It is not enough to say that we have love.
Many would-be reformers of society have claimed a great love for humanity, but their lives tell a different story. Take, for example, the great nineteenth century English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley believed that poets were the “unacknowledged legislators of the world” and that poetry could “push forward the moral progress of civilization.” His poetry lived up to his own high expectations of the art, and most of his works were highly moral and political. He wrote of an uprising against oppression, of the freedom and equality of all human beings, and he imagined a mythical being “leading humanity to utopia on earth.” He called his readers “to join him in his righteous utopia.”
Shelley’s personal life, however, was littered with the casualties of the men and women who loved him but whom he eventually destroyed. He was estranged from both parents and his first marriage lasted only three years (producing two children) before he left his wife for another woman. After marrying his mistress, he had other sexual affairs, abandoned an illegitimate child, left his debts unpaid, and fleeced friends and family members for money.
In his sobering work, Intellectuals, Paul Johnson writes that Shelley was “capable of feeling for, in the abstract, the whole of suffering humanity, yet finding it manifestly impossible, not once but scores, hundreds of times, to penetrate imaginatively the minds and hearts of all those people with whom he had daily dealings.” Johnson is a fan of Shelley’s poetry, but he summarizes Shelley’s life in this way:
"Shelley [was] astonishingly single-minded in the pursuit of his ideals but ruthless and even brutal in disposing of anyone who got in his way. Like Rousseau, he loved humanity in general but was often cruel to human beings in particular. He burned with a fierce love but it was an abstract flame and the poor mortals who came near it were often scorched. He put ideas before people and his life is a testament to how heartless ideas can be."
Shelley’s life is not an anomaly.
Many intellectuals who dreamed of shaping society and revolutionizing the world were famous for “loving humanity” but loving no actual human being. Karl Marx, whose Communist Manifesto was driven by his alleged love for the worker, knew only one member of the working class well: Helen Demuth, known as “Lenchen,” his wife’s servant. Marx had an affair and a child with her (a son, whom he never publicly acknowledged), and despite his concern for the working class, he never paid Lenchen a penny. It’s no wonder that Marx’s theoretical society, when implemented by Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, created horrifying political regimes that resulted in the most catastrophic human casualties of modern history. If we are to create lasting change, we must not be reformers moved chiefly by ideas; we must be moved, as Christ was, by love—not for humanity in general, but for the people we know in particular.
It is impossible for us to love the world. Only God can accomplish this feat—because he is able to be with every person simultaneously. We cannot love “the lost,” or “humanity,” or “our generation.”
We can only love the specific people who surround us at home, at work, or wherever we find ourselves. The needs of specific people are now within our reach through the wonder of technology. We can save a child in Africa-- a child that has a name and a story. But loving “the world” is a great misunderstanding of Christianity that has deterred many from simple service and ordinary kindness to the people right in front of them. “Universal love” does not inspire meaningful action.
Love must be here and now with the people in front of you.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is yet again another excerpt from my book, Butterfly in Brazil, taken from Chapter 12: Love and War.]
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