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.