Making Friends of Enemies: Reflections on the Teachings of Jesus

James H. Forest

ISBN 10: 0824508858 / ISBN 13: 9780824508852

Published by Crossroad, 1988

About this Item

Unbekannte Unterschrift / Widmung / Aufkleber. Offers insights and inspiration on loving our enemies as Jesus taught us. An enemy is any person or group I feel threatened by and may seek to defend myself against. Often one's most feared enemy is someone close: a member of the family, a co-worker, a neighbour. But it could also be people I don't even know: blacks, whites, gays, punks, pro-abortionists, pro-lifers, people in political or religious groups opposed to my own, foreign nations which threaten my sense of security. The author helps us to realize that we, too, are enemies to some people. The only solution to our fears is a love characterized by action and responsibility--to do what one can to foster the well-being of another whether one likes that person or not. Using the life and teachings of Jesus, and also examples such as Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, the author helps us to understand and, more importantly, experience the spiritual liberation that comes from turning fear into peace--enemies into friends.

Seller Inventory # 2a54336f-f69f-4e90-82a6-6f6cc8d1015b

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Making Friends of Enemies: Reflections on the Teachings of Jesus
• Publisher: Crossroad
• Publication Date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0824508858
• ISBN 13: 9780824508852
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

Essays discuss Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, Thomas Merton, Reinhold Neibuhr, William Carlos Williams, Tolstoy, women's liberation, homosexuality, sin, the spiritual life of children, suffering and faith

Reviews

Presented as a soul-searching diary, this is actually an assemblage of Coles' columns, mostly on religious themes, from the New Oxford Review. As he mingles with tenant farmers in Alabama, Hispano-Americans in the Southwest and hate-filled children in Belfast, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard psychiatrist ( Children of Crisis ) makes us aware that he is motivated by Jesus the migrant preacher who heeded the lowly and exiled. In short, sometimes platitudinous sermons, he defends prayer in schools, frames teenage pregnancy as a moral issue, wishes bankruptcy upon Penthouse and deplores the gay movement insofar as it represents politicization of a private matter. Coles champions Thomas Merton, Simone Weil, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor. He interprets George Orwell's skeptical stance as "Christian in nature." The least tendentious pieces are chatty meditations on heroism, grace, forgiveness, sin, fatherhood.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Published in New Oxford Review from 1981 to 1987, these 56 essays by the child psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Children in Crisis effectively illustrate the deep humanity, self-critical reflection, and compassion of their author. The range of Coles's concernsfrom social issues, the poor, religion, abortion, children and their spiritual life, school prayer, sin, and grace to Thomas Merton, Leo Tolstoy, and experiences in Brazil and Nicaraguareveal a sensitive and original perspective that is never doctrinaire or stereotyped. Easily accessible, well-written, humble, these essays ponder life's questions, paradoxes, and mysteries. Carolyn M. Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmville, Va.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.