Daily Devotional
Loving One's Neighbour
C. S. Lewis
The
rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering
whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; 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.
From
Mere ChristianityCompiled in
A Year with C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity.
Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S.
Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of
HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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