Although John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty” was published in 1859, it continues to influence our thinking today. This is particularly true of the idea that human beings are essentially good. “Don’t tell me how to live!” essentially sums up Mill’s view of liberty. Yet in his essay, Mill not only tells us how we should live, but who we are. Human beings are essentially good, he declares, and his view of liberty hinges upon this idealistic perspective of human nature.

Many theologians and philosophers of Mill’s era were skeptical of the individual’s passions and one’s willingness to choose what is right over what is pleasurable. As historian Gertrude Himmelfarb observed, “[Mill] took for granted that those virtues that had already been acquired by means of religion, tradition, law, and all the other resources of civilization would continue to be valued and exercised.”

Today these structures of tradition and authority no longer hold sway in our culture, whereas the idea of the essential goodness of humanity has taken on a life of its own and is now embedded in our modern psyche. Moreover, the assumption held in Mill’s day—that truth is knowable and should order our lives—is no longer believed by many, who instead would agree with the words of Nietzsche: “Truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions; worn-out metaphors which have become powerless to affect the senses.”

In what has been a difficult teaching for every era, the Scriptures witness to the reality of sin and our need for God. Likewise, the experience of our world undeniably witnesses to the reality of darkness in our hearts. If this experience has not inspired a change in philosophy, perhaps it is because the illusion of human goodness brings us greater comfort. Yet, does it really? Do we not find it incomprehensible how one could abuse or torture a child? And do we really believe that given time and progress we will learn to love our neighbor as ourselves? Surely the horrors of the present century alone have proven the idea of the essential goodness of human beings to be false.

Jesus himself said in Mark 10, “No one is good except God alone.” But just before declaring this, Jesus showed us how we may know the power to love and to do good—by coming to him in humility, as children aware of their need for a Savior. “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them,” he said, “for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth: anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.

Stuart McAllister is global support specialist at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

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A prayer often spoken in the halls of RZIM is one written at the hand of C.S. Lewis—words no doubt uttered throughout his own lifetime. The poem is titled, “The Apologist’s Evening Prayer.”

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
at which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.(1)

Few prayers pause to ask the Hearer to deliver us from the very words we choose to speak. Yet not all graven images are of stone and gold. Apologist or other, some of our idols can turn out to be quite thoughtful in nature.

In a letter to a younger colleague, poet and professor Stanley Wiersma once advised, “When you are too sure about God and faith, you are sure of something other than God: of dogma, of the church, of a particular interpretation of the Bible. But God cannot be pigeonholed. We must press toward certainty, but be suspicious when it comes too glibly.”

We are given minds and imaginations that can freely tread into heavenly matters, and yet we are clearly offered the limitations of this freedom as a revelation as well. “Show me your glory,” Moses implored of God. “Show us the Father,” the disciples plead with Jesus. The desire to see God is invariably set upon our hearts, even as we are reminded with great promise that we cannot even fathom what God has done from beginning to end anymore than we can fathom God in the first place. “We have heard the fact,” says Saint Augustine, “now, let us seek the mystery.”

In this, I love that there are things we can be surprised by again and again with God, even as the master of the house repeatedly seems to awaken us on the threshold of a house and a homemaker we have seriously underestimated. It is forever shocking for me to be reminded that the famous words of Jesus, for instance, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” were not uttered at angry religious leaders or directed at the lost and downtrodden. To me it always seems a statement that draws with quickened stroke a line in the sand, separating the sheep from the goats, providing infinite comfort to the lost, while disturbing those who think of themselves found. And certainly, Christ’s words have a way of doing just that. But this eminent line was spoken that day to those who knew him best. To his disciples, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and life.” And they did not understand.

Days later, as the disciples watched the very life of Jesus poured out before them like a sheep led to slaughter, perhaps they saw again those words on his lips and wondered all over again how they could make sense of an absent messiah. Throughout their ministries it is evident that their vision of the vastness of God grew exponentially as they began to put the pieces together, seeing that Jesus intended those words more remarkably than they ever could have imagined.

