How God’s Love Shapes The Way We See Others

Writing this series of columns has called my attention to a prejudice I have that I don’t know how I acquired. The prejudice is against all so-called “self-help” books. I have never read one, and yet in my mind the very title “self-help” suggests a narrow narcissism. I hope that no reader of this series of columns on the meaning and mystery of human presence thinks I am promoting some kind of narcissism. I am hoping that tying human presence to God’s presence, as I have tried to do in this series, avoids all narcissism. Nor am I trying to promote some type of relativism. What I am trying to promote is an appreciation of the awesome power we have to influence our meaning, development, and maturity as persons. We can do that by the way we relate to each other. I have come to believe that how we are present to other persons is one of the most important ways we grow or decline. We are always present to each other. How we are present can be extremely important.

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