"[...W]e might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself?'
"Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently 'Love your neighbor' does not mean 'feel fond of him' or 'find him attractive'. I ought to have seen that before, because, of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either."
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, Forgiveness)
3 comments:
nice one, wait, I mean not nice but I love this one.
I'm starting to see so many parallels between these Lewis quotes and what we've been studying in Mark with our Tim Keller study. This long quote is from last week:
"When Jesus says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' he is not commanding us to 'love ourselves.' Rather, this commandment assumes that we all love ourselves. Someone may say, 'how can he assume this when so many people struggle with self-hate?' but that is to read into the word 'love' more than is meant. In the Bible, love is not primarily a feeling, but an action. (That is a major implication of Jesus' teaching here.) Love is giving priority to someone's needs and concerns. Even if I feel distaste for my neighbor, I am loving my neighbor if I meet his needs and give his concerns priority equal or greater than mine. Thus, when Jesus assumes our self-love, he is not talking about healthy confidence, or 'self-esteem' as we use the term today. He is assuming an endless supply of self-concern. Even people complaining of 'low self-esteem' show their intense concern for their own welfare-- otherwise why does their lack of self-esteem bother them so?! 'To love our neighbor as ourselves' mean: to meet the needs of others with all the energy, delight, creativity, and consistency with which we meet our own."
That tim keller is such a copycat
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