For where [charity] is, there in some degree is heaven.

There is that in the heart of every man that resists and resents [charity] from his fellow creatures or even from his creator. We naturally want to be desired to be found delightful, to satisfy worthily some hunger in others. To receive a love which is purely a gift, which bears witness solely to the lovingness of the giver and not at all to our loveliness is a severe mortification. We desperately need to receive such love from God and even from our fellow creatures, but we don’t naturally want to. Our necessity and our wishes are in conflict.

No sooner do we believe God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that he does so not because of what he is, but because of what we are, because we are intrinsically lovable. It so easy to admit, but so hard really to believe, but we are mirrors that so whole are derived from the sun that shines on them surely we think, we must have some inherent luminosity of our own.

As we are to God, so more obviously are we to our fellows. It is hard to bear [charity] from our fellows and yet each of us needs us. There is that in each of us that simply can’t be loved with natural love. Nobody can be expected to. Only the lovable can be naturally loved. Men can’t be asked to like the taste of rancid meat. It can be forgiven and pitied and loved with [charity], but not otherwise. Every listener who has a good parent or wife or husband or child, may be sure that at times he is the recipient of [charity], loved not because he is lovable but because love itself is in the other party. This we must learn, first to believe, then to endure, and then to delight in. And without guessing about it either. Such I conceive is the world of [charity]: a world of unbounded giving and unchained receiving where all blessed creatures need and know that they need nothing but God. And are therefore set free to love one another disinterestedly and so their love shall be like his, born neither of your need nor my deserving, but of plain bounty. I think those are drawing nearer to heaven who in this life, find that they need men less and love men more. And delight more in being loved without being needed. For where [charity] is, there in some degree is heaven.

From The Four Loves by CS Lewis