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“The Weight of Glory” by C.S. Lewis

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Summary

Love is good desire, not self-denial

…”Unselfishness” carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.

  • something negative has replaced something positive,
    • unselfishness is foregoing good for ourselves, while
    • love is securing good for others
  • Unselfishness sees self-denial as an end in itself, such that it is bad to desire and hope for the enjoyment of our own good.
  • Love sees self-denial as, containing within it, an “appeal to desire”, since it is good to desire, and hope for the enjoyment of our own good.

in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.

New Testament has stories that appeals to our desire for good.

The problem is not too much pleasure — but that we are too easily pleased with second-best.

Desiring a reward — mercenary or consummation?

We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward makes the Christian life a mercenary affair.

Money is not the natural reward of love; marriage is.

The proper rewards for proper desires, is the activity of desiring itself — reaching consummation.

The mercenary gets external rewards

that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money.

The lover’s intrinsic reward is the love itself But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, not her money. A general who fights well in order to get victory, not peerage. They would not be mercenaries for desiring it.

The schoolboy The schoolboy won’t enjoy Greek literature. Ulterior desire: Marks? Escaping punishment? Pleasing parents? “Unrealised hope”?

As he approaches the reward, he becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed the power of so desiring it is itself a preliminary reward.

Let the schoolboy enjoy English literature, suitable to his age…

before he begins to suspect that Greek grammar is going to lead him to more and more enjoyments of this same sort. He may even be neglecting his Greek to read Shelley and Swinburne in secret.

We concede that the analogy breaks down: English exercises may be just as good as Greek.

from tgc:

[in this life, we] cannot know it in the same way, and cannot even begin to know it at all except by (a) continuing to obey and (b) finding the first reward of our obedience in our increasing power to desire the ultimate reward.

Believers are too shy about the inconsolability of ultimate desire

indecency, secret, calling it other names “nostalgia”, “romanticism”, “sweetness”

cannot tell: the object never actually appeared in our experience cannot hide: yet, our experience is constantly suggesting it

Natural philosophy bears reluctant witness of the ultimate supernatural object of desire

Modern education and philosophies try to:

  • silence this shy, persistent, inner voice.
  • convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth
  • but natural philosophy will only bear reluctant witness

three ways:

  • persuading that 🌏 earth can be made into heaven
    • requires our sense of 😩 “exile” on earth right now
  • persuading that 💰 fortunate event is way off in the future
    • requires that the 🗺️ fatherland is not here and now
  • …even if all 😁 happiness comes,
    • yet each generation would lose it by 💀 death, including the last generation. And the whole story would be nothing, forever.

Supernatural desire comes through fallible natural appeals

How to define it? Memories of the past?

But we live in a reality where we cannot hide and cannot tell: every conception of the supernatural can only at best be represented by poor facsimiles and parodies

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.

These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.

For they are not the thing itself; they are only:

  • 🌷 the scent of a flower we have not found,
  • 🔊 the echo of a tune we have not heard,
  • 🗞️ news from a country we have never yet visited.

We remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy.

But is there any reason to suppose that reality offers any satisfaction to it? The puzzle does not (in itself) prove the existence of a puzzle-maker. “Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.”

What we do know:

  1. A man’s hunger proves his body design that repairs on eating
  2. Men inhabits a world where eatable substances exist

A man may love a woman and not win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called “falling in love” occurred in a sexless world.

(Caleb’s: strange to have a concept of “love” if we are a world of robots — see also Mere Christianity’s “we would not known it was dark unless we had eyes”)

Our desire for Paradise doesn’t itself prove that we’ll enjoy it But if Paradise to even exist, and to be enjoyed, then the Desire (that does exist) is necessary

(If they do exist, then) It’s expected that supernatural objects of desire are described with natural appeals.

If Christianity could tell me no more of the far-off land than my own temperament, [it’s not supernatural]. I must expect [Christianity] to be less immediately attractive than “my own stuff”.

To be “with Christ” is beyond our limited natural conception — we need symbols

Five types of promises in Scripture:

  1. we shall be with Christ;
  2. we shall be like Christ;
  3. we shall have glory;
  4. we shall in some sense be fed or feasted or entertained;
  5. we should have some sort of official ruling position in the universe.

If “he who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only,” why would Scripture induce us with promises beyond being with Christ? (TGC)

The nature of symbols, earthly imagery Proximity? Conversation, as we understand it? Earthly symbols fall short, poor, narrow, strain, monotonous Needs relief and correction from the dozen changing symbols

The super-natural nature of Christian “glory”

Salvation is constantly associated with palms, crowns, white robes, thrones, and splendour like the sun and stars.

But it does not appeal to me, a modern.

“Glory” suggests two things:

  1. 📸 fame (which seems wicked), and
  2. 💡 luminosity (which seems ridiculous).

Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity. As for the first, since to be famous means to be better known than other people, the desire for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and therefore of hell rather than heaven. As for the second, who wishes to become a kind of living electric light bulb?

But:

  • many Christian figures saw it as “fame”
  • fame not from fellow-creatures; fame with God, appreciation by God
  • and that is GOOD and worthy of pursuit.

I saw that this view was scriptural; nothing can eliminate from the parable the divine accolade, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

The Christian message is one of bitter-sweetness. Beauty, and pining.

longing to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside.

We don’t want merely to see beauty — we want to “be united, pass into it, receive it, bathe in it, become part of it.”

That’s why we make idols from Nature. They are projections are the image of Glory.

They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t.

both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy.

Note how strange it is that the Apostle Paul promises those who love God not that they will “know God” (as we would expect) but rather that they would be “known by him” ([[1 Cor 8#3]] (broken link, note not found)). (TGC)

In other words, in some mysterious way they will be banished from the presence of God who is everywhere and erased from the knowledge of him who knows all things. In contrast to those who are left on the outside—repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored—others will be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. To be summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond what we deserve and the healing of our old ache. (TGC)

The glorious immortality of the human being

Humans outlive the suns and galaxies.

When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive.

Scripture invites us to work with Nature as a fitting mere symbol.

Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.

If Nature is so rapturous, then how infinitely more, the Super-nature from which it precedes from?

What would it be to taste at the fountain-head that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating?

Call to action: see the glory in your human neighbour

Bear your neighbour’s burdens with humility.

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisation these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

If he is your Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ truly hides—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory himself, is truly hidden.

Synthesis

scent of a flower i that haven’t found echo of a melody news from a country

the right to give, withhold, take-away

  • [[2025-11-04|4 November 2025]] (broken link, note not found)
  • [[I was made for another world]] (broken link, note not found)

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