Lewis: The Vulnerability of Love

C. S. Lewis 8In C. S. Lewis’s excellent book The Four Loves, he issues this warning to those who try to shield themselves from love because they are afraid of being hurt. It won’t go well for them, for there are unintended consequences:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only safe place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

Jesus is the perfect example. His love was spurned, and still is, by the mass of humanity, but it was the driving force behind His sacrifice for us. The Scripture talks about the broken heart of God over sin. Yet He looked past that and loved us regardless. We are to do no less.