Is it possible for love to be given to another without any selfish motivations attached? Even prior to reading C.S. Lewis’ Four Loves, I have pondered this question. Why do I give love to others? Is it because I genuinely care for them and for their needs? Is it because I want to be recognized as a loving person? But, what about acts of love I do in secret? Maybe even those acts are done because I want to feel good about myself.
In pondering these questions, I have come to realize that any love I give to others purely out of my ”self” will never be truly altruistic. The Gift-loves of my own nature, though they often result in good, “never quite seek simply the good of the loved object for the object’s own sake. They are biased in favour of those goods they can themselves bestow, or those which they would like best themselves, or those they want the object to lead” (176). Pure altruistic love, Divine Gift-love, can only be achieved when “Love Himself work[s]in a man” (176).
But where do I even begin to love others with God’s love and not my own? It seems impossible. Even Lewis says, “The total and secure transformation of a natural love into a mode of Charity [Divine Gift-love] is a work so difficult that perhaps no fallen man has ever come within sight of doing it perfectly” (185). But, Lewis also says that such transformation is inexorable. God commands that we love one another, so we must at least try. In Leviticus 19:18, the Israelites were told, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I don’t think this applies to us anymore. (Bear with me for a moment). I don’t think it applies because I think God now calls us to something greater, in light of Christ’s death and the new picture of love that we are given through it. I don’t even always love myself as God intends (I either love myself too much or am too hard on myself), so why would I want to love my neighbor like that? In John 13, Jesus says this, “A new commandment I give you. . .that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” We are not to love others with our own selfish love but with the love of God, with the love that he gives to us.
And, just what is this love? Well, in John 15, Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” Jesus says here that he loves us just as much as the Father loves him! That is an incredibly huge love that I cannot possibly give on my own, but it is the kind of love he calls us to bestow upon others – to love others as he loves us.
I don’t think we can give Divine-Gift love to others by simply trying to do so. The only way to give it to others is through a surrender of ourselves to let God love through us. We begin to love others altruistically, with Charity, with Divine-gift love, with the love that God bestows upon us, not through our own striving but through an attempt to know God and his love more fully, so much so that our love for him grows and causes us to surrender our selfish love in order that Love Himself might live and love in us. “By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do” (191).
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