“I will not serve.” This statement, made before the world existed, marked the first fall from God. What does it mean?

When the angels were created, they had a choice. They understood two things: themselves, what they were and what they were capable of, but also God, what he was, and what his plan for reality was. They understood the Self and the Other, themselves and God, and they had to choose which they would follow.

Satan chose himself. In his non serviam, we hear the rejection of any good outside the Self. Satan refused to serve the Other and chose to serve himself alone.

Every subsequent fall from God, every sin, follows this pattern. Satan tempted Eve by saying, “You will be like God.” You, not God, will be primary. Our first parents chose themselves, and so they sinned.

What is the effect of this choice? Just after the Fall, Cain brutally murders his brother Abel. Why? Cain is not Abel’s keeper. He cannot see beyond himself, and so he destroys the Other.

Our society, for the past half-millenium, has been turning its gaze inward on the Self. This shift, as in Cain, leads to a rejection and destruction of the Other. We see this at every scale, at the smallest, the destruction of the unborn infant, and at the largest, the destruction of entire cities with nuclear weapons. The only solution is to turn our gaze back on the Other, and this gaze is called love.

Modern society is Reformed and Enlightened. Reformed by Luther, who said, “faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law.” I have faith, therefore I’m saved. And Enlightened by Descartes and Locke. Descartes said, I think, therefore I am. Locke said, “all men are in a state of perfect freedom to dispose of their persons as they think fit.” I can do whatever I want, therefore I’m free.

And, thus, we live alone with ourselves. The sociologist Christian Smith calls our modern religion Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: yes, God might exist; yes, you should be nice to other people; but, above all, do whatever makes you feel good.

This is the cultural environment that allows the most dramatic crises of our time to fester. All of them come from a loss of Otherness and, therefore, lead to destruction. This destruction, this rejection of the Other, occurs at the smallest scales and at the largest.

First, the smallest, the nearly unseen. In 2024, 1.14 million unborn infants were aborted in the United States. There are two agents involved in this crisis (this should sound familiar): the mother and the child, the Self and the Other. When a mother decides to abort a child, this is the justification: this child, this Other, is infringing on her health and her happiness. It’s taking a real, tangible, taxing toll on her and it will continue to do so after it’s born. What right does it have? What right does it have to jeopardize her happiness and her Self?

When the Self and the Other come as close together as a mother and child, when they infringe on each other in such close proximity, who gets precedence? When a mother decides to receive an abortion, she chooses the Self, whether knowingly or unknowingly, and this choice results in the destruction of the infant.

Next, the largest, the impossible to ignore. On August 6, 1945, a nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, leveling nearly half the city and killing tens of thousands of people. Again, we have two agents in this crisis: the inflicting nation, the nuclear nation—the United States. And the receiving nation, the non-nuclear nation—Japan.

Many people will tell you that the bombs were dropped to end the war, to prevent further bloodshed. This is false. As the historian Richard Rhodes says, “The bombs were authorized not because the Japanese refused to surrender but because they refused to surrender unconditionally” (The Making of the Atomic Bomb).

Japan was an Other to America’s Self. They were infringing on America, threatening democracy, as 1940s propaganda posters will tell you. They stood against America’s democratic Self. When America nuked Japan, they said, “What right does Japan have to stand against us? They have none; they have forfeited their rights.” The Otherness of Japan was denied in comparison to America’s well-being: they were obliterated, obliterated in a way that denied them personhood, denied them the dignity of a nation.

Wendell Berry once said that when we’re caught up in pursuit of “the objective” of “self-realization, self-fulfillment, self-creation,” we end up carrying out “the destruction of all enemies, the destruction of all obstacles, the destruction of all objects.” Everything that stands in the way of the Self—the unborn, the war-time enemy—is smashed to pieces.

But what is at the heart of this crisis? The philosopher Byung-Chul Han says, “When Otherness is stripped from the Other, one cannot love—one can only consume” (The Agony of Eros). When an abortion is conducted, the nature of the child, the Otherness of the child, is denied. Only the mother, the Self exists, nothing more. Nuclear warfare is the same: the inherent nature of the attacked country is denied existence. Within these crises, no good, no purpose, no nature exists outside ourselves, our country, and our benefit.

This stripping of the Other implies a power, a dominion. A mother has power over the child in her womb; nuclear nations have power over non-nuclear ones. The crisis occurs when the dominion is abused.

We as Catholics are very familiar with this abuse, but primarily in relation to nature. We have power over nature, and our ecological crisis occurs because we abuse that power. But this is the same denial of Otherness we’ve been talking about. The environmental historian William Cronon calls nature that which is “something profoundly Other than yourself.” Thus, he says, the solution to our ecological crisis is “to honor the Other within and the Other next door as much as we do the exotic Other that lives far away—a lesson that applies as much to people as it does to natural things” (“The Trouble with Wilderness”).

The unborn, other nations, all of humanity, are also profoundly Other than us; they, like nature, are Others. How do we honor them, how do we re-clothe them in their Otherness?

Let us first take the example of nature that we’re familiar with. Pope Francis says that “our ‘dominion’ over the universe should be understood … as responsible stewardship” (Laudato si’, §116). Benedict XVI goes further: “the task of ‘subduing’ the earth was never intended as an order to enslave it but rather as the task of being guardians of creation and developing its gifts.” Our dominion over nature is for nature’s sake. We are meant to serve nature.

When we pass from nature to people, this perspective amplifies. Our dominion over other people is for their sake. But it’s not just stewardship anymore; it’s sacrifice. Sacrifice is a complete offering of the Self for the Other in love—and what is love? From Therese of Lisieux: “To love is to give all and to give oneself” (Poems).

The crises of abortion and nuclear warfare will only be solved with love and sacrifice. Unborn children require sacrifice; less powerful nations require sacrifice. Yes, they hurt us, yes, they often stand in our way. But they must be loved. We must come out of ourselves and acknowledge their Otherness, their inherent nature outside our Selves, and be willing to become vulnerable to what they are. We must give our Self entirely to their Other. This is the perfection of Christian love. As Romano Guardini says, “The more deeply I abandon myself to God, the more I become myself.”

If we don’t do this, if we remain in the sphere of our rights and our happiness, we will not love, we will continue to destroy, and we will damn ourselves. As Milton’s Satan says, “My Self am hell” (4.75). Hell is the Self without an Other.

Ultimately, the destruction of the unborn and the destruction of nations is a denial of Christ. Christ poured himself out on the cross for us in a complete act of love and sacrifice. Our lives are meant to be an imitation of this sacrifice, an emptying of, a death to the Self.

We have two options. We can refuse to serve, we can abort the infant, we can drop the nuke on Hiroshima.

Or we can embrace the death of Christ, sacrifice for the unborn and for mankind, and become vulnerable to the radical Other.