Some of us are reading through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this summer for the Chi Alpha Summer Reading Project. Every other week I’ll post some reflections on the readings.
When I laid out the reading schedule for The Four Loves, I didn’t realize that we would read Lewis’ remarks on patriotism on the fourth of July. How delightful!
I’ve actually written about this chapter of The Four Loves before, so I’ll take a slightly different direction today.
Lewis celebrates the love of country as one of the most basic of loves. He points out that the love of your nation is an indispensable part of loving all of humanity.
As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness.… those who do not love the fellow-villagers or the fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving ‘Man’ whom they have not.
This worries some people, because doesn’t loving your country lead to a dislike of others? Not at all! One of the virtues of healthy patriotism is that it allows you to love and respect people from other nations.
[This kind of patriotism] becomes militant only to protect what it loves. In any mind which has a pennyworth of imagination it produces a good attitude towards foreigners. How can I love my home without coming to realise that other men, no less rightly, love theirs? Once you have realised that the Frenchmen like cafe complet just as we like bacon and eggs—why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make everywhere else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were different.
By contrast, a disdain for your own nation will lead to disdain for others. Part of celebrating diversity is realizing that you contribute to it. Your culture can enrich a foreigner just as much as their culture can enrich you, and so to deny them by pretending there is nothing good about your culture is cruel.
This doesn’t mean that you need to ignore the flaws of your nation. Lewis devotes several pages in this chapter to helping people sort through the fact that “the actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful things.” Much of what he says reminds me of the way G.K. Chesterton talked about patriotism in Orthodoxy chapter 5, “The Flag of This World.” Chesterton’s point is that patriots see the flaws of their nation and grieve them. It is because people love their nation that they want to fix it.
The following from the aforementioned Chesterton chapter is one of my favorite quotes of all time — I beg you to read through it slowly.
Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico [Glen’s note: Pimlico is part of London]. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
When a lot of us truly, sincerely, and earnestly love America over time, our love (and the efforts that spring from it) will transform America. That’s what has happened in the past, and God willing it will continue into the future.
Lewis writes about more than patriotism in this chapter, and I commend the rest of it to you. But today is the Fourth of July, and love of nation seemed like the right theme to focus on. So from me, from C.S. Lewis, and from G.K. Chesterton: happy Independence Day!