Loving One’s Enemies

Christ taught His disciples that to follow Him means to have a love which is greater than simply loving those who love us – we are even to love our enemies.   St. John Chrysostom noted wryly in a couple sermons that we have a hard time even loving our friends, let alone our enemies.   Russian priest Fr. Alexander Yelchaninov noted how easy it is for us to lose our equanimity because we bristle at the slightest offense and are always ready to take offense at what others say.

It is only necessary for us to become aware of the slightest feeling of hostility towards us, of the faintest reproach or ridicule, and all our sympathy towards the person in question vanishes, leaving no trace. We are pleasant as long as people are pleasant to us. Yet this has nothing in common with what a genuine, brotherly attitude towards men should be.

Being pleasant towards others is something, but still doesn’t measure up to Christ telling us to love even our enemies.  What He commands us to do is to have such self control that we do not react to others but rather we act toward them.  When we react we allow our emotions to take over.  When we act toward others we chose how we will behave toward them and we don’t allow them to control our emotions.   Christian love is not an emotional reaction to others but a choice of behavior.  We attempt to imitate Christ who died for us while we were still sinners.  We attempt to follow Christ who forgave those who condemned Him to death.  We choose to treat all others as God treats all – giving sunshine and rain to everyone and offering salvation to all the world.

Let All You Do Be Done in Love

“Let yourself be persecuted but do not persecute others. Let yourself be crucified but do not crucify others.  Let yourself be insulted but do not   insult others. Let yourself be slandered but do no slander others. …  Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.  Such is the sign of purity.  Suffer with the sick.  Be afflicted with sinners.  Exult with those who repent.  Be the friend of all.  But in your spirit remain alone. … Spread your cloak over anyone who falls into sin and shield him.  And if you cannot take his fault on yourself and accept punishment in his place, do not destroy his character.”  (Isaac of Nineveh) …  ‘Agapeic’ love is not a sentimental whim or a physical attraction, both of which are doomed to fade away quickly, and anyway do not come at will.  No.  It is the awareness of God’s love for another person.  Only God can enable us to understand our neighbor according to the ‘feeling’, the intuition of the ‘Spirit’.           (Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism)

The Church: Realizing the Ideal

Our Lord Jesus Christ taught us Christians how we are to live in relationship to one another – in love and service to one another.  No Christians are exempt from this way of life.  All come to church, not supposedly to see what they can get out of it, but in order to imitate Christ – as the one who serves and looks to the interest of his/her neighbor before his/her own interest.   Two quotes from the saints below about how they think we should be living if we are following the Gospel commands which Christ gave to us.   The first by St. John of Kronstadt on “the Kingdom of love”:

Dislike, enmity, or hatred should be unknown amongst Christians even by name. How can dislike exist amongst Christians?  Everywhere you see love, everywhere you breathe the fragrance of love. Our God is the God of love. His kingdom is the kingdom of love. From love to us He did not spare His only-begotten Son, but delivered Him up to die for our sakes, “to be the propitiation for our sins.” In your home you see love in those around, for they are sealed in baptism and chrism with the cross of love, and wear the cross; they also partake with you in church of the “supper of love.” In church there are everywhere symbols of love: crosses, the sign of the cross, the saints who were pleasing to God by their love to Him and to their neighbor, and Incarnate Love Itself. In heaven and upon earth everywhere there is love. It rests and rejoices the heart, like God, whist enmity kills the soul and the body. And you must show love, always and everywhere. How can you not love when everywhere you hear love preached, when only the destroyer of mankind, the devil, is eternal enmity!                                      

The second quote is from St. John Chrysostom in which he offers us an ideal for the church.  However, Christianity is not mostly about ideals, but rather about love incarnate.  We are supposed to realize the ideals!   Here is Chrysostom on the unity of the Church: 

 He [Christ] brings us into unity by means of many  images…He is the Head, we are the body;…He is the Foundation, we the building; He the vine, we the branches; He the Bridegroom, we the bride; He the Shepherd, we the sheep; He is the Way, we they who walk therein; again, we are the  temple, He the indweller (enoikos); He the First-begotten, we the  brothers; He the Heir, we the co-heirs; He the Life, we the living; He the Resurrection, we those who rise; He the light, we the illuminated. All these things indicate unity; and they allow no void interval, not even the smallest. For he who removes himself but a little, will go on till he has become very distant.          

