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To: Pietro
Er, if I may offer an answer...

What greater purpose can there be?

To love God absolutely and our fellow man unconditionally.

182 posted on 10/01/2003 12:02:06 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl; Pietro; RightWhale
To love God absolutely and our fellow man unconditionally

Since Luke 10:27 actually says: "And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself," and the same form is used in Mat. 22:38 and Mark 12:31, are you saying we ought to love ourselves, unconditionally? I do not think so, and do not believe to love your neighbor as yourself means "unconditionally."

You cannot love both good and evil, just as you cannot serve to masters, loving one and hating the other, one cannot love both God and God's enemies.

Psalms 139:21-22 Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.

To be Godly means to love and hate the things God loves and hates, and God hates the evil:

Psalms 5:4-5 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.

And Paul wrote:

Rom 12:9 Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.

Because that which loves evil is a phoney love.

A little earlier, betty boop described Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao Tse-tung as "brutal, vicious dictators, the very spawn of Hell,' to which I certainly agree.

Do you believe we ought to love such "spawn of Hell," in the same way as we love God, our wives, our children, the decent, and the victims of such monsters?

I am curious because this "unconditional love" concept is so frequently used as way of covering up evil and of requiring us to pretend what is really evil is not. I know that is not your use of it, but I think it needs to be made clear what is meant by unconditional love, because most people think it means letting anyone get by with anything and still saying they are just lovely people.

Hank

186 posted on 10/01/2003 5:50:35 PM PDT by Hank Kerchief
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