David McElroy

I have no patience anymore for people who believe they’re going to save the world.

Maybe I’ve seen too many would-be saviors turn into monsters. Maybe my time working in politics taught me what the system does to idealists.

Or maybe I just see too much of my younger self in these well-meaning do-gooders.

Even if you have brilliant ideas — and even if I agree with your ideas — there’s something fundamentally misguided about the notion that the world is waiting for you to come along and save everyone.

Any plan to “save the world” is necessarily going to involve imposing control from the top down. Even if we ignore the stunning arrogance and immorality of imposing control on millions or even billions of people against their will, the truth is that you will never be able to do that.

Your efforts to impose your will are doomed to be crushed by political systems that have existed since long before you were born. And recent history is littered with the corpses of would-be tyrants — and with many millions of their innocent victims.

So what should the budding idealist do — when much of the most popular advice to young people urges them to “go out and change the world”?

That’s simple. Change yourself. That’s the only thing over which you have actual control.

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The mention of the man she hates triggered a strong verbal outburst from my friend Friday night.

“I wish he would die!” she said with conviction. “You might think that sounds bad, but that’s what he deserves!”

Nothing had really happened. I had merely mentioned having seen this man who she now hates. I knew she had vitriol for him, but I guess I hadn’t quite seen how deep her hatred went. She had more to say — and her diatribe was peppered with strong profanity — so I just listened.

As I drove home a few minutes after midnight, I felt a dull ache in my heart over what I had heard. I wasn’t angry at my friend for her anger and hatred. I wasn’t even judging her, because there was no way of judging her without judging some past versions of myself as well.

It wasn’t that I’ve had this sort of angry outburst of personal hatred before. It wasn’t that I’ve used this kind of strong language to wish the very worst on someone. Those things aren’t my style. I’m more devious. More deceitful.

I’m better at hiding the hate in my heart, but I’m no different.

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I had a realization Wednesday night that seems profound, but I can’t think of any way to say it that won’t make me sound like an idiot or a fool. Maybe both.

Becoming the man I need to be — especially in the spiritual sense — is about addition, not subtraction.

If I visualize my life as a complex object or machine or organism, I have always seen myself as defective. I haven’t been fully conscious of this. As I’ve tried sincerely to improve myself and become who God wanted me to be, I’ve seen it as a matter of removing defective parts.

Everything about what I learned as a child — both at home and at church — oriented me toward this unconscious model.

At home, I constantly heard everything that was wrong with me. Everything that I needed to stop doing. At church, I learned all the ways that sin made us unacceptable to God. The lessons I learned from these two centers of my development taught me that I could be acceptable to God and to my family by closely following a set of rules.

I internalized those rules that I needed to follow, both from my family and from my church. Those rules became part of my core operating assumptions about life. Compared to most people I knew, I was very good at obeying all of those rules to the letter.

But what I overlooked was something much more profound.

As I followed all of the rules I was taught — and became closer and closer to being what everyone else seemed to call “good,” I wasn’t adequately replacing the “defective parts.”

I was removing the things I could call sin or bad behavior, but I wasn’t replacing what I removed with a truly changed heart.

I didn’t truly know how to love. Not God. Not others. Not even myself.

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