day 149

(fragments from a diary of a Pastor)

Maybe...
Despite all my measured criticism of Religion in general, I write to mask a simple truth about me: I'm afraid that they are actually true and I'm the one wrong.

"I love mankind," he said, "but I marvel at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love human beings in particular, separately, that is, as individual persons. In my dreams," he said, "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, and this I know from experience. No sooner is that someone else close to me than his personality crushes my self-esteem and 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. I become the enemy of others," he said, "very nearly as soon as they come in contact with me. 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."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. David McDuff, p79.

All the same, it boils down to my insecurity: of not knowing what to do with myself. Of not knowing who to love. And so I write to the general (pretending that this does not go out to the particular) that I may somehow participate in some higher realm and escape from my personal jurisdiction and punishment for my impatience with the particular 'enemies' around me. Yes, I write, that I may be left alone. And ignore the person right next to me. I address instead to an invisible reader...



How I love this cruelty! I love how I reduce particulars to a general whole - and hence, address to no one but myself.

Now, don't trust me when I say, "I love mankind." Because, I love the person next to me not.


signed,
Renegade Pastor (who is against all other Pastors)