Location: Trinity
Time: Every Sunday from 4-5:30 p.m. beginning Jan. 24
This group will venture through two of C.S. Lewis' works: The Four Loves and The Great Divorce.
The Four Loves
describes (surprisingly enough) the four natures of love. The fact that there is only one word for such an expansive reality as love in the English language was one of the reasons Lewis wrote the book. Lewis describes the first three (Affection, Friendship, Eros) as the natural, or "creation" loves. The fourth love, Charity, or... Agape/Godly love, is the love of God and holds it's proper place as the overseeing, balancing, Love over the first three loves. It takes preeminence and thereby brings the first three loves to their fullest expression.
This group will venture through two of C.S. Lewis' works: The Four Loves and The Great Divorce.
The Four Loves
describes (surprisingly enough) the four natures of love. The fact that there is only one word for such an expansive reality as love in the English language was one of the reasons Lewis wrote the book. Lewis describes the first three (Affection, Friendship, Eros) as the natural, or "creation" loves. The fourth love, Charity, or... Agape/Godly love, is the love of God and holds it's proper place as the overseeing, balancing, Love over the first three loves. It takes preeminence and thereby brings the first three loves to their fullest expression.Notable quotes from The Four Loves:
"The gnat-like cloud of petty anxieties and decisions about the conduct of the next hour have interfered with my prayers more often than any passion or appetite whatever."
"Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give. No lover in the world ever sought the embraces of the woman he loved as the result of a calculation, however unconscious, that they would be more pleasurable than those of any other woman."
"Love's proper place is to God himself. To love at all involves risk of heartache, but far better this than to lock up our hearts in a coffin where they grow cold and hard, irredeemable. We trust it is God's wisdom to prune, and not to destroy, that which He planted in our hearts and therefore we embrace the learning of His love."
"If any man come after me and hate not his father and mother and wife and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." To hate, in this sense, is to set ourselves against anything, any other love even, that would try to position itself higher than God's type of love or love for God. To obey God, rather than our nearest and dearest friends, family or lover may indeed be perceived by them as hateful. When two agree, as in man and wife, to place Charity above the other loves then they need not oppose each other's obedience to God's love. Divine love, Charity, desires what is best for the beloved. God loves us who are unlovable, not attractive to God in the least, it was He who first loved us.
In The Great Divorce
, it appears that only C.S. Lewis can write a story like this. A man takes a bus ride through Hell, then Heaven and witnesses the choices made by others in their lives. The vivid stories within the story show that indecision is still a decision... it underscores the petty things in our lives that we allow to dominate us, things that will still plague us in Hell for eternity if we don't abandon them.
Lewis' concepts (fantasized, of course) of the substance of spirit versus the substance of flesh and blood are incredibly thought provoking. There are mental images I got from reading this book that I will never forget.
It is basic truth - you choose life, you choose death, or you choose not to choose. You will either give up the things that are holding you down (whether they be bitter resentments, anger, material gain, control, etc.) or you will cling to them until they become your master and you their slave.
T
he book presents these concepts in such a non-threatening way that you've gotten a life lesson that you don't realize until you've finished this short, yet vibrant book.
Notable quotes from The Great Divorce
:"'Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death.'"
"There have been men before … who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ."
This entry was posted
on Saturday, January 9, 2010
at Saturday, January 09, 2010
and is filed under
Rooted Groups
. You can follow any responses to this entry through the
.
