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Four Loves Module

The document provides an overview of the four loves according to C.S. Lewis: affection, friendship, romance (eros), and charity (agape). It discusses concepts and issues related to each love. Affection can turn into a blind love and be demanding. Friendships have the potential to transform or topple leadership. Romance (eros) may hinder worship of God or replace God, and can drive people to despair. Charity makes people vulnerable to pain and suffering as God's love increases in them and they share it with others.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
173 views4 pages

Four Loves Module

The document provides an overview of the four loves according to C.S. Lewis: affection, friendship, romance (eros), and charity (agape). It discusses concepts and issues related to each love. Affection can turn into a blind love and be demanding. Friendships have the potential to transform or topple leadership. Romance (eros) may hinder worship of God or replace God, and can drive people to despair. Charity makes people vulnerable to pain and suffering as God's love increases in them and they share it with others.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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T h e Fo u r L ov es

A Modular Study Created for COH Care Group Discussions

Care Group Session Objectives:


 To know the dangers and issues of each love.
 To realize the value of each love and its impact in our lives.

AFFECTION
What are the dangers of affection?
It turns love into a blind love
“Affection can love the unattractive: God and His saints love the unlovable. Affection “does not expect too
much,” turns a blind eye to faults, revives easily after quarrels; just so charity suffers long and is kind and
forgives.”
This could be seen on parents whose love extends even when their son or daughter has committed wrong.
There is still a hint of the desire to defend or at least protect their beloved from attacks from other people.
It tends to be demanding
“The most unlovable parent (or child) may be full of such ravenous love. But it works to their own misery
and everyone else‟s. The situation becomes suffocating. If people are already unlovable a continual
demand on their part (as of right) to be loved – their manifest sense of injury, their reproaches, whether
loud and clamorous merely implicit in every look and gesture of resentful self-pity – produce in us a sense
of guilt (they are intended to do so) for a fault we could not have avoided and cannot cease to commit.”
The affectionate may tend to demand to be loved in return. There is a desire to receive affection as well.
This can be clearly seen among parents who tend to get angry or resentful when ignored by their growing
children. The parents could insist on their objects of affection to receive what they have to offer even if
their objects of affection have changed. D a t e o f S e r v i c e

It is the love where there is jealousy T i m e o f S e r v i c e

“For affection is the most instinctive, in that sense the most animal, of the loves; its jealousy is
proportionately fierce.” – C.S. Lewis
Affection tends to make people jealous. This includes when someone we are affectionate with changes or
grows. This includes the jealousy of parents when their children gets married or find their own objects of
affection. The same goes with a person whose friends go out on dates with their other friends.

Checkpoint
To whom or to what are you affectionate to? What made you feel this way towards them? Have you tried to
figure out how this feeling began?
The four loves

FRIENDSHIPS
Further transformations of friendships
Man-Woman Friendships
A man to woman friendships tends to transform into Eros or romance unless they are already committed to
a partner or are physically uninterested in each other. Otherwise the friendship could be easily diffused.
This can also happen in the reverse wherein a romantic relationship could turn into friendship which can
make it lasting and enriching. Consider the friendship of Boaz and Ruth which turned into a romantic
relationship afterwards. (See The Book of Ruth)

Alliances and Affections


While friendships are not always about alliances but rather shared interests, friendships can form into thus.
A friend will always be there for you when you are in a rut but it should not be expected to happen every
time. When it does, it becomes needy like affection thus changing the whole point of the love. Consider the
friendship of Jonathan and David. (See the 1 Samuel 18-23) They have a lot of shared interests and
activities. They also helped each other but are not totally needy of each other.

What are some concepts or issues surrounding friendships?


It may be difficult to mix different genders
“Where the sexes, having no real shared activities, can meet only in Affection and Eros – cannot be Friends
– it is healthy that each should have a lively sense of the other‟s absurdity.”
Unless there is a shared interest like in a similar field or work, friendships among groups of men or groups
of women may be difficult to sustain when a member of the opposite sex is present in their group. Observe
if a group of men begin to talk as friends do, any woman in their midst would have a hard time relating to
them. The same goes in the reverse. The group would have to be careful with their words or topics so as to
accommodate the odd person out. Thus instead of making the friendships deeper through shared interests, it
diffuses the friendship.

