“God is love” is a statement I hear all the time, usually from people who take love to be the greatest thing humanity has, the greatest gift one can give to another, the greatest achievement one can hope for in life. I am inclined to agree with them there, but when they say that loves comes from God, they lose me.
When someone says that love comes from God, what I hear is: “There can be no love without God.” They’re demoting human beings by claiming we’re incapable of it on our own. Behind every honest feeling of love between two human beings, they place a helping hand. They imagine the wave of a magic wand. They’re trying to define what love is by stating that it’s nothing human. They can’t conceive of love coming from a human being, so they claim it’s not possible. What’s interesting is that the people who tell you that love isn’t possible without God can never tell you why that should be so.
I don’t want the love I feel to have originated from a divine source. I never asked for God’s intervention. In this matter, He can mind his own business. Personally, I would feel cheated. I would feel like my love wasn’t really true, that something has undermined it. I can’t conceive of attributing something so important to me to a third party. I can’t conceive of saying to someone, ”I love you,” but in the back of my mind living with the knowledge that what I just said was nothing but the manifestation of how someone else has decided I will feel.
I think it’s insulting to the very idea of love that it must be granted to us. That’s not really love, is it? It’s meaningless when you can’t decide for yourself what love is and make the choice to embrace it on your own terms, as a reflection of your own desires, happiness, and values. Do you not think human beings are capable of love by themselves, through a mutual exchange? If not, why? What leads you to believe that a magic spell grants you the ability to love? Why would you even want it from a being who tells you that you’re incapable of it, that His way is the only path to love?
Is that what love means to you? That you’re too ugly and sinful to experience it, but you think you deserve it anyway because your god is kind enough to give it to you? How pathetic. How incredibly demeaning to the actual feelings of love that people share with one another.
God doesn’t define what love means to me. No one is capable of doing that except myself. God doesn’t grant me that ability to love because that “ability” would be worthless if given. It would be unearned. It wouldn’t make me capable of love, just as the gift of an instrument wouldn’t make me a musician. Are you proud of yourself for being given a scholarship, or proud of yourself for earning it? Could you experience joy from the birth of your child if you found out that that joy is not a genuine feeling of yours but a ration of something “greater,” doled out by a creature who damns you from birth and asks that you spend your life living up to His ideals instead of your own?
If I’m wrong and God actually does make it possible for me to experience love, then He can have it back. I don’t want something unearned, and I definitely don’t want to be given the ability to love by a god who thinks it’s His right to grant it.
For a great insight on love read or even better listen to the tapes of C.S. Lewis called “The Four Loves”. Three of the four are very human.
Plato speaks to a ladder of love in his Symposium.
Aristotle classifies different kinds of love.
Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between love in the sphere of passions and love as an act of will.
Even Freud has a theory of love.
Comment by spiritualway — June 11, 2008 @ 6:43 am |
What we mean when we say that “there can be no love without God” is that God is love and that He is its Author.
You are right to observe that the Holy Bible teaches that we are incapable of loving without God.
All the glory goes to God every step along the way; for He plants seeds of faith, hope and love in our inner being and then allows them to grow.
Rather than being demoted we are embellished when God cleanses us of the selfishness and ungratefulness that so stains our soul.
The more we learn about life we discover that we need God’s helping hand in every facet of our life from the gift of air, sunlight, rain, thee earth.
Have you forgotten that your body, soul and spirit were given to you and me unearned?
Truly the list is a long one. Much longer than I can write down. God doesn’t wave a wand but speaks and uses His wisdom to bring these beautiful things into existence.
Whether we ask for God’s intervention or not plays no role in the matter; for God has planted in every human heart a measure of faith and we have been given the free will to decide if we want to exercise it.
Why should you feel cheated? Why should you say God can mind His own business? Don’t believe for one second that the love you experience doesn’t need purifying.
You too can become more loving like everyone else and when God imparts His love to us it is never undermining.
Time is on your side.
What you have to remember is that you are a unique creation of God and the loving feelings you will experience will enhance you and at some point you have the opportunity to be grateful to God for this unique experience.
Never persist in thinking that it’s insulting that the capacity to love more unselfishly must be granted to us; for that shows that you are ungrateful.
Always remember that in order to be really loving we must be desirous to become grateful.
It’s not meaningless when you can’t decide for yourself what love is.
It’s not meaningless when you can’t decide to make the choice to embrace it on your own terms, as a reflection of your own desires, happiness, and values.
It is not pathetic but honourable to seek after the highest Teacher of all.
God does define what love is.
You are wrong. God actually does make it possible for you and me to experience love.
God has given you the gift of air unearned. He made you over nine months in your mom’s womb unearned.
He has planted the gifts of faith, hope and love in your inner being unearned.
How ungrateful to say He can have them back. How about practising the words thank you. It will be a good start for you.
Comment by Josef Sefton — July 21, 2008 @ 2:07 am |