For the love of God!

-When you hear the word “Love”, it makes you think of…?
A mystery, because the normal state of affairs amongst human beings is that of ego-centered survival instincts and animosity. The fact that we have havens of peace is evidence that someone has worked this out, and got people to comply. Love is a number of things in a relationship: an affinity with someone’s mindset, sympathy for someone’s past, attraction to someone as a sexual partner, or as a friend to list but a few. I find this all very mysterious because it can be ephemeral, and suddenly evaporate, or it can progress through many phases and be an ultimate bonding, which only ends with the death of one or both of the people concerned.

-When you’re looking for advice on love, you most often turn to…?
I turn inwards in some cases, but I also enjoy seeing someone who is loving in action. I also enjoy reading inspirational literature, including religious texts. After many years of work in the Church, I have come to the conclusion that love is the one thing whereby we should judge ourselves, and whether we have loved as we could have. I also believe that people who love selflessly transfigure for people around them, so that onlookers have the feeling that something odd or awe-inspiring is at work.

-When you’re having relationship problems, the first thing you usually do is…?
Meditate on the situation, and consider what part was my own contribution to the problems. I believe that relationship problems are always caused by both sides and that we are seldom courageous enough to consider what we have done to change the situation.

I have a lot of sympathy with what you have said here since I too left the church after realising that I was being moved towards selflessness and losing myself. I don’t dismiss selflessness altogether, but it has to be in balance with a healthy self-appreciation. My tendency was to forget myself and the end was a combination of PTS and depression. This is something that I feel the Church tends to neglect, and the tendency to utilise people like myself is sometimes ruthless.

Having said that, I don’t think the people I had to do with actually knew what they were doing. There was no “evil” intention there, just plain ignorance and a focus on results. It has become a tendency to turn faith into an ideology, which they sell, and in doing so, they forget to love. We can all fall into this trap, and we need interaction with others regarding this subject to be told what we’re doing, because we often don’t realise it. That is really what a Church should be, but it isn’t in many cases.

Fanaticism occurs when religion becomes an ideology because it is then lacking the devotion that comes from love.

didn’t know what they were doing? no evil intention there? bro.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa9UJMjjPPk[/youtube]

I was referring to the people around me, rather than taking the broad view. As a system, there are various avenues that people can go down, which are very malevolent. Regarding the experience of the love of God, we have a choice in many ways, between the superficial, the spiritual and the ideological. Very many churchgoers are at the superficial level, in some countries they have sped to the ideological level, ignoring the spiritual. But it is at a spiritual level that people are inspired to deeds of love, of art and music; this is passion and compassion rolled into one.

Our problem is that the spiritual is said to be ephemeral, emotional or nothing specific, notably by people who have no spiritual experience. I have noticed how the suppressing of emotion can cripple people inwardly and lead to depression and despair. Spirituality is therefore holistic if it is worthwhile.

MagsJy,

Once in a while, I reconsider my past in terms of some of the people who came into it, who have come and gone, but who have really touched my life by paying attention, by “seeing” me, teaching and showing me who they saw me as, not as who I thought myself to be and/or experienced myself as, as a result of everything which is important for a child to have growing up, yet was sorely lacking.

“Real” love has the capacity to recreate us out of the minds and hearts of others.

I would rather go to a local church than entertain that bible app, which is the most downloaded bible app on the planet apparently, but… like your church, it wants to claim ownership of your very soul.

Are churches governed by a watch dog organisation over there? ofgod, perhaps… :smiley:

I found the expectations of the app’s plans fostered fanaticism in its users, by the sheer amount of devotion that was asked for… much more OTT than a regular church would ever be.

Since that lady on the bus/that app, I don’t entertain strangers with talk of anything anymore… I wonder if she sensed that her celestial brownie-points that she earned off of me had been revoked. :-k

What is “Real” love? How do you tell?

Can a person have the capacity to love a ‘god’ unconditionally and love another? Is the Bible app asking too much of its subscribers?

Love reminds me of mom, but also supernatural instances.

I turn to reason and logic when i try to temper my loving sentiments.

First thing in a relationship is honest communication.

I think that this question was emotionally adequately answered by Jordan Peterson in an interview. He asked how Christians could have the gall to claim they believe. He said that the only one who believed was the man on the cross. The one who died out of love for mankind is leading us to realise that we don’t even try because it isn’t in our nature to try. When we read about the fall of Adam, it is about our nature, it isn’t about wrong-doings so much as saying, you always miss the mark because of what you are.

Every now and then someone comes along and believes, and dies for it. Often it is a brief episode, but one that invokes humility and reinstalls hope. And that is all we have!

Good answer(s)… I like the first one especially, although I find supernatural instances disturbing.

Honesty… in all walks of life is best, especially friendships, as I abhor friends that are deceitful and self-serving.

MagsJ:

Well, the first thing which comes to my mind is that it is not necessarily based on sentimentality. That would be kind of a hedonistic form of love although being human we can be sentimental toward those we love.

It can also be tough on both parties since whatever a particular act or discipline (non-physical) may be it is based on wanting someone to learn, to grow, but in a gentle way.

Love also has a lot of “sticktoitiveness” to it. It is commitment and faithfulness though not to the degree that someone loses his-her self to the other person. It is not being a doormat or a masochist.

I think that in order to really love someone in the right way we also need to know how to love our self in the right way and to understand our self.

It pays good attention to…

et cetera, et cetera…

By unconditionally, do you mean to continue to love and serve that God, no matter what happens to them or around them? Yes, I think so. There are individuals like that especially if they believe that their God is a loving one and not responsible for the evil in the world.

Are you asking if loving God unconditionally could be in conflict with loving another? I am not quite sure what you mean by the above.

