Change the World - Devotion

 

Changing the world. This may be one of the most repeated catchphrases in history. Everyone wants to change the world, save humanity, start a revolution.

Does that sound difficult? Yes, it does. But there is something far more complicated.

It was captured well in a line attributed to a Brazilian author: “It is easy to love humanity. Hard is loving the human being.”

It is easy to want to change the world. Hard is to care for, sustain, or change for those near us. Even inside our own home.

So much so that when we look closely at the history of people considered “great,” those who supposedly changed the world or saved humanity, we often discover something unsettling. Many of them left behind broken families, neglected spouses, abandoned children. They failed to guide their own households. There was unhappiness right in their own backyard.

Here are some examples of people who are said to have changed the world and their personal dramas

Jean-Jacques Rousseau spoke eloquently about education, virtue, and forming the ideal human being. Yet all five of his own children were abandoned to foundling hospitals. The vision for humanity did not translate into care for those closest to him.

Friedrich Nietzsche exalted human strength, self-creation, and the will to power. And yet his own life was marked by deep fragility, isolation, and eventual mental collapse. The burden of self-salvation proved heavier than the human frame could bear.

Karl Marx devoted his life to writing about the dignity of labor and the plight of the working class, while himself never had a stable job his entire adult life, living largely supported by others. His vision for humanity never began inside his own daily life.

Michel Foucault had a philosophy revered in academia that aims at deconstructing social structures. His ideas help us tear things down, but they offer little help in building them up, leaving behind a legacy not of renewal, but of fragmentation.

These observations are meant to warn. The desire to “change the world”, or attributing it to certain people, is seductive because it deals with abstractions. Humanity does not interrupt you. Humanity does not require patience. Humanity does not need forgiveness at the end of a long day.

But the human being does.

Only One truly changed the world and saved humanity. He began with those closest to Him, just twelve. And from there, He reached every human being, of every time and place. His name is Jesus Christ.

On the cross, He did not save the world by force, but by sacrifice. He did not redeem humanity by control, but by love. Perfect love for imperfect people.

This is why the desire to “change the world” can be dangerous, but caring faithfully for what God has placed in front of you is not.

Wanting to change the world often produces totalitarianism. Being changed by Christ produces true transformation.  The Gospel does not begin with a call to fix everything. It begins with a promise. A promise that God has acted, decisively, in Jesus Christ. And from that promise flows a new way of living. Not obsessed with saving humanity. But faithful in loving the human being. Your spouse.Your children.Your neighbor.Your congregation.Your daily responsibilities. This is not small work. It is holy work.

Because the world is not changed by grand slogans alone. It is changed when sinners are forgiven, when lives are renewed, when homes are cared for, when Christ’s love takes concrete shape in ordinary places.

Jesus did not ask us to save the world. He already did that.

He calls us to follow Him. And that changes everything.