The Freedom to love vs. The Bondage of Self-love

Creation of Adam and Eve

The Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book has a prayer which speaks about “bondage of self.”  We really can be so self centered - paying so much attention to what “I” want –  as to be enslaved to the self.  Such bondage cuts us off not only from the rest of humanity but from our own humanity.  We are after all created as social, relational beings.  To be so self-centered, so narcissistically captivated by self-love, is to lose our connection to humanity – our own as well as that of all or any other human beings.  Self-love is no love at all.  True love always involves another – someone else who becomes the focus of our altruistic concern and affection.   Constantly paying attention to our own needs and wants is not exercising our freedom, but enslaving ourselves in that bondage of self.   Here is the prayer to be freed from bondage of self:

 God, I offer myself to You – to build with me and to do with me as You will. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Your Power, Your Love, and Your Way of life. May I do Your will always!

Biblical Scholar N.T.Wright in his The Resurrection of the Son of God  comments on 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 in which St. Paul says:

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;  but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Wright comments:

The point of I Corinthians 13:8-13 is that the church must be working in the present on the things that will last into God’s future. Faith, hope and love will do this; prophecy, tongues and knowledge, so highly prized in Corinth, will not. They are merely signposts to the future; when you arrive, you no longer need signposts. Love, however, is not just a signpost. It is a foretaste of the ultimate reality. Love is not merely the Christian duty; it is the Christian destiny.  

The Christian destiny is to love by which we also overcome that self-love which is a sign of the world fallen in sin.  Jesus said who ever commits sin is a slave to sin (John 8:34).   The way to freedom is to love others, not to indulge the self.  

 

Which virtue is most important?

:

Cloud of Witnesses in the 20th Century

St. Makarios of Egypt said

Where outward ascetic practice is concerned, which virtue is the most important? 

The answer to this is that the virtues are linked one to the other, and follow as it were a sacred sequence, one depending on the other. For instance,

prayer is linked to love,

love to joy,

joy to gentleness,

gentleness to humility,

humility to service,

service to hope,

hope to faith,

faith to obedience,

and obedience to simplicity.

Similarly, the vices are linked one to another:

hatred to anger,

anger to pride,

pride to self-esteem,

self-esteem to unbelief,

unbelief to hardheartedness,

 hardheartedness to negligence,

negligence to sluggishness,

sluggishness to apathy,

apathy to listlessness,

listlessness to lack of endurance,

lack of endurance to self-indulgence,

and so on with all the other vices.

                                                                                                           

Forgiving as Giving

There is no Christian who cannot be a minister of the Gospel.   It is always in our power to give to others, even when we have no material gifts to give, we can minister to others spiritually.    Sixth Century St. Dorotheos of Gaza said:

For even if you cannot give as the rich gave their gifts into the temple treasury, give two farthings as the poor widow did, and from you God will consider it a greater gift than the gifts of the rich.  And if you do not have as much as two farthings?  You still have power to give alms, you can take pity on the sick and give alms by ministering to them.  And if you cannot do even this?  You can comfort your brother by your words.  Express your pity for him in words and take heed of the one who said, ‘A good word is better than the best of gifts.’  Suppose you cannot even help him by words; you can still, even when he is incensed against you, take pity on him and bear with him in the time of his fury, seeing that he is being dealt with spitefully by the common enemy and, instead of making a sharp remark and adding to his fury, keep silent and so have pity on him and his soul, thus dragging him away from the enemy.  Even if he offends against you, you can have mercy on him and forgive his offence against you, so that you may receive forgiveness from God.  For it says, ‘Forgive and it shall be forgiven you.’  And you shall be found to have mercy on your brother’s soul by pardoning him his offence against you.  God made us a gift of the power, if we wish to use it, or forgiving one another the sins committed against us, so that if we do not have the means of coming to the aid of their bodies, we may come to the aid of their souls.

