Reflecting on peace and human good will I got some reactions from people who doubt that there still are people with a good will, an intention that is directed to be good. In the Bible it is said by Christ that the disciples shouldn’t call Him ‘good’; only the Father is good. It is clear, that a human being cannot be good in this perfect way. But the impulse in the will can be good. And if they are not, the can become good. So I would like to say to everyone who doubts the good will in the human being: There is only one person that can become good by trying: It is you. It will not help us to criticize the government, the ministers, the president or whoever. It hasn’t helped us before en will not help us now.

In this Holy Nights we should turn our concerns to ourselves, to our own inner life and search for good will there and recognize the lack of it. If I write about good will, I certainly don’t think of our politicians. Maybe some of them start with pure good intentions, but they sure have to forget them, while they have to represent the political party they stand for. Good will knows no compromises – and politicians are compromising all the time. So let us be self-aware, and forget about the evil in the world, and the world will change already…

The year is coming to an end and by reflecting on the phenomenon of peace I must reflect on the different nations in the world. A self-aware human being doesn’t feel his nationality as something to be proud of. Certainly we can be thankful for the virtues and special excellent capacities that a certain part of the earth and a certain nation can give us. It is clear that these virtues can be very different. But we can be sure that the excellence of one virtue always comes together with a lack of some other virtue – that is excellent in another nation. As a human being however we still want to be a ‘homo universalis’, the ideal of the renaissance. A human being that is truly all-round. He wants to develop what he has not developed yet, . The Dutch soberness would match perfectly with the German ‘Gründlichkeit’, with the cosmopolitan English, with ‘La douce France’… to give some examples. Why would we feel better? It would be much more to prefer that we could admire what we still don’t have and this admiration would make it possible to develop the admired capacity.

Moreover, a human being exceeds his nation, he should really want to become the individuality that he is. There even the gender is of no importance. As a human being I also exceed this. I live in my female body and have the benefits and disadvantages of it – but in the inner life I completely loose the awareness of being female. I am convicted of the need of this aware inner life in us to be able to come to good will and peace ever. Gender and nation separate, the true individual will unite.

If we would be able to look at ourselves and at the others as individuals that all are worthy to exist, there also would not be any religious fanaticism anymore. It would not be my concern to bother about the religion of my fellowman. Let he or she believe what he or she believes – what would it matter to me? The only concern I would have is to communicate in thoughts about it – without all the strong feelings that belong to religion. It would be very interesting to hear about all the knowledge and wisdom that lives in the different religions – and we could accept them if we could feel the truth in it. Only this guiding angel of truth would teach us what is right and what is wrong. And we would have the confidence that this guiding angels of truth are there in all human beings…

Not: everybody for himself and God for all of us
But: God in guide of the individual, the individual in ardour for all fellowmen.

Fra Angelico: Angel in adoration.Good will by Mieke Mosmuller