Hunger for true love


Hunger for true love – heroic, self-sacrificing love – remains humankind’s basic hunger. Acknowledgment of this comes on occasion even from those who earned their fame (often their fortunes, too) by preaching salvation through science. When Bertrand Russell stated at Columbia University in 1950 that Christian love or compassion was the thing most needed by modern humans, he moved revealingly close to declaring intellectual bankruptcy on his and many others’ behalf. He said much more about Christian love. Although fully familiar with the enormous power of modern science, medicine and technology, he held high Christian love as the answer to human needs in the broadest sense: “If you have Christian love,” he declared to a stunned audience, “you have motive for existence, a guide for action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.”