What is it to be a source of good in the world? And also to be one who is devoted to love with a mission to help others devote themselves to love?

Religious people can be focused on the abstract, or hyper-focused on the rules of engagements, without attending to the love and to the community, as part of the same thing. To see our actions, even in helping, as manifestly loving.

It is easy to recognize that, say, offering alcohol to an alcoholic isn’t the most loving. And easy enough to see an intervention, too, as loving. But formal inquiries and ostracizing people often crosses an invisible line. One that many of us know is there, but we can’t really define.

To really determine the loving response, we must first interrogate what we think good is. And what our motivations truly are.