Excerpt from The Good Life: Where Morality and Spirituality Converge

first principle A foundational principlefrom which other truths can proceed.moral life. After all, being loved makes the moral life possible! For themoral life is really about living out of the abundance of being loved inways that make life richer for everyone. How are we ever going to live inways that promote the well being and full flourishing of ourselves andothers, as well as the whole environment, if we do not first feel the love ofanother for us?Now, Nebraska is a long way from California, but that distancequickly shrinks with the thought that someone there holds us close totheir heart. To know that someone loves us, that we are special to them,not only brings them close to us but also strengthens, consoles, and empowersus to live out of the gifts that are ours. It is so much easier to takethe risk to love another, even a stranger, when we know that someone,somewhere, loves and cherishes us.As the experience of lovers tells us, loving another and being lovedby another creates a dynamism that opens us beyond the particularity ofthe one we love and moves us outward toward the goodness and lovablenessof all people—in fact, of all creation. The moral life depends on theexperience of being loved and on the dynamic pull that draws us to love allthings, and ultimately to love God.. . . Spiritual masters throughout the ages have told us in a varietyof ways that God’s love for us does not compete with the relationships wehave with other people or creation. We do not have to step over or aroundthem in order to get to God. Rather, God comes to us in and through ourrelationships with all things.But to say “God loves you!” may seem trite. We have heard it so manytimes that it may very well suggest an empty piety. Yet, the good news ofthe Christian faith is that God’s love is real, creative, constant, and undefeatable.God’s loving us is the supreme truth, the rock bottom foundation,the first principle on which we build a moral and spiritual life. Aswith any first principle, we cannot prove it but we can deduce from it.Once we accept it, we can see how much follows from it. We can see thatall of life is lived in the presenceof God, is a responseto God, and has value inrelation to God’s love.14 Christian Moral Life: A Primary Source Reader