The Sanctity of Human Life

Our society could be transformed by Christians who refuse to participate in the viciousness of our current public conversation. Imagine the impact on our talk radio and our TV opinion shows if everyone somehow came to recognize the dignity and sacredness of their political and ideological enemies, and if Christians refused to support media personalities known for their anger and dismissive contempt for adversaries. Christians must be visibly different in how we speak of, and speak to, those we disagree with. Here is a person for whom Christ lived, died, and rose again. We know this, and must act accordingly.
David P. Gushee"The Sanctity of Human Life" from Advancing the Common Good

Fissure

Purpose remains an inescapable element in human life. Human beings do entertain purposes and set out to achieve them. The immense achievements of modern science themselves are, very obviously, the outcome of the purposeful efforts of hundreds of thousands of men and women dedicated to the achievement of something that is valuable - a true understanding of how things are. A strange fissure thus runs right through the consciousness of modern Western man. The ideal that he seeks would eliminate all ideals. With dedicated zeal he purposes to explain the world as something that is without purpose. And, as I have suggested, this fissure becomes visible in two ways: in the dichotomy (one of the outstanding marks of a "modern" society) between the public and the private worlds, and in the dichotomy in thought between what are commonly called "facts" and what are called "values." The public world is a world of facts that are the same for everyone, whatever his values may be, the private world is a world of values where all are free to choose their own values and therefore to pursue such courses of action as will correspond with them.

From Foolishness to the Greeks: the Gospel and Western Culture, by Lesslie Newbigin, chapter 2.