Heschel

As I was reading Susannah's biography of her father, I found several things that I disagreed with completely. For example, one part that really stood out to me was when she talks about her father's idea of "divine pathos". Abraham Heschel believed that "religion is not based on our awareness of God but on God's interest in us," and that prayer is nothing more than us trying to be able to make ourselves seen by God. According  to this, God needs us more than we need him. almost every part of this, I believe the complete opposite. throughout most of the readings about Heschel, I had trouble finding things that I agreed with, which was the exact opposite with The Irresistible Revolution. Then I read in his essay, "No Religion Is An Island" about how he believes a Jew and a Christian could find a happy medium in terms of communication amongst they're disagreements. "Does the fact that we differ in our conceptions of God cancel what we have in common : the image of God?" Heschel then goes on to describe what he believes are the four essential factors for having a relationship with God. The first component is that we want to learn about what it is we believe in. The second being our faith or "the direction of one's heart". Next is sharing our love and knowledge of our religion with others, "particularly as they relate to social action" [Shane pretty much dominates this category]. And finally, my favorite of the four parts, "we experience in one another the presence of a person radiant with reflections of a greater presence". As soon as I read this last on I immediately thought of Shane when he was in the leper colony. He writes about looking into the eyes of a patient and knowing that he had just looked into the eyes of Jesus.