CS Lewis and The Four Loves

Did I read The Four Loves? Yes. Did I enjoy it? I guess. Here's the deal: CS Lewis and I have an interesting relationship. I first came into contact with him during high school, when Christianity was just about the last thing I wanted anything to do with. Then came college and I would hear people talk about apologetics and CS Lewis in about the same breath. Once I started studying Christianity again, I wasn't immediately a huge fan of apologetics and am still leery of the stuff. Anyway, this past year during all this crazy change that was going on in my life, I decided I'd pick up Lewis and try to be open-minded about him. Well, I just don't like how the guy writes. He's very wordy. I find. He's also insanely personal, which makes me mad. He writes those books that say exactly what you don't want to hear, but need to. I, in turn, always put those books down. That's kind of what I did with The Four Loves. I read the parts I was interested it and skimmed the rest.

His thoughts on friendship were the most fascinating. He described it as pretty much the only love that exists that humans don't need to survive, therefore it's usually the hardest to keep. This was the last year of my life, in a nutshell - finding out who was important in my life and why. If I only could have read that chapter last spring. HA! Also, when he talked about Eros, he separated it. It was kind of a hard concept for me to grasp as a read it, but I re-read it numerous times to make sure I was reading it right. Basically what he was saying, I believe, is that he wanted to split up Eros. Eros being an emotional, intimate connection of being in love and "Venus" being that plus the physicality of sex. CRAZY! I loved that. I knew something like that existed and I've discussed it with a few people over the years and they usually they look at me like I'm crazy, but it's there. CS Lewis confirmed it!

What I don't like about this book will be a general complaint about the English language (I have many). I also don't like how we have only one word for "love." This has been the bane of my existence since about 5th grade. We need to be more like the Greeks in this aspect. Get on that, people who decide how we speak English.