From Book 2, Chapter 4 of Dostoevsky’s towering masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov (can’t remember which character says these lines):
I love mankind…but I marvel at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love human beings in particular, separately, as individual persons. In my dreams…I would often arrive at fervent plans of devotion to mankind and might very possibly have gone to the Cross for human beings, had that been suddenly required of me, and yet I am unable to spend two days in the same room with someone else…No sooner is that someone else close to me than his personality…hampers my freedom. In the space of a day and a night I am capable of coming to hate even the best of human beings: one because he takes too long over dinner, another because he has a cold and is perpetually blowing his nose…To compensate for this, however, it has always happened that the more I have hated human beings in particular, the more ardent has become my love for mankind in general.
What do you see as the implications for Christians?
Another quote from somewhere: "To be with the saints in heaven, oh, that will be glory!
Living with them down on earth, now that's another story."
Oh wonderful to see this; I just finished reading The Brothers K yesterday. I think this passage holds a lot of implications for Christians, things to recognize and be wary of. I think we love mankind the more we understand the great things it is meant for and capable of, and then in turn see human beings fail to strive for that individually and daily in so many small shortcomings. When we know that man is meant for Paradise and we see him content in exile, by all means we should be upset. The "taking too long for dinner" and "blowing his nose" reflect disharmonies that aren't natural to our original, imago-Dei state – but so does getting upset and hating others because of it. The challenge for a Christian is to understand the heights from which man has fallen and yet still to love individuals despite this – because loving them is truly the only way to help bring about redemption in them (see the kiss in "The Grand Inquisitor," Ivan's 'poem'). I'd never venture to say I "hated human beings" but only the wrongs they commit – "hate the sin, not the sinner," right? We must not be ignorant, but we also must not be cynical or condemning in a way that repels.
Any thought disconnected from a personal relationship is dangerous. Love in abstract is an idea that can be manipulated by demons. Love in a person is quite different. It is relationship–it is sacrifice. It is putting the other before self. Where as love in the abstract can be anything you in passions fashion it to be. A revolutionary is different from the Christian in this aspect, yet both our revolutionary–the first destructive, the last trans-formative. Do you know why D. says hate is very near to love? That’s where he loses me. God bless!
@Texas Seraphim Not sure what he means by that, but perhaps it is hinting at the idea that hate is better than contempt. At least there is still passion with hate, at least there is some kind of emotion animating a person – with contempt, you are past the point of caring, and it allows you to do much more horrific things, because you see people as “beyond the pale,” you’ve stopped regarding them as human, you’ve abandoned empathy altogether.