Narnia and C.S. Lewis’ Trilemma
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God is always first. He loved us first, and his love is gratuitous. This means that God loves us for free, no strings attached, he loves us simply because it is in his nature. God is love (1 John 4:8).
Our love for God, will always be a response to his love. The same is true for our longings, desires, and prayers. The Lord longs for us first. He desires us first. He approaches us in prayer first. Because of the primacy of God’s love, because our love will always be a response to God’s love, we can never love him the same way he loves us. Namely, gratuitously.
It’s a crazy thing. We can never be first in loving God. We can never love him gratuitously because our love will always be in response to his love. As St. John writes, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
We are totally dependent on God. We needed him for creation, redemption, and everything in between. Our love for him will always be owed because he is infinitely deserving of it, and our love for him will always be in response to the infinitely gratuitous things he has done for us.
We can’t love God gratuitously. So, are we never able to love like God?
The saints tell us that we have a unique opportunity to love the way God has loved us, to love gratuitously, and that is in loving our neighbor.
We can love our neighbor the way God loves us, without precedent, without reason, with no strings attached. We can love them simply to love them. We can love them gratuitously.
In her dialogue with the Lord, St. Catherine of Siena records God saying: “This is why I have put you among your neighbors: so that you can do for them what you cannot do for me—that is, love them without any concern for thanks and without looking for any profit for yourself. And whatever you do for them I will consider done for me” (The Dialogue).
Notice that final line: “And whatever you do for them I will consider done for me.” This hearkens back to Jesus’ words, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).
So, in fact, it seems there is a way we can love God gratuitously. We can love God the way he loves us by loving our neighbors with a pure heart. There is something so beautiful about this paradox and this opportunity. We who wish to love the Lord the way he has loved us are told the exact, and only, way — to love our neighbors. It is by truly loving others that we get a glimpse of what it means to love like God.
Hunter Leonard is a passionate Catholic with an intense love for learning about and sharing the Faith. He holds an M.A. in Theology from the Augustine Institute and a B.A. in Creative Writing from California State University at Northridge. Hunter's essays, articles, and poems have been featured at Busted Halo, St. Austin Review, Crisis Magazine, and Voyage Comics. He is a staff columnist at Catholic Stand and works at Flocknote to help parishes and dioceses build a more connected Church.
Hunter is also the author of the brand new children's book, When God Speaks, published by OSV Kids. You can find all of Hunter's books and articles at www.sacredvision.org.
