Unselfishness vs. Love In his sermon The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis presents his account of the nature of human desire and its fulfillment through the promises of Scripture. Lewis begins by stating that in his time good men believe the highest of virtues to be Unselfishness, but if you asked ancient Christians the very same question, they would answer Love. Where has this misconnect occurred? Why has a negative term been substituted for a positive? This idea of unselfishness carries with it a notion that instead of helping others live a good life, we should simply abstain from these actions for ourselves. This is not the Christian virtue of love that is to value one another. The modern belief is that if someone is of value to you than you are acting selfishly. Lewis explains that this can’t be possible because if one really cares for someone then that other person is valued based on what value they give to one self. Abstaining from this value process is not a …show more content…
Truly valuing someone means that you see something actual valuable about him or her and you can only do that if you value those same things. If one can’t find true value in humans who are created in the image of God, then one’s value system is messed up and should focus on having stronger values and not allow the moral equivalent of “mud-pies” to consume internal desires. At this point the thought arose, Why have modern Christians turned this virtue of Love into one of Unselfishness? Really focusing on this idea of improper love led to the conclusion that one cannot actively think about his or her values when one refuses to think about them and takes the path of unselfishness. You must order your true values to find proper values in others, which then leads to the true act of Love as explained in