In order to understand the potential meaning of the word agape (that is “love” or “loving”) in the studied context, we must first examine the ways in which human beings respond to this idea of “love” and how it is formed in the very nature of who we are. C.S. Lewis, in his book titled The Four Loves, draws a clear picture of how this process of “loving” or “choosing whom to love” is being formed within the very center of who we are, as people. This will be drawn from a Christian point of view, as both the author of this paper and C.S. Lewis believe in the Christian God- the Loving God. Therefore it all starts with the idea that there is one God, who is a Loving God (“God agape is”), his very nature is to Love his people. Our “loves” therefore could be divided into two categories deriving from the center of this Loving God: Gift-Love and Need-Love.[1] Gift – Love is an expression of God’s Love for humanity; He has given us life and the ability to care for others. This is why a man wants to provide for his family and a mother can care for her children. Gift-Love “longs to serve” so much and so far that it can long to “suffer for, God”.[2] Families are this example of Gift- Love, as they want to give happiness, comfort and protection to their members. Gift-Love draws us closer to God, as the desire to “love” goes through our natural likeness to Him and His creation, caused by the fact that we are part of His marvelous masterpiece, we all reflect a part of who He is.[3] It is this Gift-Love that allows us to have a desire of serving another and loving God. In a sense, it is one of the ways in which human beings respond to the Agape of God and through which they grow closer to Him, if they desire so. Gift-Love is, in short, a love of giving. God gives us life and we give care to, especially those closest to us.
While Gift- Love is the likeness of God in us, Need-Love is a state in which we are least like God. It is our need for the “love” of the other. Just like a child wanting to cry in his mama’s arms, we also need God to comfort us; therefore, we come to him in our state of poverty crying for help. This Need- Love is given to us by our nature and we all feel it. In fact, C.S. Lewis argues that for a person not to feel the need for “love” of another, is a sign of a “cold egoist” within, or even worse, “a bad spiritual state.”[4] He says, that is one of the reasons why God created a woman for a man, as it was “not good for man to be alone.”Need- Love tells God and others of our weaknesses. No matter how sophisticated one can be, he will always long for a caring touch of the other, for the assurance that everything will work out and there will be peace within. But this can only come from God. C.S. Lewis adds: “Perhaps none of them (loves) except Need-Love ever exists alone, in “chemical” purity, for more than a few seconds. And perhaps that is because nothing about us except our neediness is, in this life, permanent.”[5] And this need allows us to draw closer to God by approaching him with our hearts and a desire to be near him, just like that crying child desires his mother’s arms and this nearness to God is nothing less, but part of our purpose and nature. Beware, as there is also a danger for this beautiful way of expressing care for one another. This Need-Love, if abused, can become a selfish “love” and not a genuine expression of our true hearts and desires.
Before we go on any further in understanding the concept of human loving, there is yet another aspect to our process of engaging in a loving relationship or even the thought of, well, the thought of loving. It is our sense of pleasure. The pleasure preceded by one’s desire, for example to have a drink of water on a hot day, is called Need-Pleasure and the pleasure, which can exist on its own such as the beautiful smell of a rose or freshly picked strawberries, is called a Pleasure of Appreciation.[6] Need-Pleasure is a momentary feeling, disappearing the moment we have satisfied it. In a sense it “dies” on us and there is no further meaning or perhaps significant memory of it, outside of that moment.[7] Similarly, the Need-Love may not last any longer than the need, even if the need reoccurs. The only Need-Love which will always be there, although our awareness of it may disappear, is the Need-Love for God, as we will always need him.[8]
The Pleasure of Appreciation is much more beautiful and lasting. A fine wine drinker will appreciate the various tastes of wine he will come across, not because he is thirsty or he has become an alcoholic, but because everything about that wine, the smell, its origin and texture, will in a sense be appreciated by this man. It is an unselfish desire to experience this, as the wine collector will not only enjoy the wine for that moment, but will try to preserve it for the sake of keeping this pleasure and delicacy gratified and lasting forever. He desires to praise this object which claimed his deepest appreciation, by its right to do so.[9] Lewis says that to preserve the wine is to continue the preservation of its whole beauty, a way of self-sacrifice by the offering of its pleasure for another’s appreciation. It is the starting point of the “experience of beauty.” It is not only our enjoyment of those things which bring this appreciative pleasure, but our ability to be, in a sense, “God-like” and proclaim the object as “very good,” in other words “this shall last.”[10] It is this ability to proclaim something earlier most appreciated for its true and given beauty, that leads us to what Lewis calls, a third aspect of loves: the idea and act of “worship.”[11] We must therefore be aware that any object which becomes an appreciative pleasure to our senses has the potential of also becoming the object of our devotion, here – worship. We must then make a careful exploration of the ways in which we come to love; from our natural need to feel a mother’s touch, to our ability to provide for those closest to us; from our sense of satisfying thirst, to our will of elevating one thing above the other. As human beings we have always had the potential to love and we have found ways in which that desire can be expressed.
Copyright © 2007 by Dorota Krzyzaniak
All rights reserved
[1] C.S. Lewis, The four Loves (New York: Harcover, Brace, 1960), 1-5.
[2] Ibid., 17.
[3] Lewis, 17.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Lewis, Loves, 10-12.
[7] Ibid., 14.
[8] Ibid., 15.
[9] Ibid., 14.
[10] Lewis, Loves, 16.
[11] Ibid., 26.
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