Hey friends!
I've been traveling with family for the holidays and am just so grateful for all the blessings in my life. I'm also grateful that I get to write my muses and explorations in this newsletter, and that you've joined me on the journey! I hope you continue to find this valuable.
Have a great holiday season! And now on to this week's thoughts...
Chesterton said: "You need to hate the world enough to change it, but love it enough to consider it worth changing."
To bring about positive change in the world, these two things must be present: dark pessimism and frenzied optimism.
You must hate it for how it is, and love it for what it could be at the same time. And to work toward that change — that is an act of faith.
It's a paradox. But it can't be any other way.
The paradox also reveals a deeper truth: love necessitates hate.
If you love your child, you'd hate anything that is bad for them. Or in Chesterton's example, you must love the world enough to hate in a way that produces positive change.
Which is why the idea that love is the opposite of judgment is utterly wrong.
Lack of judgment is not love — it's pathological compassion, which over time evolves into narcissistic virtue signaling.
So if love necessitates judgment, then the Ultimate Love necessitates the Ultimate Judgment.
To be full of love, you must — in response to what is evil — be full of wrath.
As the great philosopher Keanu Reeves said: if you are a lover, you must also be a fighter.
That is why, in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, God is both all-loving and all-wrathful.
They're not opposites. They're the same thing.
Stay purposeful.
– Nathanael
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