The
highest priority God gives us in life is to love him wholeheartedly and to love
our neighbors as we love ourselves. But what if I don’t feel loving toward God
and others?
C.S. Lewis offers us some helpful insights:
"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.
Some
people are “cold” by temperament; that may be a misfortune for them, but it
is no more a sin than having bad digestion is a sin; and it does not cut them
out from the chance, or excuse them from the duty, of
learning charity.
The
rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you
“love” your neighbor; 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. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself
disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking
him less.
There
is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey
the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to
put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his “gratitude” you will
probably be disappointed. (People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for
anything like showing off, or patronage.) But whenever we do good to another
self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own
happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more, or,
at least, to dislike it less.
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 a 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 everyone kindly, finds himself liking more and more
people as he goes on—including people he could not even have imagined himself
liking at the beginning. . . .
Some
writers use the word charity to describe not only Christian love between human
beings, but also God’s love for man and man’s love for God. About the second
of these two, people are often worried. They are told they ought to love God.
They cannot find any such feelings in themselves. What are they to do? The
answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to
manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, “If I were sure that I loved God, what
would I do?” When you have found the answer, go and do it."
For
more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
As a long time Christian, I was jealous of the obvious love many people in the Bible exhibited towards God. I loved Him but I wanted to love Him with an all consuming love. I tried to work up those "feelings" and couldn't. Finally while reading of an interaction between Jesus and a follower, I realized I could just ask Him to have a deeper love. I did that. When I awoke the next day, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. I was grateful for the painful things in my past because I now knew those things were His loving shaping of who I am, I was grateful for the abundance that surrounds us, you name it, I was and am thankful for it. He opened my eyes to see His tender love in every area of my life. It has been probably 15 years since He answered that prayer, sometimes the feelings are not as strong as others, but He changed something inside of me when He allowed me to experience such gratitude. My assurance of His faithfulness has grown, I no longer need to know why apparently bad things happen to me because the knowledge of His love for me sustains and upholds me. What a wonderful, amazing and loving God He is. His banner over me is love.
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