(The icon of St. Juliana the Merciful is from St. Paul the Apostle Church, Dayton, OH)

Saint God, Saint Mighty, Saint Immortal

What makes a person “a saint”?  The word “saint” in English is one way we translate the Greek word “agios” which literally means “the holy one.”  The word “saint” thus is the same word “holy” as in “Holy Spirit” or “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal…”   When we use the word “saint” to talk about God’s holy people, we English speakers lose the sense of connection between the holiness of God and the holy saint.   In the Orthodox Church the Feast of Pentecost - God’s pouring forth His Holy Spirit upon the disciples first and then all the Church is followed a week later by All Saints Day or the Day of ALL the Holy Ones of God.    The giving of the Holy Spirit by God results in abundance of Holy Ones in the Church.   To be consistent if we are going to refer to Saints instead of Holy Ones, we should then also say Saint Spirit and Saint God.  It sounds wrong to our ears but it would help us remember the connection between the Holy God and His Holy Ones.

A saint is a person who is holy in the eyes of God.  We strive as Christians to be holy, not just moral.  Archbishop Lazar Puhalo wrote in FREEDOM TO BELIEVE: 

“Morality becomes a substitute for our life in Christ when we reduce religion to a moral code, when we reduce the faith to a system of correct behavior instead of an existential struggle to purify the conscience and acquire the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We cannot acquire the Holy Spirit by means of correct behavior, which is just a matter of human works and legalistic words at that. Such an approach fills us with so much judgment and condemnation and arrogance and self-righteousness that the Holy Spirit remains alien to us. We begin to think ourselves to be moral and everyone who is not like us somehow immoral. We set ourselves as the criterion of morality, but there can be no true morality without the inner transformation of our person. Perfect holiness consists only in perfect love, not in correct behavior. Righteousness does not consist in correct behavior, but in genuine co-suffering love and pure faith. No deed has any moral value unless it proceeds from the heart motivated by love”.

St. Paul the Apostle expresed it this way:  

“I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I have no love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.   I may have the gift of prophecy and the knowledge of every hidden truth; I may have faith enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing.  I may give all I posses to the needy, I may give my body to be burnt, but if I have no love, I gain nothing by it.”  (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

Christianity and Islam: The Apostle Paul

This is the 8th and final blogin my series which began with  One Christian Looks at Islam Looking at Christianity; next was the two part  Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet; then the two part  Christianity and Islam:  Conflict over True Christianity; followed by the two part Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord.   This blog follows Christianity and Islam:  Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord (2).

Christians and Muslims agree that Jesus is a messenger of God and that He is properly called the Messiah.  They agree that Jesus’ birth was miraculous, and that Jesus was a miracle worker.   The Qur’an like the Gospel of John even refers to Jesus as the Word of God.   Where Christianity and Islam part company in their understanding of Jesus is that for Christians all the evidence of the birth and life of Jesus (which the Qur’an also accepts) proves Him to be Son of God.  The Christians say the evidence of the miracles of Christ mean Jesus is Lord, God incarnate, and one of the Holy Trinity.   Islam denies these points not believing that the evidence of Christ’s miraculous life justifies such an interpretation of Jesus.   Additionally, for Christians there is the fact of the death and resurrection of Christ which is the ultimate proof of the Christian understanding of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished.  The Qur’an does not accept the story of Christ’s crucifixion and thus denies to the death and resurrection of Christ any sacrificial importance let alone saving or redeeming power.   For Christians Christ ultimately triumphs even over death, the final enemy of God, which is the lesson Christians derive from the story of the resurrection.   In Islam Christ is merely a prophet who brings the same message as all prophets – submit to God.  Islam sees Christ as ultimately having no victory in his life except perhaps a moral victory.  They see true victory coming only with Muhammad who leads an army to victory and thus see God’s victory as a victory in this world.  In the world to come there will be no help from God as all that awaits each human is judgment.   On the other hand for Christians the victory of Christ extends beyond the grave into eternal life as Christ is victorious over sin and death.

