A Conversation About Love
Two passages from my commonplace book; first, this from The Brothers Karamazov:
The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular . . . I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together . . . As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
And then this from The Screwtape Letters:
Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. ~ C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Does it make you wonder if Lewis had just been reading The Brothers K when he penned those words from Screwtape to Wormwood? Lewis joins with Dostoyevsky in the Great Conversation, alongside many others, to continue unraveling the nuances of the Golden Rule. As readers, we join the Conversation too, as we listen and learn. Dostoevsky's mother of Lisa is blind to the disordered love in her own heart. Screwtape directs Wormwood to capitalize on that disordered love in the heart of his "patient." Seeing these things in the lives of our fictional friends reveals the counterfeit love that lurks in our own hearts. And perhaps they will give me pause the next time I am tempted to "direct my malice" to the "immediate neighbors" in my own house.
