Continuing from the earlier post today:
I have made the observation that some of the people who most vehemently profess abstract, universal love are those who do not exhibit or appear to experience any actual, personal love of specific persons - except their memories of family love during childhood.
Childhood family love (or even, in some people who lack families, a recognition of the lack of family love and a yearning for it) is a sufficient basis for a Christian life. After all not everybody has a loving marriage, or children and a loving relationship with them.
On the other hand, some adults reject the ideal of individual and personal love - and instead profess that abstract and universal "love" is a higher value and morality than individual/ personal love.
I have often heard this argument. The idea that individual love is a childish thing, the sign of an immature, narrow and selfish personality.
...That the higher love is impersonal, embraces everybody equally (or perhaps loving unknown strangers more that family - to compensate for natural 'xenophobia'); maybe embracing all animals; maybe indeed every living thing; or, maybe The Earth itself (and this love of Earth considered not as loving an actual, conscious, purposive individual such as an angelic being - but as abstractly loving a deific abstraction).
What did Jesus say on this matter?
As so often the Fourth Gospel can be a touchstone for Christians. Here, in what some call "the Gospel of love", Jesus is always described as loving specific persons, and never as expressing abstract, universal love.
My understanding is that Jesus wanted Christians to be a family, that is not 'organized' by abstractions, but as individual persons bound in presumably extended-family-sized (and overlapping, especially by marriage) groups cohering by personal love.
Be that as it may; I think Christians can be confident that Jesus did not regard abstract, universal love as a higher ideal than personal love - quite the opposite.
1 comment:
Some good Bible quotes, not a bad effort from this Kansas preacher...
https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/why-did-god-create-outer-space/
The Hostile Outer Space
"Why would God create trillions of galaxies with even more trillions of stars and planets? Perhaps God has plans for the universe. Right now, it’s not a safe place to be. There are gamma rays, the cold of outer space, no oxygen, asteroids and comets. Life on the other planets we know about cannot support life without a lot of help. What was God thinking when He created all of these heavenly bodies? Was the universe a different place before Lucifer was cast down out of heaven? Was the fall in the Garden of Eden directly responsible for the fact that the planets are in decay and are now hostile environments and cannot support life? Were they capable of supporting life at one time, before Satan and mankind’s fall? What happened? Were they responsible, or have these planets always had hostile environments? No, some scientists say Mars had an atmosphere at one time, meaning it has water, and if there was water, there had to be oxygen, even if a little. We may never know the answers to most of these questions until we see God, face to face."
"The Bible speaks about three heavens. The first one is what the birds and the clouds inhabit, the second heaven is where the stars and moon (and space) are, but the third heaven, is not just beyond our solar system or our galaxy, or even beyond the known universe. Heaven must be another realm altogether, although it is a specific place. Are the heavens up or down? If they’re “up” to us, we must remember, it’s “down” for others. We don’t know where heaven is, we only know that it does exist, because that’s where God dwells and today"
And what about the fact that the state uses space to position satellites for the surveillance state?
Total control able to take photos that can read someone's watch at any point on Earth.
And evil use of space.
Even future manned milestones like the Mars landing one day, will become Wokefests with a diverse LGBT crew.
"Whitey on the Moon"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
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