C. S. Lewis Four Types Of Love

.S. Lewis discusses the differences between like and love in the second chapter of his book, The Four Loves. He explains that in the Greek language, there are four words that are used to describe love: Storge, or affection love; Phileo, or friendship love; Eros, or romantic love; and Charity, or Divine love. Many times when we say that we love something, we are expressing our affection love. An example of affection love would be saying that we love the movie “The Greatest Showman.” Before jumping right into the four types of love, Lewis explains three subcategories of love: need love, gift love, and appreciation love.

Need love is when we feel as though we need to give or receive love from others. If taken out of context, need love can be

Lewis. Nevertheless, there were a few general ideas that provoked questions and even enlightened my perspective on specific aspects of life. For example, Lewis describes addiction in a way that I had never previously considered. When people are trying something new for the first time, the pleasure that they receive from it can be very overwhelming, usually resulting in another encounter with this substance. Without even realizing it, the pleasure that they are receiving from this substance can be so great that they begin to crave the pleasure from that substance more and more. Before too long, an addiction has developed. In my naïve understanding of addiction, I always assumed that people were unable to control their desires, which is true, but I never realized that their desire, or craving developed based on the pleasure that they received from the substance they

We crave or thirst for need love when we are feeling empty in a specific area of our life. However, as soon as the thirst for the need has been quenched, we no longer need that type of love. With that being said, I can now see why need love would be considered selfish, because even though one of our basic human needs is to be loved, we tend to crave more love than we actually need, resulting in selfish behaviors. When talking about need love, I am reminded about the love that I have for Jesus Christ. Many times, even without being consciously aware of it, my love for Jesus is a need love. I only love him when I need my “love tank” filled or when I am experiencing struggles in my life. For some reason, it is so hard for me to have a conversation with God when I do not need something. This new understanding of how shallowly I love God is quite depressing. Jesus loves me unconditionally no matter how many times I fail or mess up; he loves me with the same love always. How can I become better at loving God in the same way that he loves me? Consistency in my morning devotional time and evening prayer time seems like a good start, but even then, this way of loving Him seems so shallow. I am undeserving of God’s perfect love, yet he is satisfied if we just love him to the best of our ability and strive to me more like Him every