For Muslims it is essential that Jesus himself points the way to Muhammad as it is Muhammad not Jesus who is the final prophet.   The Quran  “quotes” Jesus predicting the coming of  a messenger whose name is “Ahmad.”    The quote is not found anywhere in the canonical Gospels.   Islam uses Jesus predictions of the coming of the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth in  John 14-16 as Jesus predicting the coming of Muhammad rather than the coming of God’s Holy Spirit on Pentecost.    I am not aware if there is any non-canonical Gospel text which has Christ predicting a future prophet to follow Him, but indeed some of the stories of Jesus in the Qur’an which are not found in the canonical Gospels can be found in 3rd-4th Century apocryphal texts – texts the early Christians regarded as spurious or heretical.  (It would be interesting to know if Islam considers these texts as legitimate scriptures since they have in them stories that the later dated Qur’an contains).    For example the Qur’an has Jesus miraculously turning clay birds which he had formed into live ones, a story reported also in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas or the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Savior.   

For Muslims, the Christian reverence for Jesus as Lord and one of the Holy Trinity is both wrong and forbidden by the Qur’an.   Islam blames to a large extent the Apostle Paul for distorting the true story of Jesus and the Gospel.  The Muslim missionary materials claim St. Paul was only interested in his own vision of the mystic Christ, but not interested in the historic person of Christ.    Yet, St. Paul places a clear emphasis on the Cross and on the last supper, events he reports and claims to have the received  and is passing along as tradition.    The Islamic criticism of Paul lacking an interest in history is because Islam itself does not accept the historicity of the events of Holy Week – the last supper, the crucifixion and the resurrection.   Christianity is based in historical events which St. Paul makes the heart of his Gospel.   St. Paul does not preach a different history, but proclaims the very history found in the Gospels.  He also comments on the implication of the historical events of the death and resurrection of Christ for all those who believe in God and who believe that keeping Torah is the only way to earn God’s favor.

 Islam claims its own view of Christ is historical, formed while he still lived on earth (not after his departure from the world), is the view Jesus had of Himself, teaches monotheism, is in line  with what Muhammad taught.  Muslims claim the Christian view on the other hand progressively evolved after Jesus departure from the world, is mythical and an interpretation, contradicts Jesus’ own teachings, is influenced by Greco-Roman polytheistic mythology and philosophy, was not taught by ANY of God’s prophets, was developed by St. Paul a self-appointed disciple.   Islam claims all prophets were Muslims, and so was Jesus.   It claims Christianity is an aberration created by Paul which rejects monotheism.   One booklet asked, “Is it not strange that Paul portrays the law of the mystic Christ as differing from God’s law?!”

The answer, I think is no.     Christians understand the Law of God as serving a purpose in preparing God’s people until the Messiah came.   The Law in Christian thinking is not the teleological goal of God’s plan.   Rather the Law was to help God’s people until the Christ came.   The Messiah is the goal of history and in Him the very purpose of the Law is fulfilled.     For Islam the goal in life is to obey and submit to God’s Law.   In this sense Islam is another form of literalistic and legalistic thinking that sees God mostly as a law giver whose task in life is to police His creatures, punishing or rewarding them for their behavior at the end of their lives.  Christianity however understands God’s deep abiding love for His creation and His desire to share His divine life with His creatures.   Thus the goal is not mere obedience but to freely choose love – for God and for one another.

The Muslim materials accuse Paul  of deception and of saying the law was binding on Jesus but not on Paul.   They claim such passages as Matthew 5:18-19 refute Paul.   But Jesus Himself is accused of violating the law by the Jews who rejected Him.   Jesus declared himself the Lord of the Sabbath and more important than the temple or the Torah because He fulfilled the purpose of both.    

