IS ALTRUISM ULTIMATELY A FATALLY FLAWED IDEA?

I learned from my father that the word "altruism" was coined by Comte to avoid having to use the God-laden word "agape." Bad move because such love is impossible without God's empowering grace. Loving others as oneself is fully possible only as one fully loves God with one's whole self, body and mind and soul and strength. Loving others is our response to God first loving us; we become imitators of God by depending on God's grace to help us act towards others for their good without no reciprocal demand, just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us.

Acting altruistically rather than graciously

will lead to frustration, resentment, and worse.

Without God, we will end up saying with Cain, who killed his brother, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Altruism's appeal is that it appears to agree that I am my brother's keeper, yet it offers no way to overcome the sinful drive to favor oneself first.

Altruism is a lie

that depends on appearing to be like agape

yet really being so only superficially.

Such a masquerade, typical of the work of the Father of Lies, is exposed when one walks in the light of truth that is the way of Jesus Christ, begotten of God, the Father of Lights.