"A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?"

The Big Apple Coalition of Reason has launched a new campaign in New York’s subways with posters asking passengers, “A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?”

Great question.

Of course I know that people can be essentially good people without God. I know many wonderful, thoughtful, happy, productive, loving people who don’t believe in God.

Relating back to my post from yesterday, however, I also think that a person just trying to live a good life is selling himself short at some point. Because there’s more for us.

This is one of my very favorite quotes from Pope John Paul II:

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choice that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society.”

– Pope John Paul II, World Youth Day 2000 Prayer Vigil

Nichole Nordeman’s “Legacy” is a special anthem I go back to a lot when I think about how I want to live my own life. The refrain:

I want to leave a legacy,
how will they remember me?
Did I choose to love?
Did I point to You enough to make a mark on things/
I want to leave an offering
A child of mercy and grace who blessed Your name
I want to leave a legacy

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