“In a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to seperate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is that the fact of being loved disinterestly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation.”
–Thomas Merton “The Seven Story Mountain“
It is an interesting idea that sin is really just a rejection of love. To be honest, I had to go to the dictionary to make sense of the term “disinterested love.” My first thought when reading this paragraph was “how can you love something disinterestly?” What the dictionary reminded me was disinterest is not the lack of interest, but the lack of self-interest.
I think that this is one of the most powerful aspects of the character of Jesus. His complete disinterested love for the whole world. It is an ideal that is simply amazing in scope. Just a fraction of this type of love would make such a difference in this world.
