Love me or else (Where is it now?)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Tuesday, December 18, 2012, 16:59 (4146 days ago) @ hyjyljyj

HY: Religion is no help at all. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," commands Jesus (Matthew 22, 37). "Fear God," says Peter, his disciple (1st Epistle General, 2, 17). Can we love what we fear? Imagine being told by your father: "Love me, or I'll beat you to a pulp."-That would be cause the word translated as fear does not mean fear as used in common English. Ancient Hebrew is a concrete language, they had NO words for abstracts like the modern concepts of 'love', 'hate', 'fear', etc. The word translated as 'fear' literally means a 'flowing or trembling of the gut', analogous to the 'butterflies in the stomach' or violent shaking of someone that is afraid. However, it also means awe or reverence. It means to being in awe of and revering God.-
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> And that fragment of utter brilliance constitutes virtually the most concise expression possible of the utter failure of Christianity and Abrahamic religion in general. 
> -No, it constitutes your complete ignorance of it. -> HY: Alan Watts also has exposited eloquently (how else would he do it) at length on the utter absurdity of being commanded, in ANY context, "Thou shalt love." Love by its nature MUST come from within, and is completely deaf to any form of external bullying, whether from a dusty book of poems and fables with pages too easily ripped or an ancient guy in a rolling plexiglas box wearing what appear to be a white bathrobe and huge pointy hat. As soon as you ORDER me to love this or that, I become fundamentally unable to do so. I can fear it, all right, which seems to be a fairly suitable substitute for love, to religionists. But for me to love someone or something that continuously dangles my own infintely torturous and perpetual blood-drenched demise over my troubled head, would demonstrate pretty low self-esteem on my part; rather, I curse it, saying "God Damocles! For the love of...You,...get OFF me already!" Otherwise, I am perfectly indistinguishable from Winston Smith being forced to love Big Brother, a horrible kind of impure, ill-gotten, mandated love conveyed in the final and most blood-chilling sentence of the entire terrifying tome. And that's supposed to make me feel all warm and fuzzy?
> -Love is not a feeling. Love is an action, it is something that you do. It is likened to the care shown as though for a precious gift. So, a commandment to love is not absurd, because it does not have to come from within, but must shown through action as you care for the gifts that you have been given. -> HY: Moreover, the case is never adequately advanced as to why I even OUGHT to love something or someone so routinely depicted as petty, narcissistic, vindictive and rigidly domineering as Big Br--oops, I mean God. Not to mention murderous, but there is that, too. Why bother to create us and then threaten us all day, every day till we're dead? Guess we'll never know.-You are breathing. You have the capability and autonomy to question why you should do anything. If God was such a tyrant, why would he allow you any choice at all? If all he wanted was mindless slaves then why didn't he simply create us that way instead? Given the previous explanation of your complete ignorance and misunderstanding of the nature of love and fear in the biblical context, why should God NOT demand that you take care of the precious gift that you have been given and to show due respect?-See, you labor under the modern ignorant misconception that when you love something that you would never do anything to hurt it. A parent that loves their child often disciplines the child, not out of a desire to hurt the child, but out of a desire to ensure that the child grows up strong and good. Likewise, the tender of an orchard or vinyard will often cut the vines or trim the limbs of the plants under their care in order to ensure that they grow strong and healthy instead of being bent under the weight of their own dead or harmful growth. -Also, you might want to check some of your statements regarding their accuracy. The hellfire doctrine is not biblically sound. No where in the bible does it talk about eternal damnation or torment of the dead. In fact, it specifically says that the dead are conscious of nothing. And lastly, god does not FORCE you to do anything. He gives you a choice and makes you aware of the consequences of that choice. You are free to do as you please, as you have so aptly demonstrated. However, if you do chose to do as you please, you are accepting the consequences of your actions. This is no different than secular law. You are free to speed, do drugs, kill, steal, cheat on your taxes, or molest little children, but should you choose to do so, there are consequences for those actions. As a Godhead, the creator and rule of the universe, why should he NOT expect people to obey his laws? And, more to the point, why do YOU set a double standard, demanding that people do something(creating and enforcing laws) while decrying God for doing the same thing? Makes you a bit of a hypocrite, no?

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.