This “package” of Christian moral beliefs made great sense in an intensely personal universe. When the Gospel of John called Jesus Christ the Logos—a word that meant to the Greek philosophers the supernatural order behind the cosmos—it was revolutionary. For the Greeks, the claim that the “universal cosmic order” could be identified with an

If you think Christianity doesn’t hold much promise of making sense to a thinking person, then this book is written for you.

All science can do, Kalanithi argues, is “reduce phenomena into manageable units.” It can make “claims about matter and energy” but about nothing else.

He found it no longer unreasonable to believe in God. He came to a belief not only in God but also in “the central values of Christianity—sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness—because I found them so compelling.”24 Paul Kalanithi had also found that, in Habermas’s phrase, the completely secular point of view had too many things “missing” that he knew

Science does not [and cannot] teach brotherly love.”19 Secular, scientific reason is a great good, but if taken as the sole basis for human life, it will be discovered that there are too many things we need that it is missing.

You are what you love.

The great paradox is that we “find” our selves, this unconquerable identity and confidence, only through humbling ourselves, giving up the right to self-determination, and following Christ. “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). That is, when we stop trying to find and serve

Robert Nisbet, in History of the Idea of Progress, also explains how the older Christian idea of the coming kingdom of God became secularized into a narrative of historical advancement. He shows that ancient peoples generally saw time and history as cyclical, but especially Christianity gave humanity the idea of progress.10 Christian theology

Our identity, then, is not, after all, something we can bestow on ourselves. We cannot discover or create an identity in isolation, merely through some kind of internal monologue. Rather, it is negotiated through dialogue with the moral values and beliefs of some community. We find ourselves in and through others. “We never get to the bottom of