It has the potential to topple leadership or cultivate vice


„In each knot of friends there is a sectional “public opinion” which fortifies its members against the public
opinion of the community in general. Each therefore is a pocket of potential resistance. Men who have real
friends are less easy to manage or “get at”; harder for good Authorities to correct or for bad Authorities to
corrupt.‟
From friendships arise communities, societies and circles. Therefore, if there is already an organized
community, the leaders could be threatened when a group of friends begin to move away from the society.
Among friends, there is always an opinion that may be different from the whole community. Once this
opinion or idea is cultivated, it turns into movements or small communities inside larger communities.
Friendships that were made out of a common goodness of belief or idea could be strengthened to influence
a community. On the other hand, friendships established with bad intentions or vices as shared interests
could corrupt endanger the community.

Checkpoint
Do you have a clique or barkada? What brought you together? How did you find your best friend in that
group? What set you apart from your clique?
The four loves

ROMANCE

What are some concepts or issues surrounding Eros?


It may hinder us from our worship of God.
“It is marriage itself, not the marriage bed, that will be likely to hinder us from waiting
uninterruptedly on God.”
While most of us might think that sexual activity, might be the problem with Eros, it is actually not
entirely the case. The Apostle Paul has noted this in 1 Corinthians 7. It seems that Paul’s fear is not
only more on the sexual act but also on the demands of marriage which could ultimately hinder
worship to God. C.S. Lewis, the author, expands on this further by mentioning that with the exclusivity
of Eros, a man or woman may forget worship to God. The feeling or desire to be with a specific person
might be too great to bother about God or any other activity for that matter. The emotion might be too
great that God ceases to exist from focus.

It may replace God.


“Of all loves, Eros is, at its height, most god-like; therefore most prone to demand our worship. Of
himself he always tends to turn “being in love” into a sort of religion. Theologians have often feared
in this love, a danger of idolatry. I think they meant by this that the lovers might idolize one another.”
– C.S. Lewis
Eros could often times lead to idolatry, adultery and even blasphemy. People under the influence of
Eros may always eek their Beloved at all times. They may blame their actions, even forceful actions,
as done out of love. Think about those men and women who stalk other people. They seem to want to
know everything about the person, and try to demand attention from the other person. This may seem
part of what we see in movies but this is not far from reality. Eros could also lead a man to desert wife
and children to pursue a Beloved. These all happen without regard to reason and would even have the
same religious zeal as that exhibited by pious Christians.

It has the potential to drive people to despair


“For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the
Beloved than be happy on any other terms.” – C.S. Lewis
Eros breeds a feeling of despair and unhappiness. As an emotion, Eros is at the edge of elation or
despondency. It is a feeling that can go both ways. Even mature and experienced lovers when stricken
with Eros would rather feel unhappy without the person they love rather than be happy with any other
activity. Eros tends to make us forget that broken hearts heal and forgiveness is present. Eros gives us
that kind of feeling of despair when we cannot be with our Beloved.

Checkpoint
Have you ever felt Eros? What makes Eros so appealing?
The four loves

CHARITY

What are some concepts or issues surrounding Charity?


“In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.” – C.S. Lewis
Charity or Agape is the only love that does not have a bad side. However there are concepts that arise out
of beholding Charity in our lives.

Charity makes us vulnerable to pain and suffering.


“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be
broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an
animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in
the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change.
It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to trage-
dy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be
perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." - C.S. Lewis
The love of God makes us vulnerable to pain and suffering. This is because as His love for us increases,
we tend to share it to our family, friends, partners and even the unlovable stranger. What makes this suf-
fering present is not everyone is open to the unconditional love that only God can impart. This makes us
also susceptible to the pain that He also experiences when a soul denies His love. Although in most in-
stances, God suffers more when the people we share His love with denies Him.

It increases our love for others.


“The humblest of us, in a state of Grace, can have some “knowledge-by-acquaintance,” some “tasting” of
Love Himself; but man even at his highest sanctity and intelligence has no direct “knowledge about the
ultimate Being – only analogies.”
When you love God, it does not mean that we deny the presence of the other loves. As mentioned above,
our love for God makes our affection, our friendship and our romance enriched and increased. Once a man
or woman loves God, his or her love for others tend to be magnified because the only way we can express
our love to God is through our expression of our love for our fellow men. This includes cancelling out all
the negative effects of the other loves because God’s love reigns supreme in our hearts.

God creates the need for Himself, thus enabling us to love Him.
“God, it seems to me, bestows two other gifts: a supernatural Need-love of Himself and a supernatural
Need-love of one another.” – C.S. Lewis
Our desire to find God and be in love with Him is something that has been created by God within us. This
enables us to find satisfaction only in God. We may try to look for it in successful careers, wealth or other
forms of human love, but only the love of God can satisfy our cravings for love. He is after all the author

Checkpoint
Why does it seem to be harder to define God’s love?
How would we explain it to others who are in need of it?

End the session with a prayer.

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