By what you have said and not having a clearer picture or more of a picture, I would have to say Yes. There does not seem to be any room for free will and I do believe that real love does not force one to love. I personally could never believe in a God who would force me to love. That is a form of slavery.
They have been indoctrinated so you must be too. It is almost a form of brain-washing to me. People like that turn my stomach.

Some of the more narrow and closed minded don’t allow spiritualities that make the roses smell better, or make the garden greener. They cling to an indoctrination, a puppetearing masquerador that seemingly answers blessings, but does so as a cover up of haunting your life.

1 of the scariest things about religion is that prayer works. God sets up synchronicities in our life to torture us with dependence on him. Then he drains our soul energy, and leaves us lifeless.

Now, there are some values in religious folks of the right kind, like benevolence, faith, hope, dreams, and fantasy, even families being together forever, but they introduce demonic entailments into our living stations, overseeing all events in our lives, and coordinating them into destruction.

The less mysticism and enchantment running the show, the more random and spontaneous life morphs into. If there’s always a higher meaning for everything, then our ideas start to seem too fated, too stuck in an interval of little patterns that tend to repeat everywhere.

I think of free will more like a clock. There’s always a different ticker, something more joyous to make us scatter about the portrait with more splash and mania dressing up our every step. Another incantation, another inscription in the tablets makes the fun more wavy and electrifying.

Well, annihilation may be somewhat less exaggerated than we might guess when heroic, inspiring themes get mashed under the iron fist of life’s flux. If there’s a timeless theater of magic and greenery that we can always return to, then amazingly, there may be much less scare about blessings going away.

Ritual? the East is known for that.

If it’s worked a thousand times before, then it’ll work a thousand times again… ergo ritual.

I think that religion is a beautiful thing… when not taken out of context or given too much meaning, but is used for its community and cultural purposes of belonging.

On a side note… many of the mannerisms and customs of the Far East are akin to those of The (reclusive) Caribs… a small world huh. :slight_smile:

It can seem exotic and captivating when we see these asian circus acts that ground the mind, or zoom in our mental lights to an incantation or script of words.

I think the wisdom of Lao Tzu molds and shapes the reality flow channel to make perspectives and life transforming events amazing. The profound inner eye can travel as far as the fastest feet.

Keep in mind that the chinese are also into finding the voice of harmony in their customs as the siphon the “Force”, harness its dance and tide.

…identical and related to: we have to be able to take care of ourselves, before we can take care of others i.e. the classic houseplant survival test.

Yes, for if we are asked to put all our love and faith into a god, what is left over for ourselves and others? leftovers? lol

My feelings exactly… spreading the word of god, but you have to fully commit your entirety, to prove that you do… I’m not a fanatic, and this pressure exerted to be so is very off-putting, for those that don’t need converting in the first place… a fact that is completely ignored by the self-appointed converting-loving converted. That is not to say, that their dedication is not admirable, but it may often be misplaced.

The OP is dated quite some time ago but the thread is still active so I shall go-ahead and answer the original question:

Yes, speaking for myself, I would be inclined to be tolerant in such a situation. I have done a lot of travelling and when I am approached by people I generally humour them. There are many reasons for this. First, humouring people in this way allows serendipity to work. One never knows what serendipitous events will follow and what experience one might have, experiences which one might otherwise miss. Secondly, in some cultures it could be taken very badly that one does not humour such approaches. For example, it could be interpreted as a sign of dis-respect and people can become aggressive if they feel they have been slighted, even when the other person had no such intention of slighting the other. (This has happened to me personally - in my case a knife was drawn on me because I did not know how to behave correctly in that particular foreign culture. One does have to react intuitively when possible when dealing with such approaches - the more approaches one experiences, then the better one becomes at dealing with them.)

Similarly, when Jehovah’s Witnesses come to the door, I do listen to them and answer their questions, being candid about my own religious views which are not in agreement with theirs. They leave in a short time and usually give me one of their magazines to read. Even though I do not agree with the views expressed in the magazine, I still find it interesting in various ways.

Also…

Doing things for the love of doing them rather than for e.g. money or status etc…

Myself. Also sometimes to oracle cards or tarot cards.

Reflect on the situation (once I’ve calmed down, that is).

…being all too human? when man became sentient and Homosapien Sapien, and then the (human) games really began.

Sad, that someone has to die to prove a cause or show humanity it’s failings… so humanity hates, someone has to die, and then we all go back to love. Can this cycle be broken? are we there yet?

Do we need hate to catalyse love, or can it become a standalone notion and therefore mutually exclusive, and start an era of the end of the negative forces that form human nature?

That’s right. The Bible and other traditions take up this condition and puts it into a story, which was the standard way of trying to understand it. They also go on to suggest well tested ways out of the dilemma in which our consciousness puts us. We can function without consciousness, not as well as with, but basically function to do the standard things in life. This is proven by people who, through illness, lose that capacity. In such a condition many problems we have with existence do not arise.

Unfortunately, I don’t think of it as a cycle, except perhaps that one generation learns, the next generation forgets and (at best) has to learn again. Sometimes it takes several generations to re-learn, which is due to the loss of the tradition that instructed earlier generations. In the OT there is such an instance after the Babylonian imprisonment.

It think that our main problem in this age is that we are in a similar situation. We have difficulty re-connecting. Psychology can be a way to re-connect with tradition and stories that give us a guide line, given that the traditions were using archetypical figures. It isn’t so much about hate and love superseding each other in a cycle, but remembering such tradition. The modern attempts to form stories that describe our dilemma often present a redeemer who has super powers or is in some way more than human. The older traditions were much more human, which made it easier to connect, even if we regard them as archaic. The alternatives show our sentiments to be superficial.