One reason that the world finds the New Testament's message of peacemaking and love of enemies incredible is that the church is so massively faithless. On the question of violence, the church is deeply compromised and committed to nationalism, violence, and idolatry....
For Jesus, compassion was more than a quality of God and an individual virtue [though it was indeed that]: it was a social paradigm, the core value for life in the community. To put it boldly: Jesus was political. He directly and repeatedly challenged the dominant...
There is nothing that makes us love a person so much as praying for him or her… By considering yourself an advocate with God for your neighbors and friends, you would never find it hard to be at peace with them.