C.S. Lewis on Loving Others
By Richard G. Medlock
C.S. Lewis said, “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him.”
Examining C. S. Lewis’s Thought
C. S. Lewis’s statement contains a surprisingly practical understanding of love. We often think of love primarily as a feeling—that warm emotional response we experience toward someone we admire, enjoy, or feel connected to. But Lewis turns that idea upside down. He says, in effect, do not wait for the feeling before you begin the behavior. Begin with the behavior, and the feeling may follow. This is important because our feelings are often unreliable. There will be people we simply do not like, people who irritate us, disappoint us, disagree with us, or have treated us poorly. If we make our willingness to treat them with kindness dependent upon whether we feel affection for them, we will frequently fail to love our neighbor at all. Lewis therefore asks us to make a decision before the emotion arrives: How would I treat this person if I genuinely loved them? Then do that.
There is something profoundly Christian about this idea. Jesus did not make love of one’s neighbor dependent upon liking one’s neighbor. He commanded, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you” (Matthew 5:44). That is not primarily an instruction about manufacturing warm feelings toward an enemy. It is an instruction about conduct. We may not be able to immediately control what we feel, but we can exercise agency over what we choose to do. We can refuse to return insult for insult. We can speak with dignity when anger tells us to speak with contempt. We can forgive when resentment tells us to keep score. We can serve when selfishness tells us that someone else is not worth our time. In that sense, love becomes a verb before it becomes an emotion.
Lewis’s deeper insight is that our actions can gradually reshape our hearts. When we repeatedly behave toward someone with patience, generosity, mercy, and understanding, we begin to see that person differently. We stop reducing them to the one thing that irritated us. We begin to notice their struggles, their fears, their humanity, and perhaps even their goodness. What began as deliberate behavior can eventually become genuine affection. This principle works in many areas of life. A person who begins serving others because they know they should may eventually discover that they actually enjoy serving. A parent who patiently listens when exhausted may discover that patience produces a deeper relationship. A husband or wife who deliberately chooses kindness during a difficult season may find that affection begins to return. Sometimes the heart follows the feet.
This also helps explain why resentment can become so powerful. The same principle works in reverse. If we repeatedly rehearse someone’s offenses, speak negatively about them, assume the worst about their motives, and treat them with contempt, those actions can strengthen our dislike. Eventually we may convince ourselves that our bitterness is simply an honest description of who that person is. But we have participated in creating the very disposition we now claim we cannot change. Lewis gives us another possibility: interrupt the cycle with action. Choose one good thing. Speak one kind word. Offer one sincere service. Listen instead of interrupting. Give someone the benefit of the doubt. These actions do not excuse evil or eliminate the need for boundaries, justice, or accountability. Loving someone does not mean permitting destructive behavior. It means refusing to allow another person’s behavior to determine the kind of person you become.
There is an important distinction here between love and approval. To love a neighbor does not mean agreeing with everything they believe or approving everything they do. We can profoundly disagree with someone and still treat them as a human being possessing dignity and worth. We can tell the truth without cruelty. We can establish boundaries without hatred. We can pursue justice without vengeance. In fact, genuine love sometimes requires difficult truth rather than comfortable silence. Christian love is not sentimental weakness; it is disciplined goodwill.
Lewis’s principle also challenges one of our modern assumptions: “I should only do what feels authentic to me.” That sounds attractive, but it can become a philosophy of emotional captivity. If I only act when I feel like acting, then my feelings become my master. Character says something different: I will choose what is right even when my feelings have not caught up. The remarkable thing is that repeated righteous action can educate the emotions. We discover that love is not merely something that happens to us. It is something we practice. And through practicing it, we can become people who genuinely love.
Perhaps the greatest lesson is this: don’t wait for your heart to become loving before you start living lovingly. Start where you are. Treat the difficult person with dignity. Help someone who cannot repay you. Listen to someone whose opinions irritate you. Forgive where forgiveness is possible. Pray for someone you would rather criticize. Do good when you do not feel like doing good. Over time, something may happen inside you. The person you once saw only as an annoyance may become a neighbor. The stranger may become a fellow human being. The enemy may become someone you can at least understand. And the act that began as discipline may eventually become love.