I believe that God continues to move us to those places where we discover again one who is fearfully alive and reigning in a kingdom we grossly underestimate, one who can fill even our holiest moments with the mere hem of his robe, one who repeatedly shows us that even our best thoughts of Father, Son, and Spirit are but coins merely reflecting the real thing. We must repeatedly recall, as Job recalled in dust in ashes: “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted… Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know… My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”(2)

“Show us the Father” is a hope our hearts were meant to utter—even as we learn to marvel at the mystery of the request. Far more significantly, it is a longing God has promised can be answered: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.(3)

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) C.S. Lewis, Poems (New York: Harcourt, 1992), 131.
(2) Job 42:2-5.
(3) Isaiah 40:5.

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Oft quoted at weddings, preeminent celebrations of romantic love, a poem is read extolling the virtue of love:

Love is patient and kind
Love is not jealous or boastful…
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never ends.

What many may not realize is that this is a poem from the pen of the apostle Paul. And while this poem is used to paint a picture of young love at weddings, its intent far transcends the romance of the occasion, and a fairly limited understanding of this virtue.

Romantic love was not in the apostle’s mind when he penned this verse. Instead, tremendous conflict in the fledgling Corinthian church caused Paul great grief. There were dissensions and quarrels over all kinds of issues in this community; quarrels over leadership and allegiance, over moral standards, over marriage and singleness, over theology, and quarrels so extreme that lawsuits were being filed!(1)

So after reminding the Corinthian followers of Jesus that they represented his body—a body with many members and unique gifts and functions—Paul lifts up love as the height of what it means to be a mature human being:

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing….Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away….but now abide faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love (13:1-3, 8, 13).

Often, as I survey various communities in our world today, I see the same kind of division and derision, as was present in the Corinthian community. More often than not, one encounters a war of information, argumentation based on this book or that claim, this person’s authority or that person’s expertise. Quick to criticize and lambaste, noisy gongs and clanging cymbals abound; but the love that never fails is a rare and fleeting occurrence. How does one make sense of all this, particularly in light of Paul’s proclamation that without love we are nothing?

Perhaps part of the reason why there is so little love is that there is a fear that to love is somehow to compromise. Many feel the strong need to disassociate with the way love is commonly defined; as unthinking acceptance, an anything goes, an “I’m okay you’re okay” easy love as bland and undefined as gelatin. Surely, the Apostle Paul’s understanding goes far beyond this flabby view of love. After all, he spends the majority of his first letter to the Corinthians exhorting their bad behavior by virtue of their lack of love.

Yet, I sometimes worry that a reticence to extend love to others without condition belies a forgetfulness about the conditions of our acceptance by God. Paul writes to the Romans, “But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8). If God loved us while we were yet sinners, why do we find it so hard to love others?

In a world that largely perceives Christians to be in-fighters, hypocritical, argumentative, and judgmental naysayers, would it not demonstrate maturity to reexamine our fear of what it might look like if we tried to take Paul’s words about love to heart?

Would it or could it look like creating seminaries in the prisons, as has been done at Louisiana’s maximum security prison at Angola? Would it or could it look like working with different Christian fellowships towards a vital social goal despite denominational differences or theological disagreements? Would it or could it look like proactive movement to engage the culture rather than reactive retreat? Would it, or should it look like growing into mature human beings? Paul continues,

When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

In Jesus, the full stature and maturity of humanity is on display. He taught that love was the summary of all that had gone before, and fulfillment of the entire law and the message of the prophets—love God and love your neighbor as yourself. If the greatest of the virtues is love, as affirmed by Jesus and the apostle Paul, can all who seek to follow envision becoming a community that seeks to make love their chief responsibility and goal?(2) Now abide faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the Speaking and Writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) See 1 Corinthians 1:10-14; 3:1-10; 4:14-21; 5:1-13; 6:1-11; 7; 8:1-4 as examples.
(2) Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34.

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