KISSING COUSINS OR THE HATFIELDS AND McCOYS?

Few of us would disagree that politics, religion, skin color, language, and boundaries often divide humanity into a tribal mentality. For example, consider the Middle East. Jews and Arabs, living in the land of the Bible, continuously experience conflict, and yet they have a lot in common.

True, they often behave like the Hatfields and McCoys, a feud between two families that emerged soon after the Civil War, but most of them come from a common ancestor known as Abraham. In fact, the three great world religions of Judaism, Muslim, and Christian all look to Abraham as their father. And though we, who are Gentiles, don’t have a blood or DNA relationship with Abraham, many of those in the Middle East do, whether they are Jews or Palestinians, or whether they follow Judaism, the Muslim faith, or no faith at all.