Love for Humanity?

“He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars;
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, & flatterer.”

William Blake

The love of humanity in the abstract is the root of all kinds of evil. It was the love of humanity in the abstract on the part of the committee of Public Safety that brought down the Bastille and set up la madame guillotine in Paris. It was the love of humanity as an abstraction on the part of the Black Republicans and the abolitionists in America that from 1861-1877 killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and blacks in order to “rescue” and “free” blacks. It was the love of humanity as an abstraction on the part of Bolsheviks that brought us the Holodomor and the gulag archipelago. The love of humanity in the abstract has given us scores of millions of dead humans and has brought despotism and tyranny of untold magnitude.

Humanity cannot be loved in the abstract. Love for people begins with love for the little platoons God has decreed that we live among — our families, our extended families, our churches, our workplaces, our communities. There is no love for mankind that does not begin with love for the little platoons and love for the little platoons keeps us from abstracting both humanity and love.

It is the Marxist who loves humanity as an abstraction and the irony is that abstract love ends up being translated to hatred for the individual so that Marxists love humanity as an abstraction but hate individual persons as concrete people. In their zeal to build Utopia for abstract humanity they hate the individual. They love omeletes but they hate eggs. This explains the Stalin proverb, “If you want to make an omelete (Utopia) you have to break (kill) a lot of eggs (individuals.)”

Love for people begins with love for those next to you. If you can’t love them you can’t expect me to take you seriously when you talk about loving humanity.

This is a constituent aspect of kinism. We believe that loving humanity means loving what is concrete and so near. This kinist hardly believes man as an abstraction. I have never met mankind. I have however met individuals of different races, different ethnicities and different religions. In the words of Joseph de Maistre;

“I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians … I know, too, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But as for man, I declare that I have never met him in my life; if he exists, he is unknown to me.” 

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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