I understand your pure form to mean: in the abscence of other emotions/motivations. Would you say that is accurate?
That's not quite what I was getting at. I was thinking of the different kinds of love (as explored in C.S. Lewis's book, say), and thinking about the kind of love which was the selfless, charitable kind, rather than the kind which included in it a desire to possess, say.
[God] also has a desire for justice, amongst other things, which is why what we don't get the actions we would expect if he had just that love.
I think I'm starting to see the point made by Wednesday in her article, where she writes that Christians use the word justice in a way which is quite alien to how most people understand it. The "justice" of God seems more like bullying: demanding worship and perfection from people who cannot match up to his ideals, and taking his wrath out against the wrong person (ignoring for a moment that that person is also supposed to be God).
!!! On what basis would you qualify God's right about anything?
On the basis of my own moral sense. What else do you do? Even if you truly have abdicated this in favour of the belief that whatever God says (or rather whatever the evangelical interpretation of the Bible says) goes, you must at some stage have considered whether God was someone you wanted to know, which in part must mean someone good.
I also believe that God should be at least as good as he expects his followers to be, so in a sense I'm against hypocrisy on his part.
I should probably say that I don't think he does stand in relation to you as a parent to a child. That's the relationship between God, the Father, and the Christian.
In John's "children of God" sense, yes, but in the wider sense of someone who, we are told, created and sustains us, this includes everyone. As some of your own poets have said, "We are his offspring." Paul is not addressing Christians here. Parents as creators have a responsibility to, as well as an authority over, their creations. We do not consider a parent moral if the child disobeys them and then they shove the child in the oven.
Depends what the crime being punished is. I'm guessing you're not too bothered about sins against God?
I am puzzled by the concept of sins against God's person, since God as portrayed by Christianity cannot be hurt by our actions. I can understand sins against goodness, but crucially I do not believe a failure to become a Christian is such a sin.
I would like to say my faith was strong enough for me to have done the same, but as I said I am reluctant to do so, never having had it be tested in such a way.
In a way, I hope your faith would not be strong enough. One of the most worrying things about religion is its capacity for making people think that hurting others is OK because God has said so.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: This year's CICCU Main Event - DIRECTION
Date: 2005-02-09 12:23 am (UTC)That's not quite what I was getting at. I was thinking of the different kinds of love (as explored in C.S. Lewis's book, say), and thinking about the kind of love which was the selfless, charitable kind, rather than the kind which included in it a desire to possess, say.
[God] also has a desire for justice, amongst other things, which is why what we don't get the actions we would expect if he had just that love.
I think I'm starting to see the point made by Wednesday in her article, where she writes that Christians use the word justice in a way which is quite alien to how most people understand it. The "justice" of God seems more like bullying: demanding worship and perfection from people who cannot match up to his ideals, and taking his wrath out against the wrong person (ignoring for a moment that that person is also supposed to be God).
!!! On what basis would you qualify God's right about anything?
On the basis of my own moral sense. What else do you do? Even if you truly have abdicated this in favour of the belief that whatever God says (or rather whatever the evangelical interpretation of the Bible says) goes, you must at some stage have considered whether God was someone you wanted to know, which in part must mean someone good.
I also believe that God should be at least as good as he expects his followers to be, so in a sense I'm against hypocrisy on his part.
I should probably say that I don't think he does stand in relation to you as a parent to a child. That's the relationship between God, the Father, and the Christian.
In John's "children of God" sense, yes, but in the wider sense of someone who, we are told, created and sustains us, this includes everyone. As some of your own poets have said, "We are his offspring." Paul is not addressing Christians here. Parents as creators have a responsibility to, as well as an authority over, their creations. We do not consider a parent moral if the child disobeys them and then they shove the child in the oven.
Depends what the crime being punished is. I'm guessing you're not too bothered about sins against God?
I am puzzled by the concept of sins against God's person, since God as portrayed by Christianity cannot be hurt by our actions. I can understand sins against goodness, but crucially I do not believe a failure to become a Christian is such a sin.
I would like to say my faith was strong enough for me to have done the same, but as I said I am reluctant to do so, never having had it be tested in such a way.
In a way, I hope your faith would not be strong enough. One of the most worrying things about religion is its capacity for making people think that hurting others is OK because God has said so.