St. Paul considers what Jesus said and did and then looks at what the purpose of the law was – it belongs to this world, not to the kingdom of God. The law was given because of sin but was not given originally by God in paradise.    The Muslim missionary material accuses St. Paul of pushing Jesus aside, yet Paul declared Jesus as Lord and Christ, which Islam will not do.    Islam really accuses Paul of both pushing Jesus aside and of untruthfully exalting Him.

St. Paul is not the founder of Christianity but is an Apostle of Christ.   His teachings are particularly troublesome to Islam because Muhammad did not understand or accept his teachings.   Paul is one of the Apostles and prophets upon whom God built His Church, Jesus Christ being the cornerstone.  Christianity does not have to deny or change any of the Scriptures of the Jews to come to their faith in Jesus as Messiah.   Christians accept St. Paul as being fully in line with the witness of the entire scriptures of Christians and Jews, of accepting and teaching all of the revelation of God which is found in the Bible of Jews and Christians.

Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord (2)

This blog is a continuation of Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord (1)

This is the seventh blog in my series which began with  One Christian Looks at Islam Looking at Christianity; next was the two part  Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet; then the two part  Christianity and Islam:  Conflict over True Christianity.     These blogs are my reaction to the claims of some Muslim missionary literature aimed at converting Christians to Islam. 

Islam says the Jews lost their favored status with God when they rejected Jesus – that is when prophethood left Israel.  The very things which the Jews accused Jesus of, and why they rejected Him according to John 5:18 is because they understood Jesus of making himself equal to God, of claiming that He and the Father are one.  Read John 17  to get a sense of how Jesus Himself understood His relationship with God the Father.   In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.”    So at least in the Christian Scriptures Jesus himself, His disciples and His opponents all seem to agree that Jesus saw Himself as in some manner one with God the Father and sharing the divine life of the Father.   So the Islamic claim that Jesus never declared Himself to be God or divine or co-equal with the Father is true only if one ignores the Gospel tradition and relies solely on the Qur’an for reading the claims of Christ.  The New Testament has a few explicit claims about the divinity of Jesus but many implicit claims.

There also is this in the Qur’an:  “the Messiah, Isa son of Marium is only a messenger of Allah and His Word which He communicated to Marium and a spirit from Him”  (Q 4:171).   The Qur’an identifies Jesus as God’s messenger, Word and spirit.   The notion of Jesus as God’s Word is most clearly spelled out in John 1, a text which also implies the divinity of God’s Word and in the context of John’s Gospel implies the divinity of Jesus. 

Mark’s Gospel begins with the words:  “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”   That is the Gospel’s thesis statement; the Gospel is what Mark offers as proof of his thesis.  The Gospel is the living testimony and proof to Mark’s claim about who Jesus is. And in Mark’s Gospel God Himself speaks about who Jesus is.  John in his Gospel’s conclusion in chapter 20 says that the events he reports to us are offered so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God and that believing we might have eternal life through Him.   This is also the witness of Hebrews 1-2 in which it is clear that Jesus being the Son of God is exactly how the first Christians understood Him and His words.  Notions of Jesus as God’s Son or as God the Son were not invented by later generations of Christians, but certainly can be found already suggested in the Gospel text.   It is when dealing with the entirety of the revelation as contained in the New Testament that the notions of God as Trinity and Jesus as the incarnate Word of God became the obvious (literal!) reading of the Scriptures.

The Islamic literature referred several times to  John 17:3 (“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”).   This text was used to confirm that Jesus expresses an Islamic belief in one God.  Yet the text implies that there is something incredibly unique about Jesus for eternal life is not simply knowing God but also requires knowing Jesus Christ.   It contains no reference to the Qur’an or to Muhammad as being necessary for eternal life.   The Muslim materials said John 17:3 is the equivalent of saying,  “There is no deity except the one true God, and Jesus Christ is the Messenger of God.”     While Christians are willing to say that Jesus is God’s messenger and a prophet, that would certainly be seen to be a weak interpretation of John 17:3.   Christians say Jesus is the message not simply the messenger.   This is a claim in line with Qur’an 4:171 which identifies Jesus as God’s Word.

