Godthings

“It is probably impossible to love any human being simply ‘too much.’ We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy. But even this must be refined upon. Otherwise we shall trouble some who are very much on the right road but alarmed because they cannot feel towards God so warm a sensible emotion as they feel for the earthly Beloved. It is much to be wished — at least I think so — that we all, at all times, could. We must pray that this gift should be given us. But the question whether we are loving God or the earthly Beloved ‘more’ is not, so far as concerns our Christian duty, a question about the comparative intensity of two feelings. The real question is, which (when the alternative comes) do you serve, or choose, or put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield?”

— C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

i think i’d add—and perhaps Lewis does address this explicitly in the paragraphs after this excerpt—that the two choices are not laid out as a zero-sum game. when one serves, or chooses, or puts God first, when one’s will yields to God, then one’s love for the earthly Beloved would also be honoured and augmented and consecrated unto God. the reverse, however, might not be true.