Without realizing it, we have adopted John Stuart Mill's utilitarian principles. Utilitarianism is ultimately a subjective and ego-centric philosophy—in practice, it looks a great deal like social Darwinism.
That was Good Friday. A day of blood, tears, bewilderment, and the loss of all hope. A dark day with just a glimmer of light: a Son who never lost faith in the love of his Father, even while suffering and dying for crimes he did not commit.
More than anything else, we must learn how to serve one another in love. Serving enriches us, especially when the one being served is unable to repay the debt, except through gratitude, except through the very gift of life itself.
Non-conformity means pushing back. It means paddling upstream, against the current. Christianity is not for those who want to float with the tide. It's about swimming, not drifting.
Quantum theory seems to require us to step beyond the material to the metaphysical. It suggests a need for consciousness, for mind, for something that is more than just a collection of synapses in a glob of gray-matter. It seems to demand something transcendent, like God.
In sub-Saharan Africa, about 7.4% of all adults are currently HIV positive. Of the 3.1 million people worldwide who died of AIDS in 2004, more than two-thirds were from this same region. What would Jesus do?
