Originally posted by apathistI don't know - perhaps nothing. It wasn't what I asked. I am interested in whether the "love" (deliberately in quotation marks) that is demanded with vengeful eternal torture as its quid-pro-quo backdrop can realistically be characterized as love at all.
What's the difference between love and genuine love, anyway.
18 Sep 16
Originally posted by FMFI understand what you're looking for, and if you know of my views you know I'm sympathetic but I'll stick with my answer. Love is psychological, I don't claim to know what can or cannot induce it, so maybe love can grow under threat. Think of the Stockholm effect for an example.
I don't know - perhaps nothing. It wasn't what I asked. I am interested in whether the "love" (deliberately in quotation marks) that is demanded with vengeful eternal torture as its quid-pro-quo backdrop can realistically be characterized as love at all.
And we want to love our dads for another example. If he is abusive, it takes awhile for the love to erode away. Maybe, by giving an out, god seek to controls us through our desire to love.
Originally posted by apathistI think loving someone despite the fact they abuse you is one thing, while supposedly loving someone in the hope of not being abused is something different.
And we want to love our dads for another example. If he is abusive, it takes awhile for the love to erode away. Maybe, by giving an out, god seek to controls us through our desire to love.
The Stockholm Syndrome is about empathizing with one's captors. I don't see how it also applies to declaring feelings of supposed love for someone or something (maybe some sort of maniacal creature) that might otherwise torture you in a hideously violent and unimaginably demented way.
I think it's coercion pure and simple. I think it's terror disguised as "love". I think in order to understand this we must delve into the psychology of the most depraved and grotesque instances of humans abusing one another, only - in this case - writ large, and writ permanent... indeed, eternal, no less.
It's not much of an advert for a 'loving God ideology' to my way of thinking.
As I have said before, I believe it's the darkest place that the human imagination has ever been. I think it's the ultimate perversion of the notion of "love".
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18 Sep 16
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Originally posted by 667joeDo you mean something like John wrote when he said "Perfect love casts out fear. "
That is exactly my point! Love and fear are antithetical.
1 John 4:18
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
Is that something like what you're talking about ?
Originally posted by sonshipDo you think the emotions that an abused woman feels about her violent husband threatening to break her nose and teeth and burn her with cigarettes if she doesn't please or obey him, and the relief and gladness she might feel when she manages to avoid such treatment, is a "perfect love that casts out fear"? Is that something like what you're talking about?
Do you mean something like John wrote when he said "Perfect love casts out fear."
19 Sep 16
Originally posted by SuzianneYou honestly think there aren't vast numbers of Christians - including some Christians here in this community - who believe that the Christian God will torture non-Christians for eternity after they die ~ and will do so out of anger and revenge? If "keeping a light heart" means closing your ears and eyes to the noxious ideology that some Christians propagate ((and pertaining to the very nature of the God you purport to believe in) - and instead pour scorn on people who take issue with those Christians in debate - then I don't think that a "light heart" of that kind is either spiritually or intellectually healthy.
He's basically peeing on our leg and calling it rain.
Keeping a light heart often means not engaging him.