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Charity

Decent Essays

Charity Among the key concepts of love touched upon by C.S. Lewis in his novel The Four Loves, is his concept of charity. Charity is a type of love that involves showing care for someone that is not easily loved, while doing it in a selfless manner with no gain for the caregiver. From the story of creation in Genesis we are told that mankind is made in God’s image. Through the act of God sacrificing His son Jesus for our iniquity, we see that he is charitable. Therefore, transitively, mankind is created naturally for charity. This is important to note because it shows that regardless of belief in God, anyone can be charitable. Our understanding of charity can be wrapped up nicely by Lewis on pages 128 and 129 of his book by the …show more content…

The lieutenant, though unknowingly, offers money to the whiskey priest because he had no money to his name. This shows us an important fact that even people who are not close to God have the natural ability to show charity towards people: “He put his hand suddenly in his pocket and pulled out a five-peso piece. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Get out of here, and don’t let me see your face again, Mind that.’” (P&G, 140) An even more profound moment of charity with the lieutenant comes later when he actually gets to know the whiskey priest personally. He talks about how if a person was in deep pain or suffering he would do him a favor by shooting him and ending his misery. This moment doesn’t even seem charitable until later when the whiskey priest is executed. After being shot by the firing squad, the lieutenant shoots him in the head so he doesn’t die a slow painful death: “…if he was in pain, with cancer, I’d put a bullet through his head.” (P&G, Page 200) “Then there was a single shot, and opening them again he saw the officer stuffing his gun back into his holster.” (P&G, 216) During the point of the whiskey priest’s execution we get to see one more person start to form charitable thoughts. Mr. Tench looks out the window and sees that he recognizes the whiskey priest as the same man who left his house in order to tend to the

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