The solution to the things that divide us: ‘Love Your Enemies’

The New York Times has recently reviewed a book that I have not read but whose title I certainly agree with: Love Your Enemies.

The book is by Arthur C. Brooks, who is among other things the former director of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington, D.C. The author of the review is journalist Lance Morrow, and he writes:

Brooks beholds America’s 21st-century tribal feuds — which on a national scale add up to nothing less than a religious war, a clash of faiths and value systems — with a clear, intelligent eye and a hospitable attitude that is rightly focused on the spiritual dimensions of the problem: Only transcendence can open the way to better solutions down the road. The real swamp just now is in the American mind. Source: Healing the Divisions in Our Country – The New York Times

America has always been a nation riven with deep divisions, culturally, socially, and politically, Those divisions seem particularly acute now — so much so that there seems to be no way around them.

But Brooks points out that there is much more that we can agree about than what we have chosen to disagree about. Recognizing that is the first step toward healing those divisions. I hope that more of us — especially me — can take that first step.