The world we now know is one. The universe is one. Mankind is one brotherhood. We even belong in the family of atoms and stars. Reality can no longer be divided into clear cut contraries, the material and spiritual, the animate and inanimate, the temporal and eternal, the body and mind, good and evil, today and tomorrow, Jew and Gentile, Christian and Pagan, the secular and religious, even the Creator and the created. The dividing walls are down. All things are blended and interdependent. Truth, goodness, love, freedom - all are relative and mixed up with falsehood, evil, hate, and slavery. The ethical questions we must face almost never present merely two clear cut possibilities: the right and the wrong. These varied choices call for weighing the partial good against another partial good. The development of moral and spiritual values today involves not so much the courage to fight for the right against the wrong, as the patience to understand the wrong, its causes and its meanings. It involves also learning the arts of negotiation and empathy.
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