There is a Youtube channel called "CS Lewis Doodle". It offers essays by Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis with accompanying illustrative drawings. It's a fascinating way of presenting Lewis' many essays on Christian theology, history and ethics. The site recently released the final chapter of Lewis' broadcast on "The Four Loves". I sat down this afternoon and watched the presentation on "Agape", the Christian kind of love - the kind God wants to give you.
I realize that CS Lewis disagrees with me on some points of theology. Be that as it may, I do believe he was a brilliant man and had an incredible ability to make sense of the Christian faith, even for atheists, agnostics and backslidden Christians.
If you haven't seen them, you should listen to all four in order, but the one I saw today on "Agape" or God's love, was stunning. A lot of things I have picked up in my lifelong study of scripture came together in this essay by Lewis. It was one of those rare things where a window to the Divine is opened up. It explained so much about how the natural loves (storge, philios, and eros as Lewis labels them) are incomplete unless transformed by God's love (agape) which is freely given to us if we will accept.
Turns out what prevents us from receiving it is our own pride. We think we need to deserve it and therefore we think that we must also deserve the other kinds of love and that intern, those upon whom we bestow natural love must deserve our love. This makes love a business transaction and if we don't feel the transaction was to our benefit, then we become angry because we didn't get what we deserved.
Equipped by God with Agape (Godly love), we no longer need to get our money's worth from love. I highly recommend you see the whole series of four broadcasts and pay close attention to the last one on Agape. It's the payoff and it's transformative.
© 2018 by Tom King
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