Thursday, January 14, 2010

Faith, Hope, and Love by C.S. Lewis

I wanted to share a few things that I read today about faith, hope, and love.

Faith =
"The question of faith arises after a man has tried his level best to practice the Christian virtues, and found that he fails, and seen that even if he could he would only be giving back to God what was already God's own. In other words, he discovers his bankruptcy. Now, once again, what God cares about is not exactly our actions. What He cares about is that we should be creatures of a certain kind of quality - the kind of creatures He intended us to be - creatures related to Himself in a certain way. I do not add "and related to one another in a certain way" because that is included: if you are right with Him, you will inevitably be right with your fellow creatures, just as if all the spokes of a wheel are fitted rightly to the hub and the rim, they are bound to be in right positions to one another."

Hope =
"Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at Earth and you will get neither. We must learn to want something more. The real want for heaven is present in us, but we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise."

Love =
"Our [agape, giving love] must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."

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