A Conundrum

What about a person who puts the good of many over the love of his life, i.e. his own good and the good of his love? What if the works of the person inspires hope in a community – even a worldwide community – while leaving his wife husbandless and his children fatherless? Is serving the community, and possibly generations following, the greater good? Is it worth sacrificing the love of one’s soulmate or family and the confidence (i.e. faith) of his loved ones? Is it worth risking their faith in him and, more importantly, themselves? They are, let’s say, five of them. The members of the community he serves is innumerable.

At the end of a day of saving-the-world, this person comes back to a lonely life. The one’s closest to him had abandoned him. He goes to bed alone – and possibly anguished by his loneliness – knowing that going to bed means waking up again to another active day of world-saving. There, he is surrounded by people who need him and who make him feel needed. They don’t really know or care how lonely he really is; they are working on a greater good together.

The (former) loved ones of this person, meanwhile, go on with their lives with a little more doubt than there was before. Since the lover/partner/father chose ‘the cause’ over them, they have had a little less confidence in themselves, in life, in love, and in the world. I think it’s out of this lack of faith, this despondence, that we do things that are less than our best, things that are possibly our worst. The faithless – or faith-handicapped – may not wreak havoc prolifically or even ostensibly. But the kind of harm the faith-handicapped is capable of is effective and potentially epidemic. It’s the kind of injury they have experienced. And because they now know of it’s existence – as if they had bitten into the Forbidden Fruit – they can’t help but cause this kind of injury to others.

This kind of injury is the capacity to break another’s heart. And I think it’s the most insidious problem in the world. It’s the broken, faithless heart that effects evil.