“Saint Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians
speaks of three great virtues—faith, hope, and love—but, he insists, ‘the
greatest of these is love.’ The three vices to which these virtues are opposed
would seem to be doubt, the opposite of faith; despair, the opposite of hope;
and hatred, the opposite of love. But behind hatred, even ostensibly livid
hatred, what you find so often is buried fear. Once we face down our fears, we
discover at least sometimes that those we feared were fearful of us. And as the
fear subsides on either side, it is—at least sometimes—as if the love that was
always there, lying dormant, waiting for its chance, wakes up and starts to
sing.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning religious author Jack Miles, “
Lessons From an Unwritten Autobiography,” The American Scholar, Winter 2022
(The image accompanying this post, showing Jack Miles,
was taken Aug. 24, 2016, by Louis Pescevic.)
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