It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.
Man is born in a day, and he dies in a day, and the thing is easily over; but to have a sick heart for three-fourths of one's lifetime is simply to have death renewed every morning; and life at that price is not worth living.
Life is not worth living if I cannot have pasta or bread again.
A life lived unexplored is a life not worth living.
Children born with Down Syndrome are not vegetables, nor are their lives demonstrably not worth living.
Imagine choosing a job not on money or even on career advancement, but as part of a life worth living.
What I'm trying to argue, as passionately as I can, is that the Jesus story isn't worth dying for, it's worth living for. Jesus presents a third way, a way of being in the worth that embraces the Sermon on the Mount, with its challenge to violence and greed.
Before operating on a patient's brain... I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end.
The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of its coals.
