The subject of love is clearly one of vital, indeed core, importance to Christians - but 'love' has also become a core assertion of non-Christians - including the mainstream, leftist materialist ideology that rules the world.
Consequently, several qualitatively different - and opposed - ideas of love are prevalent; and are conflated in public discourse as and when this suits the agenda of evil. For instance, in a particular period of the 1960s 'love' became a code-word for 'promiscuous sex'.
But many Christians are - I think - deeply and dangerously mistaken about the nature of love; in ways that interfere with their faith and render them vulnerable to subversion.
There is a concept of love that I would regard as 'mainstream' - and which is sustained by elements from the Leftist politics of the global Establishment, Platonic philosophy, and the Western versions of Eastern religions (Buddhist, Hindu, Sufi etc).
Mainstream love has the following characteristics. It seeks union*, a state of oneness - without separation of the participants. Those who love are equal; and the ideal of mainstream love is universality: all will love everyone else equally - in the same way and to the same degree.
...Indeed - ideally - a perfect mainstream love should encompass every living and non-living thing in the same way and to the same degree: the earth, the universe and everything in it.
Against the concept of mainstream love I would place what I understand as Christian love - which is almost the opposite.
Christian love is between two specific people; who are separate, qualitatively-different and unique persons. Love is therefore rooted in permanent difference, and is in a deep sense complementary.
Christian love is that which links the two, which keeps them together - love is that which makes difference harmonious.
And when such Christian love enlarges beyond the two, it does so like a network of dyadic (one-to-one) linkages; so that the love of many is Not an immersion into universality, oneness and equality-sameness; but instead a web of unique elements.
Christian love can be imagined as the harmony of different beings that results from a sharing of purpose and motivation.
Like all affairs on this earth; Christian love is vulnerable to the vicissitudes and dominating entropy of mortal life.
But those who discern the nature of Christian love, and desire to live by it in eternity; are able to do so by Jesus Christ's gift of resurrection into Heaven.
*Note added: In our totalitarian world - where all nations and social institutions are following the same core plan, under top-level demonic domination; it is increasingly clear that calls for 'unity' for any rationale - including both explicit arguments and covertly-implied narratives that put unity as a high and ultimate value - are (whether intentionally or deludedly) functional propaganda for submission to the global agenda of evil.
3 comments:
This is one of the difficulties arising from the Omni-god perspective, because everything and everyone in every particular must be loved to fully love OmniGod. Your idea of love makes more sense, but I doubt many can really access it before questioning Omni-God. It's really such a serious barrier to real love.
@Lucinda - Yes, the problem of a Platonic omni-God (so unlike God as described in the Old Testament!) seems to have captured mainstream Christianity very early. It was one of the greatest achievements of Joseph Smith to recover and restore a properly Christian understanding of God - which, I think, probably came early to him, and mostly from his fresh and clear reading of the Bible.
@BS - William Tychonievich has done a good job of it:
https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-supergod-delusion.html
And I have often written on this theme here:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=omni
The nature of God is not at all difficult to understand - a normal child of eight can understand it - especially with Jesus Christ as an example - except that so many obstacles have been erected over the centuries.
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