Lessons From Mere Christianity: Love

This is a post from my topic called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

Today I would like to look at something we all strive for... something we all hope to have and show for others, something we hope to be shown from others. Something that causes us to strive to be the best person that we can be, indeed to be better even than we thought we could, I am talking, of course, about love. CS Lewis addresses a couple different kinds of love (and goes much deeper into it in a separate book - The Four Loves - but that is another story for another time).

In the first sense, he talks about it with regards to having love for your fellow man, especially those with whom we do not agree with or see as our best friends. He begins with an analogy of Christianity as a house, and those in the hallways are still sorting out what they believe, and what is really true. Those in the rooms are those that belong to a certain branch of Christianity... some more right than others, but all containing some truth. Lewis says those in a room:

"When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house."

We have a tendency to look down on those of different beliefs and values as ourselves, and this does not do anyone any good. Whether you think they are wrong or right, you are called to love them.

This does not mean that you must stray into relativism, and many inevitably would take this line of thinking. By all means, if someone has a varying opinion from you, especially in regards to God, then you should think that they are wrong and you are right. Otherwise, what would be the point in believing what you do? But you are still called to love them, and to share your life with them, and to pray for them.

Lewis then talks about the love that most people think of when they hear the word... a relationship-type love between two people. Specifically, he talks about the difference between being in love and loving. He says:

"Love in this second sense - love as distinct from being 'in love' - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit' reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity; this quieter love enables them to keep this promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."

I think if you would ask any happily married couple, anyone that has ever loved anyone else... they would verify the truth of this statement. Love does not mean that at every moment you are falling over yourself for the other person (even though that is what most romantic comedies would want me to believe)... it means that even when you are not, you are still willing to sacrifice for that person, to will the good of that person, even above your own happiness and desires. This is love.

Love and marriage (I am merely speculating on the latter, I am not married) is based on sacrifice, and being willing to die for the other person... not only literally, but in the small things of everyday life.

What a beautiful thing to experience.