If human relationality formed the bedrock of meaning, it seemed to us that rearing children added another dimension to that meaning.

After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week. Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world.

Yet I returned to the central values of Christianity - sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness - because I found them so compelling. There is a tension in the Bible between justice and mercy, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the New testament says you can never be good enough: goodness is the thing and you can never live up to it. The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time.

It’s very easy to be number one: find the guy who is number one, and score one point higher than he does.

This is how 99% of people select their jobs: pay, work environment, hours. But that's the point. Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job - not a calling.