What Is the CODA Project?
Let’s be honest: most of us didn’t choose the first beliefs and values that shaped our lives. We inherited them.
They came from our families, religions, cultures, communities, schools, political traditions, and countless other influences. Some of those values have served us well. Others may deserve another look. (And some may no longer make sense at all.)
The CODA Project is about figuring out what deserves to guide our lives once we’re willing to question the answers we’ve inherited or that have been handed to us.
This isn’t about replacing one set of answers with another. It’s about learning to ask better questions, think more critically about what we believe and value, and make more conscious choices about how we want to live.
Why “CODA”?
CODA used to be an acronym. It isn’t anymore.
Today, I think of a coda in its musical sense. A coda is a distinct passage that grows out of what came before and helps bring a piece of music toward its resolution.
I think that’s a darn good metaphor for life.
None of us writes our story from the beginning. By the time we’re old enough to seriously examine our beliefs, values, and assumptions, a lot of the music is already playing. Our families, cultures, experiences, and traditions have helped compose it.
We don’t have to reject everything that came before. But we don’t have to keep playing every note exactly as it was handed to us, either.
At some point, we get to participate consciously in how the piece continues.
That’s the space the CODA Project explores.
How I Got Here
For nearly four decades, Christianity (specifically Roman Catholicism) was a major part of my life. Starting as a college student, I spent 39 years involved in Catholic ministry, eventually earning a master’s degree in Pastoral Studies and serving as a Director of Youth Ministry for over a decade. I gave thousands of talks, led hundreds of workshops, and facilitated more than 150 multi-day retreats.
But I also kept asking questions.
Eventually, those questions led me away from Christianity and belief in the supernatural altogether. Today, I’m an atheist and a secular humanist.
But the CODA Project isn’t about convincing you to become a non-believer like me.
I’ve known people whose experiences caused them to rethink everything they once believed about Christianity, yet who still find meaning in believing there is something beyond ourselves. Others are firmly religious. Still others have never believed in anything supernatural at all.
Honestly, I’m much less interested in sorting people into those categories than I once was.
These days, I’m interested in a different question:
Whatever we believe about the supernatural, what can we learn from our shared human experience about how we should live our lives?
That question has become the heart of the CODA Project.
Start With Values, Not Answers
Religion traditionally answers questions about morality by appealing to some form of external authority: scripture, doctrine, tradition, revelation, God, or “all of the above.”
The CODA Project takes a different approach.
Rather than beginning with an authority and asking what it tells us to value, I want to begin with humanity itself. What has helped human beings survive, adapt, learn, build relationships, create communities, solve problems, and flourish?
Looking broadly at the human story has led me to five concepts that appear repeatedly important: Cooperation, Empathy/Compassion, Fairness, Integrity, and Curiosity.
I call these the Foundational Values.
I’m not claiming that ancient humans used those words or consciously organized their lives around five neatly labeled principles. These are modern English terms used to describe some complex human capacities that developed across cultures and throughout our history. There is obviously interpretation and subjectivity involved.
However… I did NOT simply choose five values that sounded good to me.
My goal is to identify fundamental human capacities that appear to have helped our ancestors survive and adapt—and that continue to help individuals and communities flourish today.
That’s why the Framework begins with human experience rather than religious authority.
The Foundational Values Framework
Calling these five values Foundational doesn’t mean they’re the only values that matter.
Courage matters. So does responsibility, acceptance, autonomy, resilience, kindness, honesty, mindfulness, and many others.
But those values can often be understood as growing from combinations of deeper ones. Responsibility, for example, can emerge from Integrity, Cooperation, and Fairness. Acceptance can draw upon Empathy/Compassion, Curiosity, and Fairness.
That gives us a useful way to explore not only what we value, but why we value it.
And that’s where the Foundational Values Framework becomes the primary “lens” for the CODA Project.
Whenever we consider an idea, belief, tradition, decision, or problem, we can ask:
What does Fairness ask us to consider? What might Empathy help us notice? Are we acting with Integrity? Would Cooperation help us find a better way forward? What questions does Curiosity suggest we still need to ask?
The Framework isn’t a rulebook, a creed, or a formula for producing predetermined answers. Sometimes the values will pull us in different directions. Reasonable people can apply them differently. That’s where evidence, reflection, discussion, and judgment become necessary.
A Framework That Can Change
There’s another important difference between the Foundational Values Framework and a religious creed:
I could be wrong.
These five values haven’t been revealed by a higher authority. I don’t claim that they’re the final five, the perfect five, or the only way to understand human flourishing.
The Framework itself should be subjected to exactly the same curiosity and critical thinking that the CODA Project encourages us to apply to everything else.
As I continue exploring anthropology, history, psychology, philosophy, evolutionary science, and human experience, my understanding of these values may deepen. The relationships among them may change. Perhaps the Framework itself will eventually need to change.
Good!
The purpose of the CODA Project isn’t to replace inherited dogma with a new set of unquestionable answers. It’s to become more deliberate about what guides us, and then remain willing to change our minds when better evidence or better reasoning gives us a reason to do so.
Exploring the CODA Project
The CODA Project puts this philosophy into practice in several different ways.
The Weekly Compass explores individual values one at a time. I look at what they mean, why they matter, how they connect to the Foundational Values, and how we can practice them in everyday life.
Mythologizing the Bible takes texts that have profoundly influenced Western culture and examines them without assuming divine authorship or authority. Sometimes they contain valuable human insights. Sometimes history and textual evidence complicate the traditional interpretation. And sometimes the values they promote deserve to be challenged.
Afterthoughts and other CODA essays and podcasts go wherever the questions lead: religion, culture, ethics, critical thinking, personal growth, community, and the assumptions that quietly shape how we see ourselves and one another.
Different subjects. Same lens.
The goal isn’t to tell you what to think.
The goal is to encourage all of us to examine what we’ve inherited, to decide consciously what deserves to guide us, and to then try to live our lives in alignment with those decisions.
The first part of our music may have been written for us. The coda is ours to compose!
