Why do the most thoughtful religious people I know sound like the most thoughtful secular people I know?

My closest friend is an Orthodox rabbi. I'm an agnostic.

We disagree about everything a philosophy seminar would argue about. Metaphysics, epistemology, whatever.

And yet when we talk about what it actually means to live well — how to be patient, what to do about envy, whether to forgive a specific person — I cannot tell us apart.

I don't know what to do with that, and I've stopped pretending the observation is trivial.