This explosion of thoughts from my mind is probably a long time coming, as I have often thought about the need for a discussion of an idea which seems so popular in modern times that it has become an ideal in many different circles, for Christians as well as many others, sometimes explicitly and other times implicitly.
I most recently encountered this idea when I came across a video of Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar and priest for whom I have much respect, but whose idea about the way that we experience the Holy Spirit made me pause. When he explained the Spirit he called Him a consciousness, a consciousness which is inside of man, and everyone simply plugs into and experiences, making that person more of who they are meant to be by going deeper into their own consciousness.
Now, I need to specify that I am not writing this to dispute particularly his point, because, as I said, he is a holy and intelligent man who probably has a lot more to say on this than the point which bothered me, but I think that these words of his made me think about something that has often bothered me.
The idea I want to discuss here which bothered me is this: we are more alike than we are different; or to put it in the now infamous words of the wildly popular High School Musical song "we're all in this together."
I am not trying to say we're not, because Christ clearly wanted us to work together, to support one another, to build each other up (read any of the letters of the New Testament for evidence of all of this) and to reach our salvation with the aid of others. It seems to me, however, that this idea has been taken too far, and now we don't just look to help each other, but we want people to believe that they ARE each other, that we're all to some extent the same. Therefore, helping the poor is not just a charitable act but a necessary one, because you aren't different from the poor and therefore have a certain need to help them.
When this becomes a problem, for me, is when the Holy Spirit is just something inside of ourselves that we all tap into the same way; when the people around the world are essentially just us in a different package; when there is nothing to separate one from another. While this grows out of a truly sincere desire to unite and encourage aid and help for others as well as encouraging an experience of becoming who you were made to be, what I have seen is that in uniting it removes the very reason to help, the very reason to love. The problem I see boils down to this fact: I can't (and definitely shouldn't) love myself in the same way I love another; even if I could, I wouldn't want to. In order to avoid this, I think we should be weary of anything which equates all people to the same, or even to reaching into some communal consciousness.
Our love for the poor, for the suffering, for those most in need of love ought not come from our sameness to them. If our love comes from this, the problem I believe we will see is that we will help not because we care about others, but because we care about us in them. If loving others is simply an act of loving ourselves, we are not loving.
When love is sincere, it seems to me, is only when love is a genuine love for another. In that, it becomes most important not to emphasize our sameness, but to emphasize our difference, showing that we are radically different, and this is what makes us each beautiful, unique, and deserving of love.
Christianity, then, is quite important in this sense, because it always has emphasized the unique and unrepeatable dignity of each and every single human being from conception to death and on for eternity. The dignity of the person can't be emphasized more; once you are created, you are you-uniquely and extraordinarily-for the rest of eternity.
The importance of what Christianity says is precisely this uniqueness-saying we're the same might want us to help ourselves, but takes away the freedom to love. Saying we're different, however, frees us to love. As Chesterton put it, Christianity is the sword which comes in and separates, not to isolate, but rather to free us to love.
And so, my argument is this-we are made to be separate and unique. We're made to be ourselves. And in being uniquely us, we are free to love in a radical and true way. The Holy Spirit is alive, and is in each of us. He is not in us, however, in the way that He is the same thing and we just tap into it deep down in our own consciousness, but in the way that He uniquely gives each of us what we need to become more truly ourselves, and in being ourself the Spirit frees us to love with a radical and not self-seeking love.Let the Spirit be the sword that separates and, I believe, we will see that we care more about others than ever before.
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