"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind ... You shall love your neighbor as yourself" - Matthew 22:35-40. Is it just me, or is this an impossible commandment? "thou shalt love me!" Try telling that to the woman at the bar, she'll look at you and laugh. You can't force love, love is spontaneous. I don't want, when I tell my wife I love her, for her to say "I'll try to love you too". So what are we to do? It's the same question that I've posted before, as far as forcing belief. If a nonbeliever is told this, what can he do, besides burn in hell (assuming, for the sake of discussion, the Christian is correct)? I can't force belief, and I can't force love. This is a mighty dillema, is it not?
TrippinBTM I love you. And everyone on these forums, even if it's tough, I still love them. I don't know of anyone here I hate, or anyone I hate at all. One must remember Love doesn't mean lust. And loving people is easy when we've got Christ.
TrippinBTM i love you too. for asking that question!! (by any chance have you been reading some alan watts?) you are right on. what do these phrases have in common? Read carefully. "Stop being self-conscious!" "Try to relax." "You must be free." "Try to be sincere." "YOU MUST LOVE US." / "Thou shalt love the LORD they God..." They're all double-binds, self-contradictory and nonsensical. You cannot force sincerity, force relaxation, force freedom, force respect, and you sure as hell can't force love. For God to command us to love him is totally and utterly ridiculous. if i may use a quote from ryu in another thread: (not dissing you in particular, ryu...but i remember noting this idea of forced love when you posted this awhile back.... ) "i know it's hard, but we must love...no matter what." is that love? it's certainly forced, whatever it is. i'd be very hesitant to call it love. it's suspicious and smells funny, whatever it is. what's more - if this is what christians consider to be "love", i wonder if they know what love is at all? if love is something that can be shoved around and shaved and moulded into an acceptable form, then what you have is not love at all. to quote a great bit from alan watts, and yet, there is God, saying, "LOVE ME." what?
Yes. He's been a mighty influence on me, although in this case, he just said what I was already thinking...just said it better. Agreed. My point is, Christianity (and any religion that declares it is the one and ONLY way and MUST be believed) puts you in an impossible position. You can't force the spontaneous. And true love and true belief, are nothing if not spontaneous. Forced, it's just me mouthing words from scripture. I might even fool myself into believing I believe it. But an imposed spirituality is not a true spirituality. It's confusion. But we are told we must believe, or suffer eternity is hell (whatever that is). Surely God, should the christian version be right, would know that I'm faking. The already-believing is sitting pretty, but what are we would-be converts to do? If the "good news" doesn't strike us as Truth or right, then we're just fucking screwed.
Forced love? Yes, and no. Yes, it's tough to love some people, especially ones who try to destroy your whole life.But even so, I'd still confort them, help them, take care of them, etc... without having any grudge against them, not even minding their dark sides. If you ignore a person's dark sides, it's harder to hate them. Loving people is easier with Christ though. It's 'forced' because it's a commandment, but on the same time it isn't forced because you actually want to love them. And yeah, we Christians know love. Jesus is love. He was rejected, tortured, and killed eventhough He never sinned at all! He gave His 100% innocent life for us on the cross, but still said: " Father, forgive them! they do not know what they're doing!" on the time when they mocked and despised and rejected Him. What more, is that He died for those people, laying His innocent life down for people who had sinned all their life, and mocked him. Now that's true love.
IF you read into this scripture you can see GOd's purpose in it. These two commandments are the combination of all the 10 commandments in the old testament combined. Loving God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and loving your neighbour as yourself means you are not lying, stealing, committing adultery, murder, worshipping idols, ect ect.......it seems impossible, but GOd knows our hearts individually. And of course it takes alot of work and prayer, faith, and time! Love the Lord your God with all your heart (Mt 22:37-40) Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
There are several different levels of love. On a lower degree, is basic compassion for humanity. "Love your neighbor as yourself"... General respect for one another, taking others feelings into consideration, these are all examples of a very basic type of love. That is all that God commands. You are the ones who seem to blow the idea completely out of proportion. You ask for much more than God does.
There are a whole hell of a lot of you who KNOW what God Wants...ha ha... but the funny thing is that many of you contradict each other. Denominations?? "Versions", "Translations", "Interpretations"....etc. etc... God: Hey Jews! Go love the Midianites, now. Love them by slaughtering them and raping their women! God: Hey Sinner! I LOVE YOU, but if you don't return my emotions (!), I will torture your ass! Now THAT is LOVE, PRAISE GOD!!!
If I was god i woulda said love your neighbor before you love god. Kinda selfish no? Halos, Heated to Gold, And harnessed 'round the necks Of God's slaves... Hardly room to breathe... And a beautiful golden chain, Reaching to the heavens, Leaves breathless with wonder The rebellious souls.
no, not selfish. It's just that GOd knows that people will let us down and dissapoint us, and He always remains faithful. Plus he is our Creator and treasures us far more than any of us could treasure eachother. So it's not selfish, it's wise.
respect your neighbour, consider your neighbour, comfort your neighbour, but i don't know if there are "different levels" of love. respect isn't necessarily love, considering someone's feelings isn't necessarily love. you can not-love someone, but maintain respect for them, i think. in any case, i think that the love god is asking for is something more than "respect me and take my feelings into consideration". i think he's saying, "love me, wholly and completely, with true love." and that's what's absurd. however, that's beside the point. even those commandments (thou shalt respect..) would be absurd. "Respect your neighbour"? if you can't force love, can you force respect? this reminds me of when i was little and got into fights with my siblings. my mum would always make us "hug and make up" and we hated it. like, we had just finished ripping each other's hair out and now we had to hug; it sucked. but we had to, so we did. were we really making up? respecting each other, loving each other again? no - that came later of its own accord. we were only obeying mum because otherwise we'd get spanked or something. this is the same as the commandment "thou shalt love the Lord thy God.." (ie. because if you don't, you're going to experience Hell.) the question is, is that love? is that respect? if the entire religion is based upon "Love me or go to Hell", and it's clear that it's impossible to make someone love you, what does that make God? insane? nonsensical?
Then you're not seeing them as a whole person, but an image in your mind. If you have to grit your teeth, or lie to yourself about who or what a person really is, how is this love? Really it's cordiallity and tolerance, not love and acceptance. It must be love enough to die for someone. This is what Christianity is about, right? Being Christ-like? Christ died for everyone's sins, everyone, even his enemies: for sinners, for his own murderers. That's pretty damn intense if you ask me, that's not respect or consideration, it goes far beyond that. Man, great analogy. I hated having to do that, it never solved anything and was just uncomfortable. But yeah, you had to do it.
God's very nature, is love. It is a commandment out of love, by our spiritual Father, God. Mans current state of affairs, begs for love being the answer.
^alright, but the point is, I can't will myself to love god, or anyone else. It is a spontaneous thing. I might be able to trick myself into thinking I love someone, but that's not true love, and deep down you know it.
but if you get to know God, you cant help but to feel His Love, Love Him and love others. It's contagious!
