Dear reader, in my columns, I have always tried to be as inclusive as possible. I hope today’s will be no exception. However, I must confess that it will be the most, dare I say, “theological” one I’ve written to date. I believe that the strangeness of these times requires it. I hope you will stay with me.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian theologian and German national killed by the Nazis, says this in his book “Discipleship:” “It is the great mistake of the false Protestant ethic to assume that loving Christ can be the same as loving one’s native country … Jesus does not talk that way.” (pg.114)

Perhaps Bonhoeffer was familiar with the fourth-century church leader and pastor John Chrysostom’s series of sermons that he preached in fourth-century Antioch (modern Turkey). In one sermon, he

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