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’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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