Good News Quote #37

From Chapter Seven, Why You Don't Have to Keep Getting Transformed All the Time: Or, How Virtues Make a Lasting Change in Us.

I've heard both pastors and students try to explain this by saying that love is not a feeling, it's a choice. But I'm afraid that's still consumerism talking. [...]


But love is not a choice -- or rather, it is not only a choice, just like it is not only a feeling. Love is a way of life for the long haul (again, think of love for your children) and its presence in our hearts is what Christian doctrine calls a virtue -- an enduring pattern of feeling and thought, choice and action and perception. Love involves all these things, including choices -- many, many choices over the course of a lifetime, made in light of the people and things you love. But of course it also involves feelings -- how could it not? When we look at the children we love, playing or sleeping, we are filled with tenderness and delight. What loving parent doesn't have such feelings?

Good News Quote #30

From Chapter Five, Why You Don't Have to Be Sure You Have the Right Motivations: Or, How Love Seeks the Good.

There is of course a sense in which love for neighbors is unselfish. But this is not because it is motivated by the desire to be unselfish. Rather, it is motivated by desire for the good of the other. Think of how we love our children, seeking their good as well as taking delight in their very being. But sometimes, when you have to wake up in the middle of the night to deal with your screaming infant for the fourth or fifth time, there is no delight in your heart, just sheer exhaustion and devotion to duty. For once again, if you love, you'll do your duty for the one you love: you'll drag yourself out of bed to deal with this tiny bundle of misery, not because you desire to be unselfish but because she needs you. That's the shape of love, the way it directs your attention: it's not about you, it's about her. The delight is lovely when it's there, but it's not the essential thing. And the desire to be unselfish is surely not enough to get you out of bed for the fourth or fifth time -- it's too self-centered. Only love for your child can do that.

Good News Quote #27

From Chapter Five, Why You Don't Have to Be Sure You Have the Right Motivations: Or, How Love Seeks the Good.

The key point my student needed to realize was simple but powerful: it's okay to do the best thing. After all, if your desire is to do the best thing, then your motivation is good enough! [...]


For example, to love your neighbors means to seek their good. So it would be perverse to wonder whether you had the wrong motivation for seeking their good. If what you're trying to accomplish really is good for your neighbor, then that's good enough. For Christian love is about the good of your neighbor, not how good your heart is. (It's not about you.) The difficult part is knowing what really is good for your neighbor. [...] So that's what a loving person worries about -- "Is what I'm trying to do really good for this person?" -- rather than worrying about whether you're doing it out of some selfish motivation.