Note: This is a modified version of an essay I wrote for ENGL0150E Love & Friendship.
The way we as humans have perceived love has always been fundamentally intertwined with how we value one another, which is why the purest charity must be one that overcomes that perception and loves unconditionally, independent of the worthiness of the beloved. But in order to understand the full implications of what that charity represents, we must first comprehend what “worth” even means. Does what we are good at define who we are, or is it really the areas we are lacking that reveal our nature the most? For many people, the answer to the aforementioned question is an equal mixture of both. Without the bad, the good would either serve as a constant reminder of how we are never good enough, or it would appear to be an insubstantial façade that, while impressive, is not lovable. Without the good, the bad is no longer seen as a humanizing, genuine aspect of the person but a definition of that person’s immoral character. Our superficial love for one another is dependent on what Erich Fromm would describe as a paradoxical basis: we expect others to be both good and evil. Thus, someone who embodies charitable love must be truly capable of loving the person whose bad outweighs the good, the person whose good outweighs the bad, and the unknown stranger whose bad and good are unknown and irrelevant. It can sometimes be easier to love someone who harms us more than a stranger because we instinctively are drawn to and grow affection for the things constantly in our lives that we pay attention to. As C.S. Lewis states in Four Loves, “To love at all is to be vulnerable” (169): to unconditionally love and make yourself fully vulnerable to an unknown existence you otherwise would be apathetic towards is the ultimate representation of true charity. As such, in charitable love, the worthiness of the object doesn’t matter because charity is derived not from the character of the loved, but from the character of the lover.
However, even if we agree on the foundational character of charity, before we can even address whether using charity to love the unlovable is practical and laudable, we must first ask a more foundational question: who defines whether we are worthy of love? If we can make the distinction between lovable and unlovable, then unless we argue that some people are inherently born without the capacity to be loved, certainly there must be an arbitrary boundary that, when crossed, once lovable people are no longer lovable. Unfortunately, the boundary is almost never that clear. If you commit murder, are you now unloveable? If so, then what about soldiers in active duty? To the soldiers’ countries, they would be considered more lovable because of their willingness to serve and sacrifice for their home, but I doubt the opposing country would agree with that sentiment, so where is the line drawn?
Determining whether someone is worthy of love is in itself a self-defeating idea. In the very first place, we as humans making distinctions on who is “worthy” of love is a very arrogant perspective. Just as how in Gilead, John's feelings for Jack were skewed by his lack of knowledge about the other's feelings and circumstances of being married and having a child with a colored woman, we will never be able to fully understand the context of others’ actions because we are not them: we do not know others’ past experiences along with any extraneous circumstances affecting the situation at that time. Even if we did, as Jesus states in John 8:7, “He that is without sin among you, cast the first stone”: when it comes to making judgements on a human’s intrinsic value and entitlement to love, we, as fellow sinful, imperfect beings, certainly have no right to be the ones making the decision. If someone steals a thousand dollars, is that person better than someone who steals ten thousand dollars? Sin and evil are grafted on to us all through the varying forms of branches stemming from the same tree. For us to decide who is deserving of love and who is not would be to arrogantly ignore our own faults, which would make us far more unlovable than the ones we judge.
Furthermore, measuring a person's worth on actions is ignoring the fact that maybe a lack of foundational, charitable love is the reason they were in a position to commit those crimes in the first place. When we deem someone unworthy of love, especially of our own, we are essentially ignoring the privileges of acceptance, reciprocation, and attention we have had access to that others may not have had. To be lovable, one must first be loved, which is why it generally takes a “charity-esque,” unconditional love from a parent or family figure before children can mature and be loved for their characteristics rather than an inherent sense of familial responsibility. So if experiencing love is necessary to being lovable, and there are many people who have never been loved in healthy, sufficient ways, then considering them unloveable would simply propagate the gross injustice of disparities already existing between humans because of circumstances out of their control. If we are not strong enough to be the ones to break that invidious cycle and love the ones we don’t think are deserving of love, then nothing will ever get better.
