C: C. S. Lewis wrote this poem...

"All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

 

"Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;

I talk of love – a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek –

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin."

I have begun to awaken to the wider world of which I am a part. I have begun to realize that the crux of all things meaningful is inherently connected to a solidarity with the rest of humanity. We are indeed all in this together.

Is humanity broken? Yes, I believe it is. Is there a solution? Yes; in Christ, I believe there is. But the solution has little to do with good works and nothing to do with formal religion. As much as I grow in my rhetoric of love and social justice, the fact remains that I am still a self-obsessed person in a world of self-obsessed others. So the solution must truly be completely out of my hands, or else there is no hope.

My desire is to grow in love, for Christ and for the world, to the point that in some small way I care more about someone else in something than I care for myself – than I care that people view me as a loving person…than I care that people (and God) don’t judge me for not being a loving person. I want to know the meaning of loving for the sake of love, and not for the sake of self.