Lewis is concerned that human loves, at times, tend to claim for themselves a divine authority that overrides all other claims and obligations. They demand unconditional allegiance and thereby become gods (and thereby become demons which destroy both us and themselves).

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis begins his discussion of the natural loves with the observation of de Rougemont that “love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god.” Or, in Lewis’s restatement, “love begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.”

Lewis is concerned that human loves, at times, tend to claim for themselves a divine authority that overrides all other claims and obligations. They demand unconditional allegiance and thereby become gods (and thereby become demons which destroy both us and themselves).

Significantly for Lewis, the human or natural loves only make this claim when they are at their highest, at those moments when they most resemble God. Their claims to divinity are only plausible if there is a real likeness between the natural love and Love Himself. But having become deities, they become demons, and as demons, they cease to be loves at all but instead become only very complicated forms of hatred.

Great Divorce

To illustrate the point, we might consider a recurring character in Lewis’s writings — the tyrannical and possessive mother. In The Four Loves, she is called Mrs. Fidget. In Screwtape Letters, she is described as “the sort of woman who lives for others — you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.” And in The Great Divorce, she is called Pam, the ghost who is Michael’s mother.

It is this last example that I wish to use as an illustration. In the allegory, Lewis depicts a bus traveling from hell to heaven. The conversations that happen on the bus unfold the tensions between good and evil, grace and judgment, all to show (in Lewis’s words), “If we insist on keeping hell (or even earth) we shall not see heaven: if we accept heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of hell.”

Pam’s love for her son, Michael, is “uncontrolled and fierce and monomaniac.” When she meets her brother Reginald on the green plains, she is put out because Michael has not come to meet her. Reginald, a solid spirit who is there to lead her to the mountains (heaven), insists that she must be “thickened up a bit” before Michael will be able to see her. The thickening process begins with her desiring someone else besides Michael.

Corruption of Mother-Love

Pam sullenly agrees to try “religion and all that sort of thing” but only so that they will hurry up and let her see her boy. In other words, she attempts to use God as a means to Michael. Her love is intensely possessive. “I want my boy, and I mean to have him. He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine, for ever and ever.” This is a twisted form of the rightful affection that a mother has for her son. A child does belong to his mother, in some sense. But when natural affection becomes a god, it makes a total and ultimate claim to ownership.

What’s more, Pam’s love for Michael has the appearance of sacrifice but is, in fact, a complicated form of hatred. She protests that she gave up her whole life for Michael, that she sacrificed everything for his memory. But George MacDonald, Lewis’s guide in The Great Divorce, points out that her love is not excessive, but defective. It’s the type of love that will even demand to have the beloved with her in hell rather than give up possession. It prefers to possess the beloved in everlasting misery, rather than release them into joy. Hatred is not too strong a word.

Lewis takes pains to remind us that the corruption of such loves is greater because their natural goodness is greater. Mother-love is a grand and glorious virtue. Therefore, when it goes bad, when it becomes a god, it becomes a terrifying demon indeed.

Passion of Pity

Lewis, of course, applied this principle to the three natural loves — storge (familial affection), eros (romantic or sexual love), and philia (love between friends). But in principle, he notes that the same can be applied to many other kinds of love — love of country and love of nature, for example. But in The Great Divorce, he also points to another surprising form of corrupted love, what he calls, “the passion of pity.” The passion of pity is what happens when love for the hurting, the broken, and the weak (what we typically call compassion) becomes a god, and in doing so, becomes a demon.

We see subtle indications of the complicated dynamics when compassion goes wrong in Pam’s conversation with Reginald. Recall that Pam was attempting to use God as a means to see her son Michael. When Reginald points out this fact, Pam rebuffs him with her own suffering as a mother. Reginald reminds her of God’s love and suffering on her behalf, and Pam responds, “If he loved me, he’d let me see my boy.” In other words, Pam is appealing to a certain definition of love, a love that does whatever the beloved wants, especially if she has suffered.

Now, it’s important to get straight on this situation. Pam really has objectively suffered. Her beloved son Michael was ripped from her through death. And her pain didn’t cease with the loss of Michael. After his death, she lived for his memory and continued to feel the pain of his loss, even as she learned to “expect no sympathy” from her husband and daughter who, in her mind, didn’t truly care for Michael or for her. That’s her lived and experienced reality as a bereaved mother.

But notice how her brother Reginald diagnoses her suffering. The truth is that her high and holy mother-love was actually tyrannical. Living only for Michael’s memory was a mistake (and, according to Reginald, she knows it). Her husband and daughter loved Michael and only rebelled against Pam’s attempts to dominate them with her sorrows. Her insistence on clinging to the past was, in fact, “the wrong way to deal with a sorrow.”

Wrong Way to Deal with Pain

Pam’s response to Reginald’s correction is telling. “You are heartless. Everyone is heartless.” And then, sarcastically, “Oh, of course. I’m wrong. Everything I say or do is wrong, according to you.” In other words, here we see Pam attempting to use her suffering (both real and imagined) as a way to get what she wants from Reginald. In her grief, she will sulk and pout in order to elicit compassion from her brother. But then, we see a key interaction as Pam erupts at Reginald and at God.

“I hate your religion and I hate and despise your God. I believe in a God of love.”

“And yet, Pam, you have no love at this moment for your own mother or for me.”

“Oh, I see! That’s the trouble, is it? Really, Reginald! The idea of your being hurt because. . .”

“Lord love you!” said the Spirit with a great laugh. “You needn’t bother about that! Don’t you know that you can’t hurt anyone in this country?”

The Ghost was silent and open-mouthed for a moment; more wilted, I thought, by this re-assurance than by anything else that had been said. (103–104)

In this moment, Pam realizes that she can no longer use her suffering to hurt and manipulate those who love her. A weapon has been taken out of her hand.

Read More