Love

[PerAnnum]

I have been reading a few of the discussion topics on this forum and find them rather interesting. I found the post intitled "Christians" especially interesting. I don't know about Islam or Bhuddism, or any other religion, because I was raised in a Christian home, but I do know what Christianity is all about.
It seems as though the word 'Christian' is producing a distaste among many people, and I wonder why that is. No, I don't. I know exactly why that is. We as Christians are to be Christ-like, and we have lost that, most of us. (I speak to myself). The Christian faith comes down to 2 basic principals.
1. Love God.
2. Love others.
Everything else falls underneathe these two categories. Life would be such a better place if we could understand these to principals. We try to put rules on ourselves and others, to MAKE the world see who Jesus is when all we have to do is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."

For what it's worth, PerAnnum.

[subterranean]

The Christian faith comes down to 2 basic principals.
1. Love God.
2. Love others.
Everything else falls underneathe these two categories. Life would be such a better place if we could understand these to principals. We try to put rules on ourselves and others, to MAKE the world see who Jesus is when all we have to do is love.

I think these verses summoned up your thoughts:

Matthew 22:35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

[bhekti]

If I love my neighbour for because I want to fulfil that commandment, or
If I love my neighbour, and my enemies, for the sake of general kindness and satisfaction by way of positive emotions that result from that gracious act

Do I really love?

[Pendragon]

If I love my neighbour for because I want to fulfil that commandment, or
If I love my neighbour, and my enemies, for the sake of general kindness and satisfaction by way of positive emotions that result from that gracious act

Do I really love?

This is a point I adressed before. If you obey only the letter of the law, and not the spirit of the law, you must come up short. You love of your neighbor must not be for your benifit, but theirs. II Corinthians 6:6 "By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by The Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned." The word "unfeinged" means "not pretentous". Then again in I Peter 1:22 "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeinged love of the brethern, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." So we obey because we are granted through the Spirit the ability to love. As a wise man once said, "When God let me love Him, He caused me to love you." God bless.

[subterranean]

Define love.....

please....

If I love my neighbour for because I want to fulfil that commandment, or
If I love my neighbour, and my enemies, for the sake of general kindness and satisfaction by way of positive emotions that result from that gracious act

Do I really love?

[IrishCanadian]

There are many definitions of love...not all of them true, however more than one of them is true (or so I think):
--1 Jn 4:8 "God is Love"
--Aristotle's Poetics "Each of them (people in any type of loveing relationship) is both good without qualification and good for his friend, since good people are both good without qualificationand advantageous to each other." He goes on to say that this type of love builds virtue in life which builds love and the ability to love in people and groups. But I don't think I want to type the whole second half of bookVIII Ch. 3 in this post.
--C. S. Lewis' The four loves "I was looking forwardto writing some fairly easy panegrycs on the first sort of love (gift-love or God-like love)and disparagements of the second (need-love). . . . I still think that if all we mean by our loveis craving to be loved, we are in a very deplorable state. But I would now say that if we mean only this craving, we are mistakiing for love something which is not love at all."

On the other hand Bono says that love is blindness. haha. I think the best way to know what love is, is to read some great literature about it (hey thats what we're all here for). I don't mean the love poems of Yeats or Byron, I mean about the love that friends have because that is the most mysterious and possibly (in my experience anyway) the most common.
In the words of Jeaferson Airplane, "C'mon people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now."

[Pendragon]

Define love.....

please....

A just and reasonable question.
I think the best example to define love is the story of The Good Samaritan, since Jesus told it in answer to a similiar question, "And who is my neighbor."

As you may recall, a Jewish man was traveling to Jerico. That road was well known to be dangerous because of bandits. He fell afoul of them, they beat him, stripped him, robbed him, and dumped him in a ditch wounded and bleeding. Along came a priest, saw him, but passed by. Along came a Levite (the order of the priests), looked at him, but passed by. Then came the Samaritan. Now, from the Bible, we learn in the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, that Samaritans and Jews had a sort of Segregation, one had nothing to do with the other. But this man couldn't pass a wounded man without helping him, taking him to an inn, paying his bill, and telling the landlord to allow him to stay until he was well. And if the man ran up a tab, the Samaritan agreed to pay it. Now, who showed love? I Corinthians 13 defines all the things love is.

I have always loved my wife, but I discoved how much when her dad, in a drunken rage and suicial, waving a pistol and making threats, ears deafened to our pleas struck her. In one move I had him by the arm that held that gun. I had never used that self-defense grip, but in that moment I unerring clamped on the nevre center in his arm, and the pistol fell from his now lifeless hand. I wouldn't let him go until he had calmed down. I could have been shot very easily. It was a nine-shot double-action revolver, and he was a marksman. It didn't matter to me, someone I loved was being threatened, and someone I loved was in danger of injuring himself. Love will conquor even self-preservation to save another. Sermon over. God bless,

[Psycheinaboat]

Pendragon, I really get a lot out of reading your posts. I am not an especially religious person, but I think that truth surpasses religion and other boundaries humans build between one another.

It makes me very happy to meet people who show the kindness and sincerity you do.

Sorry to sound like such a cheerleader, but I wanted to express that.

[Nightshade]

Humm Ive said several times that I dont belive in the exsistance of love but I want to clarify I belive in Gods love for his creation but I think if love does exsist its self love.
Never having been romanticcly in love or involved cantt speak of that kind but for example I love my paerents but do I really? Or is it just a form of self protection I love thenm because they are part of me and I love me.
I love God but again do I really or do I love god because I want to go to Heaven?

