Each of us has what Peter Singer calls our "moral circle." Within that circle we feel concern and care. For many within our moral circle, our love flows easily and freely. But that love can also be costly, sacrificial, and difficult. And within our moral circle there are those whom it is harder to love.
Outside and beyond our moral circle, in the territory of the stranger and the enemy, love becomes even more difficult. As I describe in Stranger God, people outside my moral circle are met with indifference, fear, superiority, revulsion, or hostility.
The point is easily made. I don't care who you are, progressive or conservative, love is difficult. Love is a challenge. Love is hard. Survey your heart and you'll quickly find places where your love is absent, hesitant, cold, or begrudging.
I wrote The Book of Love to bring the high calling of love into view. The demands of love show up most clearly in the chapters "Diamonds, Dignity, and the Imago Dei," "Mercy, Not Sacrifice," "This Is the Way," "The Shape of Love," and the epilogue "God Is Love."
Let me conclude by putting it this way. How do you write about a book of love for everyone?
I’m put in mind—once again!—of the Elder Zosima’s final sermon in The Brothers Karamazov. Zosima concludes his sermon with this exhortation: “It would be easier for the birds, and for a child, and for any animal near you, if you yourself were more gracious than you are now, if only by a drop.”
I don’t care who you are. Atheist or Christian. MAGA or woke. Catholic or Protestant. Republican or Democrat. Trans or cis. Conservative or liberal. Evangelical or progressive. Or anything else you can think of. The world would be a better place if all of us were a drop more gracious than we are right now. The world would be easier, for all of us, if we were a drop more kind and gentle today than we were yesterday.
I don’t care who you are. You and I can be a drop more loving.
That’s how you write about a book of love for everyone.
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