Morals, Values, and God...?

I saw the movie To Save a Life today. I didn't realize that it would have such a religious undercurrent to it - being "saved" and stuff. I didn't necessarily judge the movie based on that, but it did give me some interesting thoughts about society. Actually, I was having thoughts that were somewhat related to this before the movie.

Why does it seem like, in this day and age, it's so rare to see someone who has strong morals and values that they hold true to, unless they are religious?

I am by no means a religious person, although I have becoming more spiritual and even maybe developing a desire to become more religious recently. I do, however, think that I am and always have been a very moral and ethical person, with strong values. Of course, many of my friends from Catholic school disagree with a lot of my values and would say that this post is stupid but I don't care.

What I'm getting at, though, is how people treat people. Why did it take a church youth group to bring a feeling of welcomeness at a high school, even after the suicide of an outcast? Why does the protagonist of To Save a Life find God before being able to treat people with respect?

Why can't we find it within ourselves to treat others with love and respect? I don't care if you're old or young, stupid or brilliant, gorgeous or ugly, black or white, I will treat you with love and respect. I'm completely human and have many flaws, and DO judge people internally, but I refuse to let my judgments - which I am trying to change but haven't totally been able to - impact the way I treat people. You might call that fake, but I call it ME. I won't pretend to think you're the most amazing person in the world if I just don't like you, but I will give you the time of day. I will be there if you need to talk. I will donate money if I have it and an organization is legit. I will donate time to a cause I believe in.

I'm not doing this for God. I'm not sure who God is, or what, or where. All I know is, I'm doing it for me.

(of course, my belief is leaning towards the fact that God is inside everyone, so perhaps it is God. Perhaps God is what drives good things, but maybe God is just a synonym for the charge of positive energy and love. I don't know if I believe in God as a person-ish thing, but if God is energy and love and respect coming from one and channeled to another, then I guess you could say that I am sure that I believe)

** Funny thing is, this post was kind of taking a very non-religious standpoint... "Why do we need to use religion as a reason to be nice to people? Why can't we just treat people well without doing it because we want to go to Heaven, we fear God and don't want to get on his bad side, etc? Why can't we all just realize that as humans we are all inherently equally deserving of everything?" and yet, I kind of surprised myself at the end.