perhaps the question the students should be investigating is whether or not any one religious perspective should be the foundation for a legal system of a nation of 300 million people.

My problem with government is complex: of course I want there to be a representative body that protects my rights and oversees the way different people with different worldviews and pritorities interact. But I have a very difficult time making sweeping statements about what we “must do in all cases”, because I don’t look with such broad eyes.

I am working to see myself as both ephemeral and insignificant as well as eternal and endless, an important particle of the body of God.

It is not enough to strive to be “good”. We must be “good for something”, to use our lives as the testing ground for the unfolding of some shared desire, dream, or objective. This “radical utility”, the feeling of being useful for something that transcends our own individual lives, is what propels us from good to great.

Spiritual love is something that we do rather than something that we feel.