The Ethics of Nonviolence

“My view is, and this is one of the things that I try to get students to see as a possibility, my view is that each person has within himself or herself the capacity to extend love to other people whom they interact with, whether or not those people deserve it. And insofar as people do extend love in that sense, they are acting in precisely the way that God is represented as acting in traditional Christianity. Now, I'm absolutely convinced that every person, every individual has that power or capacity to extend love as a gift, as it is in Christianity, as a gift to other people, not just to people you like and not just people you are close to or love in a romantic sense or a filial sense, but to everyone, everyone that you interact with, without qualification. This can be done whether or not one is a Christian. That is, one can disconnect this idea from Christianity altogether. And whether you're a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or an Atheist, one can extend love to others in that sense. We all have latent within us the power to do that.”