If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.

We can either emphasize those aspects of our traditions, religious or secular, that speak of hatred, exclusion, and suspicion or work with those that stress the interdependence and equality of all human beings. The choice is yours. (22)

I had failed to make a gift of myself to God.

Las mujeres de las primeras umma (comunidad) de Medina tomaban parte plenamente en la vida pública, y algunas de ellas, de acuerdo a la costumbre árabe, luchaban al lado de los hombres en el campo de batalla. No parece que entonces experimentaran el islam como una religión opresiva, aunque más tarde, como sucedió con el cristianismo, los hombres tomaron el control de la religión y la adaptaron al patriarcado dominante.

Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment.

Then, as now, there would always be people who preferred the option of devoting their religious energies to sacred space over the more difficult duty of compassion.