Love me or else (Part One) (Where is it now?)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Thursday, December 20, 2012, 05:06 (4144 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: ..This does not mean the ancient Hebrews did not experience fear!
> -Yes, they absolutely felt fear. The difference is, as I have said, that their language is a concrete language. Passion, Anger, Jealousy, are all based on a word that literally means 'a flaring of the nostrils' because these are the concrete actions that the abstract feeling causes. They didn't think in abstracts. That didn't come along until the Greeks. -As for the flood account, consider this: YHWH looked and saw that the whole world was wicked. He was going to wipe out all of the creatures on the earth. Then, he spotted one man out of the lot that was good, and spared him and his family. The same happened to the woman in Jericho. The same with Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah(Southern Canaan), a people that were known for raping strangers. The Canaanites, whom he ordered exterminated, had been given multiple chances to clean up their act before they were destroyed. They, as a people, burned their children on the altars of Baal, their priestesses were prostitutes. -In fact, this is what you see time and time and time again throughout the text. YHWH gave people ample warning and time to clean up their act and get the heck out before he caused the destruction. -Something other to consider, to use an analogy, is the way ideals spread, like cancer. If a doctor were to excise a cancerous tumor, but leave half of it in, you could expect with some certainty that the cancer would spread, eventually killing its host. Even if the doctor only left a few of the cancerous cells, it is enough to spread and grow the cancerous tumors again. This was the ideal behind the genocide. Having given people multiple opportunities and ample time to change their ways, he decided to excise the culture from the world. Now, a doctor might remove some good cells in their efforts to excise the tumor. Likewise, it is reasonable to assume that perhaps a few good people might have died. But consider two points. One, as mentioned before, YHWH repeatedly demonstrated that he would spare people that did not fit into the criteria. Two, if YHWH is the giver of life, then even should he kill a few so-called innocents, he has not taken anything that he could not return in better condition than he took it. -
> DHW: How do you "do" love?
> -Think of your relationship with your wife. You 'love' her in the abstract Greek since of the word, no? But how do you show your love? Do you take care of her? Do you treat her with kindness and respect? Show her trust? Help her when she needs it, and perhaps even when she doesn't? Tell her, kindly, when she is mistaken and show her why? Listen to her when she does the same for you? There are so very many many ways to "do" love. It is 'cherishing a precious gift that you have been given', whether that be your family, friends, mate, or even a stranger when you stop to consider that having other people on the planet that you can associate with in a meaningful way is indeed a gift. Just imagine how terrible life would be if you were all alone. If love were simply a feeling, you could love and do nothing, but if you do nothing you do not love. -
> ..a God exacting exclusive devotion, bringing punishment for the error of fathers upon sons and upon the third generation and upon the fourth generation, in the case of those that hate me;..
> -Note the end of that verse where the reward for loving him is the to thousandth generation, far exceeding the punishment. David often talks about epigenetics. In this form of genetics, the sins of the father are literally passed on to the offspring, yet, science shows that these epigenetic changes only last for a few generations. Even with these genetic anomalies, people can still choose to overcome their genetic inheritance to an extent, so even in that there is a chance for overcoming your inheritance. Also 1 John 5:3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. Simple as that. ->DHW: Conscious of nothing? No torment of the dead? Why tell such an anecdote if it's not to be taken seriously?-Read This Verses 1-7-
As for the other, the word Hell did not even exist at the time the bible was written. It was introduced sometime after 700AD There are actually four or five different words that are all translated as hell in the KJV: she'ol, geeenna, hades, and tartarus. Of these, only she'ol, and geeenna are used in the OT, tartarus is only used once in a parable, and hades only appears in the NT. The quote from Luke actually uses the word tartarus and is a parable, which is much like a fable, a story told to teach a moral lesson. In this case, it says that when people do not believe, even if you brought someone back from the dead, right in front of them, the would not believe. It is worth mentioning here that they were talking among a people steeped in Greek culture, so using the common parlance when trying to teach them makes sense. -See Luke 16:30-31 where the parable is concluded:
"31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." No matter what you try to tell someone, if they refuse to listen, you could raise the dead and they would still disbelieve. Believing is seeing, not the other way around. (Something we say about science all the time, where personal bias effects the interpretation of the results.

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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.