BACK TO SCHOOL WEEK: 11 More minutes of insight

See Mike Todd’s excellent reflections on Jeremy Rifkin’s proposal here … all highly relevant to the spiritual formation of children.
It’s especially disconcerting to think that some religious education – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, whatever – teaches children who belong to “us” not to have empathy for “them.” So much of Jesus’ teaching, it seems to me, was seeking to overcome that religious us-them thinking in his day and engender empathy (love) for stranger and enemy as well as brother/sister and neighbor. See especially the idea of extending empathy beginning at about 7:00 in the video …
One of Rifkin’s final conclusions – we have to rethink the human narrative (about 9:55) – certainly resonates with my most recent book. When you see things in this light – and what’s at stake (evidenced in the growing Islamophobia in the US), you can see why I have been willing to take a good amount of critique from defenders of the old narratives.