- Don Ruch
- Ramona, CA
- United States
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Unconditional Love.
Is there such a thing as Unconditional Love? Love that is not subject to any condition? I will love you no matter what. It is not conditional that you should love me back, indeed, you could hate me and that would not change my feelings for you.
Topics:
Unconditional Love love philosophy religion
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Roy Bourque 20+
I believe that my father loved me unconditionally, but his belief in purgatory made his expression of that love pretty screwed up.
The witch hunters tortured and executed people accused of witchcraft, believing that they were saving their souls from eternal damnation. To them, that was an expression of love.
Unconditional love can only be expressed when the distortions in the mental field are all cast out. That is what casting out Satan from heaven is all about. It is all metaphysical, cleanse the mind of misconceptions, and then you can think clearly.
As far as expressing unconditional love, it requires that we do not put ourselves first.
Colleen Steen 500+
I don't believe torturing and execution of people for a belief that is different, is unconditional love. There are people here on TED who try to convert us to their religious beliefs under the guise of love and caring, while telling us that if we do not believe in their god and their religion, we are going to hell!!! That is unconditional need to CONTROL...not love. Unconditional love accepts and respects others regardless of who and what they are, regardless of beliefs. As you so insightfully say, "unconditional love can only be expressed when distortions in the mental field are all cast out". That being said, we can love a person unconditionally and NOT accept certain behaviors that adversly impact others.
Roy Bourque 20+
I believe that you understand what I am trying to convey, that our conception of love cannot be unconditional if we have all these distorted beliefs in our head. And yet to those who hold such beliefs, they actually believe that they are expressing love when they try to instill these beliefs on you, including their belief in hell. They actually think that they are doing you a favor.
I have seen many posts of those who claim that God is unconditional love, and yet they attribute qualities to God that are highly detestable based on their interpretation of words that they themselves do not understand. The scriptures are not about God, they are about us in our attempt to discover our place in the cosmos, and all the detestable things that we do because of all our misunderstandings.
Colleen Steen 500+
It feels like they think/feel I am not intelligent or informed enough to make my own decision. And what it is actually showing me is that they are insecure with their own beliefs. Misery loves company?
A god of love simply would not use some of the distorted propaganda to get folks into a religion. A god of love, if there is one, would be genuinely, unconditionally loving.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
I guess it depends on how you define unconditional love. And how do we know it is unconditional. Maybe god loves us just as a mother is hardwired to love their children, in most cases.
I agree that hell and unconditional love seem incompatible.
I agree love may involve rules.
I suggest god views that involve god loving us unconditionally seem to be based on definition in scripture only. And if you look at the scriptures it is not that clear.
How much did god love us when only the Jews were his chosen people. Who has a hissy fit the first time your child disobeys you and casts them out of the home (Eden). Who supports your chosen children over the others. Who needs a blood sacrifice in order to reconnect with their loved ones. Does it really gel. Actually it wasn't until after Jesus dies that they even started to include non Jews in a big way. How do we know the veracity of the words in the gospels attributed to Jesus. There are clues he wasn't that interested e.g. initial resistance to heal a gentile, only jewish followers etc. Maybe some of the verbal stories were changed before being written done. Why not include the Gospel of Thomas, Judas, Mary etc.
I don't see an unconditionally loving god in the old testament and the new on adds hell. I don't see any evidence Jesus was more unconditionally loving than many other humans with love in their heart. Just looks like a man with a reasonable message in part and apocalyptic nastiness in the other.
Roy Bourque 20+
I understand your viewpoint. Hell is a misunderstood word. What religion teaches us about hell originates in ancient Egypt. It was not supposed to be carried forward by the Hebrews. You won't find it in Genesis. Hell is the pain and suffering that we create for ourselves. Much of it is avoidable, but we like to take chances, so we end up reaping its consequences.
The chosen people were sent out to rid the world of idol worship. You have to understand what the people were doing in order to understand why it was so objectionable. We started a civil war to end slavery, and slavery was mild compared to what sacrificing your children to Baal was all about. The chosen people were equally targeted by their own god when they themselves succumbed to the practice.