The Christian experience of Jesus as God’s Word is why Christians do not interpret God’s message as nothing more than obedience to God.  If sheer obedience is all that God wanted from humanity, it would be strange to give humans free will.  God could have made automatons for that purpose.  Christians would say that God wanted us freely to choose to do His will because God created us to love – to love Him and to love one another.  Love is only possible where there is choice – freedom to love, and where good and bad are equally attractive to us so that we must choose between the two.   In creating beings capable of love, God created beings who could also reject, rebel, disobey or choose badly.  It is however His greatest wish for humankind that we would love – and this is exactly what Jesus lists as the greatest and second greatest commandments: love God and love neighbor.  And the commandment to be obeyed is to love  (John 15:12, but see also Mark 12:31, John 13:34, 14:15-21, 15:10-12.   From the Torah see Deuteronomy 5:10, 7:9, 11:1,13).

The Muslim missionary literature says Jesus taught mostly obedience to God  which they say is exemplified in John 14:15, 21, 15:14 where Jesus instructs His followers to obey Him.   But it is these same passages in which Jesus says His command is to love.  Jesus emphasized love, forgiveness of enemies more than obedience to the law.  He says the law is about loving God and neighbor, obedience isn’t more important than love for love is the highest good.  In Christ’s teaching we find that to love Him is to obey His commandments and His commandments are for us to love.  Submission and obedience are not the goal but a means to attain the goal.   Love is in the teachings of Jesus not a noun of emotion, but a verb of action.   Love is how we are to choose to act toward others; it is not a mere reaction to others.

Because submission to God is what Islam teaches the main tenet of God’s Law, Islam emphasizes obedience to God’s commandments as the main message of the Old Testament and of Jesus (Matthew 5:17, 7:21, 19:16-17).     God’s people are to hear God’s word and obey it (Luke 11:28).    And in what was a rare quote from any New Testament material outside the Gospels, the Islamic materials  pointed out that  James 4:7 says to submit yourself to God.   While Christianity does embrace these words of Jesus, it also keeps them in their Gospel context that His commandment is that we love.   Obedience and submission is not what God mostly wants from us – we can keep the law without loving God.   It is the love of God and neighbor which is God’s ultimate plan, hope and desire for us.

And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ”‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

God does not just want us to obey Him under threat of punishment, according to Christianity, He wishes for us to choose to love Him and to love one another.

Next:   Christianity and Islam:  The Apostle Paul

Generosity Generates a Blessing

In all this I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ “   (Acts 20:35)

As children of the darkness that rules through fear, self-interest, greed, and power, our great motivators are survival and self-preservation. But as children of the light who know that perfect love casts out all fear, it becomes possible to give away all that we have for others. As children of the light, we prepare ourselves to become true martyrs: people who witness with their whole lives to the unlimited love of God. Giving all thus becomes gaining all. Jesus expresses this clearly as he says: “Anyone who loses his life for my sake…will save it.” Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity, I know that I am moving from fear to love. But these steps, certainly at first, are hard to take because there are so many emotions and feelings that hold me back from freely giving. Why should I give energy, time, money, and yes, even attention to someone who has offended me? Why should I share my life with someone who has shown no respect for it? I might be willing to forgive, but to give on top of that!  Still…the truth is that, in a spiritual sense, the one who has offended me belongs to my “kin,” my “gen.” The word “generosity” includes the term “gen” which we also find in the words “gender,” “generation,” and “generativity.” This term, from the Latin genus and the Greek genos, refers to our being of one kind. Generosity is a giving that comes from the knowledge of that intimate bond. True generosity is acting on the truth – not on the feeling – that those I am asked to forgive are “kinfolk,” and belong to my family. And whenever I act this way, that truth will become more visible to me. Generosity creates the family it believes in.     (Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son)