• Home
  • Personal Growth
    • Inspirational
    • Leadership
    • Business & Marketplace
    • Health & Wellness
    • Family
    • Stories
  • Faith
    • Christian Living
    • Christian News
    • Bible Study
    • Prayer
    • Faith
    • Theology & Christian Education
    • Christian Fiction
  • How it works – Submission Guidelines
  • Add a Post
  • Daily Top 3 Quotes
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
  • Login
  • Register
Start Writing
Subscribe Now
Hopelify Media
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Personal Growth
    • Inspirational
    • Leadership
    • Business & Marketplace
    • Health & Wellness
    • Family
    • Stories
  • Faith
    • Christian Living
    • Christian News
    • Bible Study
    • Prayer
    • Faith
    • Theology & Christian Education
    • Christian Fiction
  • How it works – Submission Guidelines
  • Add a Post
  • Daily Top 3 Quotes
Start Writing
Subscribe Now
No Result
View All Result
Hopelify Media
No Result
View All Result
">
ADVERTISEMENT

The Faces of Love-Affection

Charlotte Bethia Thomason by Charlotte Bethia Thomason
in Faith, Inspirational
0

BookBrushImage-2021-5-16-10-1311.png

This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote in 2017 comparing and contrasting two book by C. S. Lewis, “Till We have Faces” and “The Four Loves.” Both books address the complexity of love, one is imaginative and the other propositional. I used the essay as a basic for my YouTube Videos this week as I discussed the Advent theme of love. This is the first of four posts from the essay.

Love is a universal subject for writers, artists, and musicians both past and present. However, current media often presents love as sex and sex as love.  Social media creates a new expression of love through the click of a button on a smartphone.  Commercials for sexual enhancement and performance products appear on prime time television.  Sex is no longer taboo to prime time television rather the more sex, the higher the ratings.  Relationships change daily on Social Media with a single entry.  Our attempts to define love devolve into meaningless memes on Social Media that reflect our attempt to oversimplify the complexity of love. While engaging the hurried, hurt confused and often angry skeptics of our current culture presents a significant challenge, adding Devine Love to the equation increases the difficulty. Somehow, we need to slow down, take a deep breath and turn off the smartphones long enough to experience and understand the complex subject of love. Fortunately, C.S. Lewis was a master of slowing down the hurried mind with profound, provocative and engaging writing. In keeping with his style, Lewis offers two books that address the subject of love in unique yet complementary ways, a propositional work, The Four Loves and Till We Have Faces, a rewriting of the Psyche and Cupid myth.  While in The Four Loves, Lewis adapts four Greek terms to present a propositional explanation of love, he brings the terms to life in Till We Have Faces by drawing the reader into the experience of the characters. While each book eloquently depicts love’s complexity, the rational approach to defining love found in The Four Loves and the imaginative approach of Till We Have Faces enhance each other to provide a complete understanding of the nature and complexity of love thereby, providing a some insight for those struggling to understand love and all its complexity.

Lewis clearly expresses the difficulty of defining love when he begins The Fours Loves with, “God is love,” says St. John. When I first tried to write this book, I thought that his maxim would provide me with a very plain highroad through the whole subject. “[1] He soon discovers the complexity of the topic and begins the internal conversations that ultimately lead him to the four terms for love: Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity adapted from the Greek terms Storge, Philia, Eros, and Agape. Even so, Lewis does not stop with the four terms; he also includes the terms Need-love, Gift-Love, Appreciative Love as methods of expressing and receiving love. Lewis describes each term in detail, providing metaphorical and imaginative examples for each throughout the remainder of the book. Without reading Till We Have Faces, the reader of The Four Loves would have a basic understanding of each term, butthe mythical tale provides added insight and understanding for each term.

          Beginning with Affection, we see how the imaginative style of Till We Have Faces, breathes life into the description presented in The Four Loves, thus enhancing the reader’s understanding of the term. In The Four Loves Lewis describes affection as “a mother nursing a baby; … a cat with a basketful of… kittens;” [2] In a similar manner, through Lewis’s description of Orual’s first encounter’s with the infant Psyche,  “I soon had the child out of their hands. I got for her a nurse a free woman, a peasant’s wife, as honest and wholesome as I could find, and after that, both were in my own chamber day and night…I lost more sleep looking on Psyche for the joy of it than in any other way,”[3] we experience mother-daughter Affection through the eyes of Orual, Psyche’s surrogate mother.  We readily accept the level of affection expressed by Orual for Psyche because the language takes us into the bed chamber with Orual to gaze upon the beautiful Psyche through Orual’s eyes. Orual’s experiences become our experience.

