Well, I know I haven’t done a lot of blogging this summer, but I have done a bit of reading, and I’ve started reading a book by Karol Wojtyla (the future John Paul II) called Love and Responsibility. So far, this is an excellent book, though very dense, and it’s full of principles for building a culture of life. The man who was to become Pope John Paul II noticed a very fundamental difference in worldviews between Christianity and the secular world, a difference that may lie at the center of the culture war. I would like to share this discovery with you today.
This discovery, this fundamental truth, is this: People are more important than pleasure. This may seem simple, this may even seem like common sense. But when we look at the mentalities of the world, when we look even at the decisions we make in our own every day lives, we may be surprised to find that we don’t act on this.
We live in a world that seeks pleasure and flees pain. We drown ourselves in as much entertainment as we can afford. We hide from uncomfortable truths. We fight for the most comfortable jobs, or for the jobs that can bring us the most wealth, the most comfort. We like to be around those who make us happy, and we hide from those who are uncomfortable for us to be around. The greatest evil today in secular society is to make someone feel bad.
But where can this attitude take us? If pregnancy becomes a burden, we “terminate” it. If we view someone’s life as too painful, we “put them out of their misery.” If a marriage brings more struggles and pain than joys, we seek divorce.
However, if we truly want to live a culture of life, we must reverse this mentality. We must recognize that people have a dignity and value above the sum of their pleasures and pains. This is not to say that pleasure is viewed as evil. But on the other hand, pleasure is not everything. If we want a culture of life, we must not live for pleasure, but rather for love. Rather than use a person for our own pleasure, we must find common ground, a common good, and work together with that person to achieve it. We must be willing to sacrifice even our own pleasure for the good of ourselves and for others. Only then will we truly be living in a way that respects the dignity of the human person.
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