ex libris

"Charity means 'Love, in the Christian sense.' But love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about others.

"Natural liking or affection for people makes it easier to be 'charitable' towards them. It is, therefore, normally a duty to encourage our affections - to 'like' people as much as we can (just as it is often our duty to encourage our liking for exercise or wholesome food) - not because this liking is itself the virtue of charity, but because it is a help to it.

"But though natural likings should normally be encouraged, it would be quite wrong to think that the way to become charitable is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings.

"The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

"Consequently, though Christian charity sounds a very cold thing to people whose heads are full of sentimentality, and though it is quite distinct from affection, yet it leads to affection. The difference between the Christian and a worldly man is not that the worldly man has only affections or 'likings' and the Christian has only 'charity.' The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; 115, 116, 117.

It doesn't matter how many times I read the same thing by him, C.S. Lewis always moves me; always strikes me as poignant, subtly powerful, and painfully apt. I don't know how many times I've read Mere Christianity but each time I go back it's like cool water for my soul. If I could produce a book of material that has the potency of just one of his paragraphs, I'd be happy.

More importantly though, I wish the reality of Christian's interactions with others (and themselves) would come more and more to match Lewis' description of what it should be.