But while we can't say that people are unloveable, is it necessarily wrong to deem them undeserving of our own love? The purest intrinsic beauty of love is that no matter the circumstance or responsibility that might influence the decision to give it, at its core lies the fact that love must be willingly given. We can't force ourselves to love others because that would contradict the very definition of what love is — it would no longer be love, but a wretched mix of pity and begrudging responsibility. And while some would argue that pity is a form of love, in reality, it isn’t. Pity inherently establishes a hierarchy of power that ostracizes the sufferer from the observer. To show pity to someone is to say, “I am sorry for your unfortunate circumstances,” which really bears no substance or solace to the person suffering, but instead pushes them further away. What every person really needs in their times of pain and misfortune is a kindred spirit to reach out in loving empathy to share the burden, not worsen it through the degradation and separation of pity. A forced charitable love that does not stem from one of C.S. Lewis’s natural loves is doomed to be rooted in pity because without “Affection”, “Eros”, or “Friendship”, any remaining “love” will only be given by the most selfish humans that believe themselves to be selfless. There are none perfectly good enough to freely give authentic love to everyone, and truly selfless people would never condemn others to experience disingenuous love while openly selfish people would never force themselves to go through that effort in the first place.
Robinson addresses this philosophical issue in Gilead through the resolution of John's complex relationship with Jack through a charitable love derived not from his own power and understanding, but from God. Robinson effectively undermines the idea that it is possible for us to love people regardless of whether they are worthy of love, but still reinforces our calling to do so, just not through ourselves, but through God.
The inability for humans to show unconditional love is epitomized in John's early interactions with Jack. For instance, Jack asks him about predestination: “'Do you think some people are intentionally and irretrievably consigned to perdition?’” (150), which John receives in an ostensibly annoyed manner, not only because it's a convoluted and controversial topic, but also because he associates his frustration with Jack and is predisposed to assume the worst motives from him due to the condemnable wrongs Jack committed in the past. John writes that “it is hard for me to see good faith in John Ames Boughton” (154), which reflects how, from his perspective, Jack is an antagonist purposefully posing difficult questions with no concrete answer with the malicious intent to show up John through his inability to give a satisfying answer. However, Jack was likely posing the question as a confrontation to himself and a reassurance for his own guilt. Later in the story when John was sending off Jack and telling him that they all loved him, Jack responded with “‘You’re all saints’” (242). No one was more aware of his sinful past than Jack himself, and he was struggling to come to terms with it. Jack wanted a reassurance that people could change; that despite the wrongs he committed in the past, there was hope for the future because he was no longer who he once was — he wasn’t condemned to be unlovable. John’s inability to recognize how Jack felt shows how we can’t truly love others regardless of their worthiness because in order to disregard someone’s worthiness, you must first fully understand that person’s worthiness, and that is something we are not capable of.
But while John was unable to reconcile with Jack, his feelings did eventually change, as shown when he gave a blessing to Jack, representing the ultimate form of charitable love. The act of blessing is a recurring theme throughout John's life from as early as when he was just a child baptizing kittens in a creek, which in itself actually bears significant analogous meaning to how John blessed Jack. Just as John described touching a cat with the intention of blessing it as a very different, authentic experience than simply petting a cat, John blessing Jack signified a deeper, genuine connection between the two replacing any former animosity that they could have felt. This connection was not formed through a transformation, but rather a communication, because as John asserts, blessings don’t enhance sacredness, but acknowledge it: Jack was not turned into a new person, but who Jack truly was all along was finally understood by John. But while this development seems to contradict the previous assertion — if we really are incapable of showing unconditional love because of our inability to fully understand someone, then how could John change his feelings for Jack? — in reality, both the statement and the development can be valid because it was not through John, Jack, or any human that his feelings changed, but because of a higher power: God.
The true significance of the blessing lies not in what its representation means to John or Jack, but rather in who the cause of empowerment is. While it may seem as if Jack is submitting to John's blessing, that could not be further from the truth: by the spiritual nature of a blessing, John is no more than a vehicle for God's love. And here lies the main argument for Gilead's stance on charitable love: simply by the fact that all humans are selfish by nature, we do not have the capacity or capability to truly love anyone unconditionally at all, and as such, humans must not be the source from which we derive love. Only through God, who is forever perfectly good, can we show charity to others, because then it is not us fighting against our true nature to love the unlovable, but rather utilizing the boundless power of God’s love to do so. In other words, we do not love people unconditionally regardless of their worth, but God does so for us. From the very beginning, John never deemed Jack worthy enough for his love — and that never changed — it was just that John’s love no longer mattered because God’s perfect love had prevailed.
There's a divide between what we know and what we understand. We can know the nature of charity, know that every human is lovable, and know that we are not capable of showing true charity to others, but actually understanding and believing it is a separate matter. Ultimately, as reflected in the conflicting relationship between John and Jack, we are not capable of bridging this gap ourselves to love others regardless of whether we deem them worthy of our love, and as such, it is neither practical nor laudable to successfully love others charitably. If it takes the all-powerful, perfect love of God interceding for us in order to make unconditional love even possible, then we should not attempt to laud ourselves pridefully with that charity, lest we forget that it is never us, but God, who loves.