The pursuit of people

I know you’re reading this for some other reason–boredom, compassion, or whatever–but I’m going to barrage you with a thought on life: pursue people.

Not your girlfriend, not your ex. Simply persons, as opposed to things. People, not ideas. Humans, not humanity.

They say Robespierre was a great lover of the people—but there were no specific people that he loved. After the French Revolution, everyone was wondering how a movement dedicated to “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” could have been so slavish, hierarchical, and selfish.

That’s why Voltaire exalted garden-cultivating with Candide and why Byron wrote his anti-epic, Don Juan—because they perceived that people who clung to ideals destroyed themselves and those around them, because blind faith in a creed not only created an idol but created a thrall of pagan worshippers.

And it’s true. Ideals will destroy you. They will make you stale. They might even make you dead.

Thank God that He isn’t just an ideal. Thank God that we don’t just believe in the Nicene Creed, but that we believe in a Person, someone with whom we can have a relationship, someone who will guide us and direct us and love us and teach us to love Himself. When we figure out our own ideals, our own truths, we aren’t figuring out natural laws and dictums inasmuch as we are figuring out who God is. Honesty, peace, justice, mercy are all dead ends if we pursue them for their own sake. They will only survive without being meaningless if we understand them as God’s attributes, if we first follow Him and then emanate into action because of our love for Him.