{"id":5040,"date":"2018-07-05T16:34:34","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T00:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=5040"},"modified":"2018-07-05T16:34:34","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T00:34:34","slug":"the-four-loves-introduction-and-chapter-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2018\/07\/05\/the-four-loves-introduction-and-chapter-one","title":{"rendered":"The Four Loves: Introduction and Chapter One"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_5041\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5041\" style=\"width: 192px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5041\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/220px-The_Four_Loves.jpg?resize=192%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt width=\"192\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/220px-The_Four_Loves.jpg?resize=192%2C300&amp;ssl=1 192w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/220px-The_Four_Loves.jpg?w=220&amp;ssl=1 220w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 192px) 85vw, 192px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5041\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Four Loves by C. S.&nbsp;Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Blog readers: Chi Alpha @ Stanford is engaging in our annual summer reading project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will largely consist of excerpts I found insightful). They are all tagged <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/tag\/summer-reading-project-2018\">summer-reading-project-2018<\/a>. The schedule is <a href=\"https:\/\/xastanford.org\/summer-reading\">online<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We live in an area that often overvalues the love of nature and undervalues the love of country. At the end of \u201cLikings and Loves for the Sub-human\u201d (the first chapter of <em>The Four Loves<\/em>) Lewis makes some astute observations about&nbsp;each.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Concerning nature, he makes the claim that nature doesn\u2019t teach us anything on its&nbsp;own.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you take nature as a teacher she will teach you exactly the lessons you had already decided to learn; this is only another way of saying that nature does not teach.\u2026 Overwhelming gaiety, insupportable grandeur, sombre desolation are flung at you. Make what you can of them, if you must make at all. The only imperative that nature utters is, \u201cLook. Listen. Attend.\u201d (page 755 in <em>The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics<\/em>)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While I think his main point is sound, he words things too strongly here. If I adopted this perspective as he phrased it, I wouldn\u2019t be able to make sense of such passages as Romans 1:20 and Psalm&nbsp;19.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"simple-list\">\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Romans 1:20, \u201cFor since the creation of the world God\u2019s invisible qualities\u2014his eternal power and divine nature\u2014have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.\u201d&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Psalm 19:1\u20132, \u201cThe heavens declare the glory of God; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;night after night they reveal knowledge.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These and other Scriptures clearly teach that there are things God expects us to learn from nature. But there are not many of these things. Lewis is right that nature gives confusing messages \u2014 we can construct clever natural arguments for cruelty as well as for&nbsp;mercy.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rather than looking to nature to provide our entire system of morality and meaning, Lewis says it is enough to allow nature to give us a framework for thinking:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the \u201cfear\u201d of God could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags. And if nature had never awakened certain longings in me, huge areas of what I can now mean by the \u201clove\u201d of God would never, so far as I can see, have existed. (pages 755\u2013756)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Good stuff and well worth pondering.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lewis goes on to make some great observations about patriotism. Patriotism is a virtue for Christians as Douglas Wilson points out in his 2016 essay <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/dougwils.com\/books-and-culture\/s7-engaging-the-culture\/110097.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">American Jesus<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Patriotism, rightly developed, is a duty that falls under the fifth commandment. I am to honor my father and mother, and this extends beyond them in such a way as to include my people, my tribe. Ordinary and ordered patriotism is not just okay; it is a duty, one that needs to be cultivated.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I highly commend that essay to you. Wilson is on point and adds all the caveats you might be worried about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of Lewis\u2019s insights about patriotic love is that it allows us to love and respect people from other nations:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course patriotism of this kind is not in the least aggressive. It asks only to be let alone. It 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 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cafe complet<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> just as we like bacon and eggs\u2014why, 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.&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br>\n<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And he has particularly strong words to say about those who try to replace the love of country with a commitment to higher ideals:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for \u201ctheir country\u201d they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, or civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up.\u2026 If our country\u2019s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world. (page&nbsp;761)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Much of what Lewis says in this section reminds me of the way G.K. Chesterton talked about patriotism in <em>Orthodoxy<\/em>&nbsp;chapter 5, \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ccel.org\/ccel\/chesterton\/orthodoxy.viii.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Flag of This World<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u201d Chesterton\u2019s point is that patriots see the flaws of their nation and grieve them. Because they love their nation they want to fix&nbsp;it.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing\u2014say Pimlico [Glen\u2019s 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&nbsp;her.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So to summarize:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"simple-list\">\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nature is worthy of love but not worthy of worship. Our cultural celebration of environmentalism far to often runs beyond the concerns of ecology and veers into religious territory.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nations are worthy of love but not worthy of worship, and we ought to cultivate a healthy and measured patriotism in ourselves whatever our homeland may&nbsp;be.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">See you next&nbsp;week!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blog readers: Chi Alpha @ Stanford is engaging in our annual summer reading project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will largely consist of excerpts I found insightful). They are all tagged summer-reading-project-2018. The schedule is online. We live in an area that often overvalues \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2018\/07\/05\/the-four-loves-introduction-and-chapter-one\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cThe Four Loves: Introduction and Chapter One\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"CS Lewis on why both nature and nations are worthy of love but not worthy of worship.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[230,229,232],"class_list":["post-5040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-reviews","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-summer-reading-project-2018","tag-the-four-loves"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-1ji","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5040"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7715,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions\/7715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}