To Be Cont’d…


[1] C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1988), 32.

[2] C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1984), 21.

[3] Ibid.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Telegram
  • WhatsApp

Related

Share2Tweet1SendSendShare
">
Charlotte Bethia Thomason

Charlotte Bethia Thomason

I hold a Master of Science in Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Arts in Apologetics, Emphasis in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Baptist University. I also hold a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work from Graceland University. With over 30 years of experience in foster care and social work, I have a wealth of experience from which to draw as I offer guidance to women in their journey of healing. I have seen, both professionally and personally the devastation created by child abuse. My writing also reflects my personal journey to healing. After years of counseling and spiritual healing, I co-founded The Living as Conquerors Center, where I co-authored several Bible Studies and small group curricula that integrate faith, reason, and imagination to help participants navigate the chaos created by childhood trauma. Various churches in the Austin, TX area as well as in Wyoming and, most recently, in Delaware included the material as part of their Women’s Ministry programs. I currently provide guidance to the new owners of the ministry, Eleanora and Cheryl Luke, as they bring the material into the 21st-century. I contribute to a variety of media including Blogs “Connecting with Grief,” YouTube videos, “Near Death Experience: An Unexpected Conversation with Jesus”, on Michael Licona’s YouTube Channel, and an interview with Jordan Hampton “Going Beyond the Intellectual Problem of Evil,” and a live conversation with Shannon on Instagram @survivingchildhoodtrauma

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Login
Notify of
guest

guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
A Battle Plan for Purity: Accountability Partner/Group NOT Required!
Christian Living

A Battle Plan for Purity: Accountability Partner/Group NOT Required!

August 15, 2022
12
Who Am I, Really?
Christian Living

Who Am I, Really?

August 14, 2022
11
Who Am I, Really?
Christian Living

Who Am I, Really?

August 14, 2022
11
Questions that Make You Think-Do You Need A Gun?
Christian Living

Questions that Make You Think-Do You Need A Gun?

August 13, 2022
21

Social Media

Follow Hopelify on Facebook

Follow Hopelify on Twitter Follow @hopelifymedia

My Profile

Register
  • You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself!

    You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself!

    65 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 16
  • How You Can Grow Stronger in Faith During Trying Times

    55 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14
  • Small Beginnings: Five lessons from Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart

    52 shares
    Share 21 Tweet 13
  • My First Post: Musings on “Once There Was a Girl: A Memoir” by Wendy Randall

    48 shares
    Share 19 Tweet 12
  • RUN

    44 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 11

Who’s Online

There are no users currently online

Members

Newest | Active | Popular
  • Profile picture of Leslie Speas
    Leslie Speas
    registered 3 days, 18 hours ago
  • Profile picture of Michelle Booth
    Michelle Booth
    registered 1 week, 4 days ago
  • Profile picture of Eva Liebich
    Eva Liebich
    registered 1 week, 4 days ago
  • Profile picture of GrowByDesign
    GrowByDesign
    registered 1 month, 2 weeks ago
  • Profile picture of SunShine22
    SunShine22
    registered 1 month, 2 weeks ago
  • Profile picture of Sharon Swan
    Sharon Swan
    registered 2 months, 1 week ago
  • Profile picture of wsanborn
    wsanborn
    registered 2 months, 2 weeks ago
  • Profile picture of Christina Stern
    Christina Stern
    registered 3 months ago
  • Profile picture of Sean R. Foster
    Sean R. Foster
    registered 3 months, 1 week ago
  • Profile picture of Heather Anderson
    Heather Anderson
    registered 3 months, 2 weeks ago
  • Home
  • Personal Growth
  • Faith
  • How it works – Submission Guidelines
  • Add a Post
  • Daily Top 3 Quotes

© 2020 Hopelify. Kharis Media LLC

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Personal Growth
    • Inspirational
    • Leadership
    • Business & Marketplace
    • Health & Wellness
    • Family
    • Stories
  • Faith
    • Christian Living
    • Christian News
    • Bible Study
    • Prayer
    • Faith
    • Theology & Christian Education
    • Christian Fiction
  • How it works – Submission Guidelines
  • Add a Post
  • Daily Top 3 Quotes

© 2020 Hopelify. Kharis Media LLC

Welcome Back!

Sign In with Facebook
Sign In with Google
OR

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Sign Up with Facebook
Sign Up with Google
OR

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
0
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x
| Reply