“If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the hightest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a postitive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love… If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith… it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak… We are far too easily pleased.” –selections from the beginning of The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis
by love.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Contemplating
Posted by Kristi at 5:31 PM
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2 comments:
And the Dave said:
Are we honestly pleased, or would we just rather pretend out of fear that the achievement of our own good coming into conflict with that of others? It's easy to forget that, the achievement of good for one does not necessitate the privation of good in another.
"You can be a victor without having victims," as they say.
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