The Garden of Eden was a myth. The forbidden fruit is all the things that entice you but leave you destitute if you partake of them. It is a metaphorical tree, and it is just as real today as it was then. I know of people who are in the same boat as Adam and Eve because they allowed themselves to be enticed by things that would drain them of their life savings and leave them wanting. They have no life of their own. They are serving their addiction.
The scriptures are not that clear? Of course they are not that clear. They are designed to make you think. That is the only way you will grow in spirit. Science is not all that clear either. You have to think about it if you are going to get anything out of it. You can't just say I believe in it, you have to search it out, figure out what it is telling you. Blind faith is rubbish. Blind acceptance of relativity is no better if you don't know what it means. Read between the lines.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
I still think there is an element of faith in anyone's specific religious interpretation, even those more considered. For example, you rely a lot on Judeo Christian scriptures. I see nothing divine in them at all.
Then through a belief framework we come to conclusions. This framework may include assumptions that are deeply embedded and seldom called into question and used to assess other information e.g.
- God exists or doesn't
- God intervenes or doesn't
- God has been revealed to us via a book etc or had not
- God loves us and is interested in our personal lives or not
- We can have a personal relationship with god or not
- That a certain religious tradition points in the right direction etc
So, I'm not sure if god loving us unconditionally is something you have embedded without much critical assessment, or something you have thought deeply about. I guess it is part of the Judeo Christian Framework. An assumption. A dogma.
If there is a creator who say set off the big bang, I don't know it takes an active role in the universe, whether we can access it, or whether it is sitting back. Humans may not even be part of the plan. The creator may have just rolled the dice and we might be one of many life forms in the universe that evolved. This creator may not have created the universe with humans as the key focus. It may not love us. It may not even exist.
One part of my argument is pointing out the issues from a bible or Judeo christian perspective. Another is that the bible is probably no authority on gods anyway in my view. Just one of many different man inspired religious scriptures.
So how do you know the bible is pointing in the right direction. You may have had similar experiences if brought up in a Hindu world view, butwith different cultural details.
So many religious and spiritual viewpoints. Nature spirits to polytheism to deism etc
Roy Bourque 20+
You have chosen to deny the scriptures on the basis of science. That is not out of tune with the scriptures themselves; "the truth will set you free". How you get to that truth is not written in stone. The scriptures were written to enlighten, not to provide cold hard facts. So to deny the scriptures because they have been presented to you in a blind faith scenario is a step in the right direction. Jesus had nothing good to say about blind faith. Anyone who rejects blind faith is following in the teachings of Jesus, even if that means rejecting Jesus himself. Eventually you may come to see that there is a lot more to this than just a lot of dogma.
My faith began in a Catholic church. I was soon disillusioned by the teachings of the church. My search for the truth led me to a religious experience that equated God with the power of creation. And that power was not somewhere else, it was in matter itself. I kept this on the back burner until I came to learn of quantum fields. That's when I put the two together.
What religion says about God, and what I have come to know about God are two different things. I believe in God even though I reject what religion says about it because the experience I had pre-dated my scientific journey. I understood intuitively what science later confirmed logically.
My journey led me into Eastern philosophy. That is where I began to find correlations to scripture that gave them a new meaning. I never took religion for face value. I always had the notion that religion was missing something. Eastern philosophy provided information that was missing. It opened channels of understanding.
Nature spirits, to polytheism, to deism is the associative path to unity. A respect for nature, to an understanding of the forces of nature, to relativity, to the unified field theory is the logical path to unity. They both came to the same conclusion, but took different routes. Learn to read between the lines.
Colleen Steen 500+
Adriaan Braam 20+
"I agree that hell and unconditional love seem incompatible."
You would not think this way if you knew what hell is and why it exists.
I am amazed how you totally discard the Bible, but keep using it to make your points. Is there a possibility that you and most Christians are mis-interpreting things??