Quote of the Day

God who has loved us into existence loves us into the power of loving our brethren. What is not perhaps so generally noticed is that he also loves us into the power of receiving agape (charity) both from himself and from others, for here we meet a quite unexpected obstacle. On the natural level we are full of hunger for our beloved, the hunger to receive family affection, erotic love, and friendship, and it might be expected that we similarly have a hunger to receive agape. But this is untrue. There is that in the heart of every man that resists and resents agape from his fellow creatures or even from his creator. We naturally want to be desired – to be found delightful, to satisfy worthily some hunger in others. To receive a love which is purely a gift, which bears witness solely to the lovingness of the giver and not at all to our loveliness, is a severe mortification. We desperately need to receive such love from God and even from our fellow creatures, but we don’t naturally want to. Our necessity and our wishes are in conflict.

No sooner do we believe God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that he does so not because of what he is, but because of what we are, because we are intrinsically loveable. It is so easy to admit, but so hard to really believe, but we are mirrors that so wholly are derived from the sun that shines on them surely, we think, we must have some inherent luminosity of our own.

As we are to God, so more obviously are we to our fellows. It is hard to bear agape from our fellows and yet each of us needs it. There is that in each of us that simply can’t be loved with natural love. Nobody can be expected to. Only the loveable can be naturally loved. Men can’t be asked to love rancid meat. It can be forgiven and pitied and loved with agape, but not otherwise. Every listener who has a good parent or wife or husband or child, may be sure that at times he is the recipient of agape, loved not because he is loveable, but because love itself is in the other party. This we must learn first to believe, then to endure, and then to delight in. And without guessing about it either. Such I conceive is the world of agape: a world of unbounded giving and unchained receiving where all blessed creatures need and know that they need nothing but God. And are therefore set free to love one another disinterestedly and so their love shall be like his, born neither of your need nor my deserving, but of plain bounty. I think those are drawing nearer to heaven who in this life find that they need men less and love men more. And delight more in being loved without being needed. For where agape is, there in some degree is heaven.

C S Lewis