God's Love:
Reading Till We have Faces immediately brought back memories of my days as an active member of my highschool youth group at a non-denominational community church, and memories of my youth pastor, who had the Hebrew words for God's unconditional love and our love for God tattooed on his wrists. He explained the meaning behind his tattoos as something that can't be translated into proper English, the Hebrew words translating a feeling we can not properly organize into thought. It's a love so powerful that it can not be expressed in words, only in feeling and faith. This idea of unconditional love stood out to me, and now I can see how it is like being a part of the Four Loves that Lewis makes sense of in Till We Have Faces--affection, friendship, romance, and unconditional love because as this love isn't based on any grounds of reason. You don't have to perform to meet any standards in order to get God's love.
In Christianity, this kind of love is preformed through Jesus's self-sacrifice. In Till We Have Faces, Psyche experiences this unconditional love when she is alone on top of the Grey Mountain after the community had condemned her as a human sacrifice. "Thing only thing that did me any good was quite different," Pysche says to Orual on pg. 109 of Till We Have Faces, "It was hardly a thought, and very hard to put into words," (Faces 109). She is unable to clearly explain a metaphor about sacrifice and its relations to health of the crops, and says that there was a gladness that "seemed to come from somewhere deep inside of me....It was shapeless, but you could just hold onto it;or just let it hold onto you," (Faces 110). I can relate this to holding on to the feelings of gladness and love that God gives you, and letting God's love for you wash over and embrace you at the same time. Shapeless, but powerful.
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