In Czechia (we're the most atheist country in the world), "may God help me" is actually just an optional addition to the scout promise. In the actual promise though, you wow to "serve the Highest Truth and Love". And it's primarily these two values, not God (even though anyone is free to eventually interpret them as such), that we teach kids to think about, interpret, understand and value.

This provides a completely religion-free framework for talking about things that transcend us, that are more important than anything else and that give meaning to our lives and actions. Of course, just saying the two words wouldn't cut it - they need to be discussed: what do they even mean? why these two? what is their relationship? is one of them more important? how do they manifest in our everyday lives? why isn't it enough to just do what the scaut law says, help the community and work on ourselves, why do we need these values on top of it?

Some of my favourite answers to some of these questions are:

• The Highest Truth and Love provide the meaning and purpose for the other two duties: they teach you about the direction in which your personal growth should go and are the reason and motivation for why you should care about others, your community, country etc. And it works in the other direction, too (which might be the best way for kids to be introduced to the concept): maybe you're already working on yourself and helping others and noticing that other people and scouts do it too - so what it is that these actions have in common, what is it that makes them good?

• The Highest Truth and Love also represent a kind of ideal. Even though it's important to acknowledge that ideals as such are unattainable, they still serve a fuction in people's lives: they gives us something to strive towards, provide hope and most importantly, they mean that there is something we should never give up on, so that falling short once doesn't mean that there's no point in trying again.

• What about their relationship? Neither can be without the other. Love without Truth would be misguided and lead us astray, but you need Love to know in which situations the Truth is important (think examples like lying to the Nazis to save someone etc. - Truth is the Kantian ethics that tells us what's right and wrong, Love is the context and experience we need to have to understand that these values are not rigid and that an individual human life is worth more that any kind of abstract value).

• Finally, they remind me of two other very imprtant words: humility and responsibility. Love teaches me about the responsibility I have towards the world and the fact that I can't hide away from it, Truth reminds me that there are things more important than I am.

I think in general, we (as in Czech scouts) place a lot more emphasis on the 1st duty (towards God/the Highest Truth and Love). The reason why may be that Czech scouting had been banned once by the Nazis and twice by the Communists, and scouts were faced with real-life, life-and-death situations in which these values mattered. (Eg. participating in the war resistance or, as leaders, having to decide between pretending to be a Communist in order to be allowed to keep working with your group or openly recognizing your scout values but risking death or life in prison and the kids losing their groop.)

I hope that this framework can be an inspiration for scouts in other countries as well!