Highlights: Ep. 30 | Mere Christianity | Part 9 | Just Do It
Love is the litmus test for authentic Christian living. It’s the one signature quality above all others that defines us as Christ-followers.
“Love in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will…It would be quite wrong to think that the way to become charitable is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings.”
The Greek language has four words for love:
Storge - Affection primarily in a family
Eros - Romantic/Sexual attraction Philia - Friendship
Agape - Not an emotion, but a decision of the will to actively care about all people, regardless of their relational standing with us.
“The great reason why Christian thought fastened on agape is…that Christian love must not only extend to our nearest and our dearest, our friends and…to the Christian fellowship and to the neighbor, but…also to the enemy and to all the world.” (William Barclay) All other types of love are to some degree exclusive. But agape love embraces the whole world.
“Love of fellow humans was not a familiar concept to Greco-Roman philosophers, or to the ordinary person in that culture…Neither philosophy nor religion taught philanthropy or charity… One of the things about the early believers that most astounded their pagan neighbors was the Christians’ willingness to minister to the poor and needy for no ulterior purpose.” (Albert Bell, Exploring the New Testament World)
"The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did…Feelings aren’t what God principally cares about. Christian love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will.” Acting as if we love all people is a good kind of pretending. The pretense leads to the real thing.
“When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him…if you do him a good turn you will find yourself disliking him less…Christian charity…(though it is quite distinct from affection)…leads to affection…The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he “likes” them: the Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.”
“This same spiritual law works terribly in the opposite direction. The Germans, perhaps, at first ill-treated the Jews because they hated them: afterwards they hated them much more because they had ill-treated them The more cruel you are the more you will hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become - and so on in a vicious circle for ever. Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.”
‘They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, “If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?” When you have found the answer, go and do it…Christian love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will…He will give us feelings of love if he pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves.”
So, once again, ask yourself this question. If I really did feel love for this other person what would I say? Then say it. If I really did feel love for this other person, what would I do? The