Loving What Isn’t Lovable Yet

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” — Romans 5:8 (KJV)

Chesterton grew up in an age divided between optimists, who said the world was wonderful, and pessimists, who said it was terrible. He thought both were missing something.

He says the right attitude to the world is more like loyalty than like a review. A good reviewer says, “This is good, this is bad.” But someone who loves their home doesn’t only love it when it’s good. They love it so much that they want to make it better.

He uses the example of a run-down part of London. If you just dislike it, you leave. If you think it’s fine as it is, nothing changes. Chesterton says the only thing that changes such a place is that someone loves it: “to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason.” Then, he says, it will begin to rise and become beautiful, like a person who becomes more beautiful because they are loved.

Remember the lesson of Beauty and the Beast: a thing must be loved before it is lovable. That is the heart of the gospel. God loved us while we were still sinners. He didn’t wait for us to be good. He loved us first, and that love changes us.

Chesterton also found a puzzle that Christianity solved for him. How can we love the world and yet not be swallowed up by it? He wrote:

“One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.”

Christianity gave him the answer. God made the world, and it is good, so we can love it. But God is separate from the world, and the world is broken, so we don’t worship it or trust it completely. When he saw that, Chesterton says, the rest of his thinking “fell in with an eerie exactitude”, like machinery clicking into place.

What would it look like for you to love your school, your town or your family like this: not because they are perfect, but so that they can become better?

One thing to do this week: choose one place or group you are part of that isn’t perfect: your class, team, family or street. This week, do one practical thing to love it and make it better, without waiting for it to deserve it.