‘Three things will last forever – faith, hope and love – and the greatest of these is love’
This is what the Greek sacred text asserts. If it is true, maybe we should orientate our lives around these three activities. Maybe we could organize our lives such that these three practices are central to our days, weeks and months. What would that look like? Certainly if hope, faith and love are the things that have eternal value and will last forever, they warrant some of our attention during the years we live here on the earth. And, given love trumps hope and faith, it deserves our utmost attention.
During the course of history, there have been other trinities that people have considered foundational to our human lives. In the lead-up to the first century, Socrates and Plato led a revolution in philosophical thinking that swept through Greece and beyond. The three transcendentals were proposed: truth, goodness and beauty. These three were forms of being that were considered able to transcend categories of reality – forms common to all people. It was also believed that they crossed thresholds to the divine and existed beyond the time-space-matter world. Plato considered goodness to be greatest of the three.
Recently, I read an article in a magazine (Dumbo Feather) that proposed kindness, fairness and mutual respect are the three things that give our lives meaning. This trinity of ‘The better angels of our nature’ (a phrase coined by Abraham Lincoln) enables us to co-operate with one another and reduces our competitive, ego-driven behaviours that lead to social disharmony. In this article, Hugh Mackay states, ‘people with the richest sense of their life’s meaning are those who devote their lives to the promotion of social harmony – in their families, neighbourhoods and workplaces’. Hugh believes that kindness is greater than fairness and mutual respect. He defines kindness as ‘anything we do to show another person we take them seriously’, and believes that ‘the capacity for kindness is our most precious asset’.
Personally, I am finding the practice of hope and faith almost impossible at the moment. Perhaps I will instead take hold of kindness and goodness for a while and see what they can achieve in my life. Kindness, goodness and love! I suspect that the greatest of these will still be LOVE.