I Want You to Be: On the God of Love

by Tomáš Halík

It strikes me that the “bloated egos” and excessive individualism omnipresent in modern society are further truths of Christianity that have “gone mad.”15 Individualism could scarcely have germinated elsewhere than in the soil of belief in a personal God, who made every individual human being in his unmistakable image. But where that image stops turning back to the Original to correct itself, it gradually loses some of its important features, and a person turns into an individual. Persons gravitate toward each other and create societies—precisely by mutually complementing each other in their uniqueness. Individuals compete. Our world is full of people who would happily mirror God’s omnipotence, but there are far fewer who bring to mind God’s kenotic selfless love. And don’t we also belong to that vociferous majority?