The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

Lewis draws a contrast between the popular perception that the highest virtue is “unselfishness” and the Christian idea that the highest virtue is “love.” Whereas “unselfishness” appeals to a negative capacity, self-denial, “love” appeals to the positive capacity of desire. Lewis claims that desire is an integral part of the Christian faith that has been weakened by Stoic and Kantian philosophical influences. In fact, human desires (centered on fleshly satisfaction) are, if anything, “too weak” when compared with the infinite happiness Christianity promises.

Nevertheless, Lewis argues against the notion that Christianity’s appeal to desires and rewards makes the life of faith a “mercenary affair.” A mercenary reward has no “natural connection with the things you do to earn it” (26), whereas the rewards that Christianity promises complete or fulfill the activities done to earn them. Yet because the reward of heaven is beyond humans’ experience, it is beyond their present ability to grasp. They are like a schoolboy whose studies feel like drudgery at present but whose desire for the true and proper reward of his studies (mastery of his subject) steadily grows. Human beings’ desire for heaven—which Lewis characterizes as “longing” and analogous to the desire for beauty—is latent within them but sometimes attached to lesser goods. These lesser goods are “good images of what we really desire” but are not the thing itself (30). However, most of modern philosophy and education has inculcated the belief that the lesser goods are the real end of life.

Because heaven is beyond human experience, humans can only understand it by means of analogies with things with which they are familiar; hence, it makes sense to imagine the joys of heaven in terms of things like jewelry, the beauty of nature, and music. Lewis delves into the precise imagery scripture uses to characterize the future life. He reduces this to five themes: Christians shall be with Christ, they shall be like him, they shall have “glory,” they shall be feasted or entertained, and they shall have official positions in God’s kingdom.

First, Lewis comments on why anything other than the first theme should be necessary. He explains that, because of humans’ limited earthly perceptions of love and communion, they need the first theme to be balanced and “corrected” by other images—all of which can be summed up by the idea that “God will be our ultimate bliss” (35).

Next, Lewis turns to the definition of “glory.” Lewis observes that the word suggests two things to him: fame and luminosity. Upon reflection, Lewis came to see that the sense of glory as divine approval is scriptural. Although this emotion has become corrupted by human ambition and pride, it retains a pure core consisting of the desire to please God. In the end, when humans discover that God is happy with them, both their vanity and their sense of inferiority will fall away, and they will experience true happiness. Lewis finds that the promise of glory satisfies the human desire to be acknowledged, welcomed, and accepted.

The sense of glory as divine approval leads to the sense of glory as “brightness, splendour, luminosity” (42). This is because human beings do not merely wish to “see beauty” but to be united with it. Scripture promises that in the end, Christians will be able to “put on glory,” becoming at one with the divine. While at present they receive the divine life remotely, through various intermediaries, in the end they will “drink joy” directly from “the fountain of joy” (44)—a process of glorification that will flow from the spirit to the body and appetites.

In the meantime, humans must follow Christ, which leads Lewis to draw some practical implications for daily life. One of the most important is that each individual is responsible for the glorification of their neighbors, helping those around them to achieve that final glory. This implies that people need to take every human being seriously as bearing the image of God and Christ within them.