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written by C. S. Lewis, first issued in 1958
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Likings and Loves for the sub-human
Chapter 3 Affection
Chapter 4 Friendship
Chapter 5 Eros
Chapter 6 Charity
A radio DJ wondered on air If you could sit down for a visit with any one person ... not family, not Jesus ... who would it be? There may be several people whom I would love to share some time with, some maybe not a conversation, rather more just the opportunity to observe them or hear them speak, or sing ... and of those people, the reasons for wanting to spend some time in their company vary significantly, and the reasons (or excuses) are not all virtuous. But, given only one wish company, I know I would chose time with C.S. Lewis. I've read several of his books. I like the way he arrived at Christianity. I like his way ... his sensibility. I like that he seems to know love. Four Loves is a new title to me. I would like to have read it in my teens and again and again through my life time. I wondered as I read through it what I would have been able to make of it as a young woman ... it was written before I was even born.
Well ... in an effort to brief my notes I will re-read it these next few mornings and tap out my thoughts on his thoughts. Some of them. It's funny, I do not know this man's name ... not the C or the S of him, but I do know something of his heart. He shares his heart while he shares his mind ... it's very personal. I'll change the font color on "my" thoughts as I range through his words.
The book is 129 pages, 6 chapters in all.
Chapter 1
Introduction
"God is love" ~ St. John (signpost on the highroad ... not only that simple/straight-forward though)- Gift-love - typically love which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing.
- Need-love - that which sends a lonely or frightened child to his mother's arms
I think I have seen "work" used as a substitute for the arms of a mother ... but I get what he is trying to help me see.
He states, Divine love is Gift-love in that God gives all to the Son ... the Son gives all He is back to the Father and to the world, thus giving the world (in Himself) back to the Father ( via the offer of saving restoration to mankind) Need-love is our actual nature. "We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually: we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves." (pg 3)
panegyrics = a lofty oration or writing in praise of a person or thing
need-love is actually love ... we do in reality need one another this need-love is not merely selfishness ... and ... "Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God." (pg 4) Man's love for God is largely, often entirely, a Need-love.
love this idea quoted:
"But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing - for it ought to be growing - awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose."
Lewis references "Come unto to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden..." and "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it" ... I think the entire scriptures help us see a need for restoration ... that we need is the skeleton of our story.
"Thus one Need-love, the greatest of all, either coincides with or at least makes a main ingredient in man's highest, healthiest, and most realistic spiritual condition. A very strange corollary follows. Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry
for help? This paradox staggered me when I first ran into it; it also wrecked all my previous attempts to write about love."
fullness and need
sovereignty and humility
righteousness and penitence
limitless power and a cry for help
I see these acted out on a purely human scale, and ... it seems to frequently be shrouded in a big cloud of stink ... humans do not play God well. Perspective seems to be of utmost importance here ... I may, in human interaction, either give to one in need or receive relief for my own needs, but it is important in either role to keep in mind (and heart) that this is done via the grace of God ... as, every good gift is from God (even those which are delivered by human hand).
We chase our vanities, it seems to me, when credit the fulfilling of "love-needs" to others, also when we require credit for such acts.
I can think of things that I want which God's hand wouldn't even touch. I can also see some things which are offered to me which I know didn't come through God's hands ... I will experiment with the idea of where my particular consumables originated, also my motives for lending a hand ... . I admire people who help when they can and especially those acts offered without expectation. I imagine those acts to be sacrifices offered to/through God.
As I look around, I see a lot to be thankful for.
Nearness to God, nearness of likeness, nearness of approach
This is an excellent analogy I think ...
"Let us suppose that we are doing a mountain walk to the village which is our home. At mid-day we come to the top of a cliff, where we are, in space, very near it because it is just below us. We could drop a stone into it. But as we are no cragsmen we can't get down. We must go a long way round; five miles, maybe. At many points during that detour we shall, statically, be far further from the village than we were when we sat above the cliff. But only statically. In terms of progress we shall be far "nearer" our baths and teas."(pg 6)
And here I pause to smile and shake my head at myself ... this isn't brief ... these notes should maybe be in outline form ... idk. I'll adapt as I go ... I haven't read the last of the book before I started re-reading and making notes of the beginning ... at this rate, I may not get through it this week! And ... I wish I were smarter. Sometimes, I have to read the thought over and over again to grasp what he is trying to to get across! I think once I get his voice in my head I might read several of his books back to back.
nearness via likeness is conferred and thus we can't do anything to become more near to His Likeness
nearness via approach is initiated and supported by Grace ... is something we must chose to do
and this is the crux as I see it ... "Hence, as a better writer has said, our imitation of God in this life - that is, our willed imitation as distinct from any of the likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or states - must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions." (pg 7)
"Love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god."~Dennis De Rougemont (via C.S. Lewis)
offered as a safeguard as "God is love" may slyly come to mean for us the converse ... love is God.
"We may say, quite truly and in an intelligible sense, that those who love greatly are "near" to God. But of course it is "nearness by likeness". It will not of itself produce "nearness of approach". The likeness has been given us. It has no necessary connection with that slow and painful approach which must be our own (though by no means our unaided) task. Meanwhile, however, the likeness is a splendour. That is why we may mistake Like for Same. We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred.
Our Need-loves may be greedy and exacting but they do not set up to be gods. They are not near enough (by likeness) to God to attempt that." (pgs 9 and 10)
These last two sentences I am thinking about, because I do believe that those things which we worship are precisely little gods ... recent reading in Psalms talks about made by human hand with eyes unseeing, ears unhearing and those who worship thus become as empty as the gods they crafted ... I think those are seen today not so much in totems (though I do see little gods in little shrines at the nail salon) as in the empty and emptying ways we use our lives. and maybe equally so in the ways we fill our lives up ... maybe I busily serve my little gods while neglecting to make time holy in worship of the God. I see what Lewis is saying by "likeness" they remain vacant, but perhaps I must respectfully disagree here. I do believe we may construe needs to be so very important that they seem to become our little gods. Maybe I miss the point he is making. See ... lunch time would be very helpful to my better understanding!
"The human loves can be glorious images of Divine love. No less than that: but also no more - proximities of likeness which in one instance may help, and in another may hinder, proximity of approach. Sometimes perhaps they have not very much to do with it either way." (pg 11) ... this in support of his stance ... I'm thinking about it.
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