My values are all based upon people and religion, and they really cannot be separated, because church is about people and their relationships with each other and the creator. I do not think that my religion controls my values, but more that I value my religion, because it reinforces my value system. Values are developed early in life, and the basic core values I think do not change. We modify how mush we value certain things and we modify how we apply our value system to our lives, but the basic values are who we are.

My basic values are that I want others to care about me and treat me well. I want good things to happen to those people I care about and I value their opinion of me. I try not to hurt anyone, because that hurts me. Any time I hurt someone I feel badly for some time afterward, depending on how seriously I hurt that person and also on how responsible I was for the hurt. I think it also matters how much I care about that person. It hurts more when you hurt people you care about. I think this all comes from my early education at home, and it is reinforced by several factors. It all connects to wanting to be loved. If you hurt people they will not like you and if you care about someone it causes you pain when they are hurt. So that is the negative reasoning. The positive reasoning is that I feel good when those I care about feel good.

I know these are really basic things that babies feel when they are young. I think when we learn how to make ourselves feel good we keep doing those things. Making others feel good makes them like me, so that make me feel good. So I try to do things that make people feel good. It does not always work, because I get angry and I think about myself too. However, when I am no longer angry or I have had time to think about something I often regret angry or selfish behavior, so I try to remember this before I act, and I am getting better at it.

So how did I develop these values? Well I think we are born wanting other people to care about us. My parents and family tried to help me to learn how to make people like me. They encouraged me to do things for other people and to be tolerant of their faults. They discouraged antisocial behavior, like fighting and not sharing. They did not punish a lot, but reminded me that I felt bad, because of what I did and that the other person felt bad, and so would not like me as much.

The church reinforced these values, but they said the rules were from God. Now I believed that when I was young, and, in a way, I know it is true, but for a different reason. It is not that God set up the rules that He wanted, but more that the rules that He t