Need

Towards the end of his book Perelandra, C.S. Lewis juxtaposes two seemingly opposite ideas as true ways of perceiving reality. There is first the idea that God has a purpose for us - a part for us in His plan that gives us meaning - and that He thus has need of us and we likewise have need of each other. No one is separate and alone; in the great plan of God, every part is necessary and depends on each other. We see this in the common biblical analogy of the church to a body, where every member is strengthened and built up by what the other members supply: no one of those members could survive separately, but each needs all and is needed by all. Even Christ, as the Head of the body, needs us (in a manner of speaking, for He is self-sufficient), that, for example, He might reveal in us His grace, mercy, and righteous judgment.

The second idea is that God has no need of anything that He created - He simply created us and loves us out of the overflowing abundance of His goodness. He was not less before He created us, nor is He the greater because He created us. He does not lavish His grace and blessing upon us because He needs our love or because we deserve His favor, but simply because He is. Likewise, in this idea, we have no real need of one another, and so we are able to love as He loves: freely, without the conditions of merit or need.

I can't say that one or the other of these ideas is false; both ring true to me. The first speaks to my inner hunger for purpose, to my desire to be needed, and to my honest admission that I desperately need God and other people. But the second expresses the riches of God's grace, explains how we can begin to love as God loves us, and leaves God's eternal glory unlimited. Maybe this is one of the seeming paradoxes of Christianity - the pairs of apparently contradictory truths whose reconciliation lies beyond our current ability to reason and understand, like the concept of the triune nature of God. What matters is that it is true. We are needed, and all that we do matters and has significance, and we must not let our feet slip; we are not needed, and we can give and love in the freedom of our insignificance, resting in the greatness of our God.

"He has immeasurable use for each thing that is made, that His love and splendour may flow forth like a strong river which has need of a great watercourse and fills alike the deep pools and the little crannies, that are filled equally and remain unequal; and when it has filled them brim full it flows over and makes new channels. We also have need beyond measure of all that He has made. Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely necessary to you and for your delight I was made. Blessed be He!
"He has no need at all of anything that is made. An eldil is not more needful to Him than a grain of the Dust: a peopled world no more needful than a world that is empty: but all needless alike, and what all add to Him is nothing. We also have no need of anything that us made. Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely superfluous, and your love shall be like His, born neither of your need nor of my deserving, but a plain bounty. Blessed be He!" - C.S. Lewis, Perelandra