On loving the not so lovable...And I love Lewis

C.S. Lewis is a definite favorite of mine.  I could read and reread his straight forward words over and over again.  There are so many layers to some of his works and then other times he's as blunt as can be.  Such an interesting character.  Possibly a bit obnoxious, even, and I'd still go so far as to name a child after him except the poor thing woud be named Clive.  Even if by some giant miracle my husband would approve, I just couldn't go there.  So instead we'll give Mr. Lewis the next greatest honor and highlight his words in my final post for the month of love.  Such an honor, I know.

There are many, many things that are easy for me to love about life.  This month opened my eyes to that.  Giggling children.  A visit with a friend.  The sound of crashing waves.  A made bed.  Caramel Hershey kisses.  Dangerously easy to love.  Too bad all people aren't as lovable as chocolate.  Some people are that lovable,  and they make my life so sweet, but we have been commanded to love ALL of our brothers and sisters.  Even the not so sweet ones.  And that is tough, tough stuff.  And I'm so not there yet.  And I've often wondered how in the world I'm ever going to get there.  It's a question I've been wrestling with for some time now.  I was reading from Mere Christianity last night and not only did I find this bit about love amusing, I found some hope in his insight:

We might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbour 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 neighbour' does not men 'feel fond of him' or 'find him attractive.'...  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.  That is an enormous relief.  For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are.  Go a step further.  In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one.  I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing.  So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do.  Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man:  or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction:  how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man?  But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life-namely myself.  However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it.  In fact, the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man.  Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Chrisitanity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery.  We ought to hate them.  Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid.  But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves:  being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again....

Something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed.  I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it any more.  That is not how things happen.  I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head.  It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible.  Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves- to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured:  in fact, to wish his good.  That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him:  wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not." 

.....not exactly the most feel-good post to wrap things up here, but definitely something to think about.