Sitting in a car at a red light on a pedestrian crossing on a Sunday morning with not a soul in sight is daft, as are most regulations applied without reference to the context. Yet the minatory power of that red light paralyses us into stupidity and acquiescence.

This is one of the fault-lines in debates about human value and it puts the role of institutions and the good of individuals in unnecessary contention. We need institutions, but they are always instrumental goods, good for something else. That something else is human flourishing, which is an intrinsic good, good in itself.

Religions are a famous battleground in this debate, because they imaging their rules and regulations are not just another variant of human arbitrariness, but have immutable transcendental authority behind them, a delusion Jesus challenged. He skewered the issue with a single saying: 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'

The saying can be universalised: The State was made for man, not man for the State. The Law was made for man, not man for the Law. Traffic lights were made for man, not man for traffic lights. Religion was made for man, not man for religion.

Taken from Leaving Alexandria