I might say that the Quaran says Love thy neighbour love thy brother, love thy paerents, love thy self, wife etc etc etcd
so I guess love really must exsist if I am to belive part of my religon have to belive all of it it jkust doesnt exsist for me.
errr what was the point of this post anyway and whats the thread about?

[Pendragon]

Pendragon, I really get a lot out of reading your posts. I am not an especially religious person, but I think that truth surpasses religion and other boundaries humans build between one another.

It makes me very happy to meet people who show the kindness and sincerity you do.

Sorry to sound like such a cheerleader, but I wanted to express that.

Thanks very much, Psyche. You may not realize it, but you have just made my day!


P.S. A late edit. Sorry about that first smilie. I thought he was JUST WAVING Dear Lord! Please forgive me, everyone!

[Psycheinaboat]

This thread brought to mind this poem by William Blake...

THE CLOD AND THE PEBBLE

‘Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.’

So sung a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet,
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

‘Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven’s despite.’

[PerAnnum]

Humm Ive said several times that I dont belive in the exsistance of love but I want to clarify I belive in Gods love for his creation but I think if love does exsist its self love.
Never having been romanticcly in love or involved cantt speak of that kind but for example I love my paerents but do I really? Or is it just a form of self protection I love thenm because they are part of me and I love me.
I love God but again do I really or do I love god because I want to go to Heaven?

I might say that the Quaran says Love thy neighbour love thy brother, love thy paerents, love thy self, wife etc etc etcd
so I guess love really must exsist if I am to belive part of my religon have to belive all of it it jkust doesnt exsist for me.
errr what was the point of this post anyway and whats the thread about?

Love does exist in that way, self love, but what is even more 'real' than that is a selfless love. Lust is what attracts us to the opposit sex, and then love follows after. But a selfless love is what put Jesus on the cross. It is what makes your parents provide for you as best they can. It is what moves a man to leave everything he has and go to some foriegn country to share the LOVE of Jesus.
God is LOVE... that is a fact. So therefore, we cannot truly love without God. It takes God to love God. It takes God to love one another. All other forms of love without Him are not TRUE. They are fabrications, shadows... knock off brands, if you will. The only true love is the love we recieve from the Father.

[bhekti]

Is "God is love" the same as "God is loving"?

[bhekti]

Humm Ive said several times that I dont belive in the exsistance of love but I want to clarify I belive in Gods love for his creation but I think if love does exsist its self love.
Never having been romanticcly in love or involved cantt speak of that kind but for example I love my paerents but do I really? Or is it just a form of self protection I love thenm because they are part of me and I love me.
I love God but again do I really or do I love god because I want to go to Heaven? ...

I used to think the way you think about love. And, I found no way out. It always returned to myself and to myself and to myself. No matter how I expressed it - love of God, of parents, of friends, of enemies, etc - in the final analysis it always came into....love of myself. All the time I was acutely conscious of that that I couldn't but deny the existence of love, just like what you do.

And, one day a question came to me: Why? Why do you want to love without self-love? The answer was, after a very long struggle, because that is good n right and I wanted to be good n right. So, it was quite a self-love again... I had wanted to love without self-love, but the capabality to do it was not in me.

Until one day I read a book and I understood something. I understood that I was too proud by thinking that I could save myself, that is, make myself good n right. I used to think that Heaven was in my pocket if I did things which I thought good n right. I had put too small a price on Heaven and God's Sacredness by thinking that it could be bought by my acts, my decisions, my choice, my power, my love.

Having realized all that, now I don't do things, such as loving, for Heaven or for any reward any more. The reward has been paid in advance. Not by me, but by someone. Now If I am given a chance to do good n right thing I consider it an honor, a gift, and I'll do the thing carefully according to the way it must be trully done.

[Pendragon]

A love lesson from an odd source.

When Mr. Spock dies of radiation poisoning at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, having given his life to save the ship, Kirk is aghast. Separated from his dying friend by a glass wall, he asks Spock why the Vulcan did it. And Spock replies, “Because the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few…or the one.”

This simple moment has had a profound affect on me. I see many my own age, and many younger people, who have become disillusioned with the very idea of church, and have turned away. Why is this? God has not changed. It then must be that we who call ourselves Christians fail to demonstrate the love of God.

Jesus came to Earth the sinless Son of God. But He died on the cross for the sins of the world. But our salvation was sealed in the garden of Gethsemane. Matthew 26:39 “And He went a little further and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” He repeats this prayer twice more that night. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one. The Great Commission tells us to go into all the world and preach the Gospel unto every creature. Again, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

But Jesus demonstrates that the reverse is also true. Sometimes the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. Jesus at His trial told them of preaching daily in the temple. In other words, he had no trouble drawing a crowd to hear Him speak. But he went all the way across The Sea of Galilee for one man. We never know his real name, he was possessed by devils and dwelled among the tombs as a wild man, who couldn’t be held with brass fetters. Legion. Mark 5 tells us his story. The country where he lived was the land of the Gerasenes. They were not Jews, for they kept swine, an animal considered unclean to a Jew. But Jesus helped the man, and cast out the devils. They went into the swine, which then drowned themselves. And when the people saw that Jesus had delivered him, the people of the place told him to please get out of their country. They cared more about pigs than another human being.

To have love like Christ’s means to be willing to go for the one. A lot of people are willing to preach to a crowd. But who listens to the cries of those who need a friend, and one on one counseling. The one that will disagree with you, but is still willing to listen if we demonstrate love is as important as a crowd. Sometimes to really show the love of Christ, the needs of the one will have to outweigh the needs of the many. Matthew 25:45 “Then shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me”

End of Devotion. God Bless!