On Abstract Love, an Insight from C.S. Lewis, and Practicing What We Admire

A Note from Me

The idea of loving my enemies captivates me. What a life! What a way to be in the world. I read about it in the gospels and am entranced. I sit in a pew and listen to it, grinning and nodding. But all of this enthusiasm comes from a distance. When I get near an enemy—someone I’m in a contentious moment with—it doesn’t look so attractive anymore. I’m not captivated. I’m not amazed. I’m annoyed. And I want to retreat. I don’t want to love them. And here’s the temptation: it’s easy to love the idea of love. So many spiritual things work like this. They shine from a distance. They stay safe in the abstract. But the moment I get near them and put them into practice, they become hard, irritating, and costly. I think what I’m learning now is not to nod too quickly at Jesus' words. Some teachings need to first expose how deeply I resist them. Perhaps acknowledging that resistance is not disobedience, but the first honest step toward obedience.

A Voice from the Tradition

In this excerpt, C.S. Lewis imagines a senior devil coaching a junior one on how best to tempt a human soul:

"Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary...

You must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy...”

—The Screwtape Letters

A Question to Carry

How might you take one small step toward an enemy this week?

Thanks for reading,

—Jon