I would not stop it even if I could!
The first roadblock to unconditional love is judgment. Whereas we are to judge the matters of life, we are advised against judging other beings:
Blessed [are] the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. - Matthew 5:7
I love all beings - even while sometimes hating what they say or do. And yes, I pray for the same good things for those who are my enemies that I pray for my dearly beloved husband and daughter.
Long ago a man did a terrible thing to me, so bad that I did not know how to forgive him. My brother suggested that I pray for this man every night right after praying for the family, all the same good things. He said I wouldn’t mean it at first – but if I kept it up, I’d be able to truly forgive. He was right.
Now I always pray for family, friends, associates and enemies. I pray for Bush and I pray for Osama bin Laden – the same good things: a saving knowledge of Christ, growth in the Word, protection and guidance in the spirit, soul, mind, emotion, body and peace.
After all these years, the love flows through me with no strings attached – and forgiveness is virtually automatic.
Well, prayer is good, but what I am talking about is what I actually do relative to people. When I say I love my wife and children, I mean I value them very highly. What a person loves or values is not determined by what they say or what they pray for, but where they spend their lives, that is, their money and time.
If I want to know what somebody really loves, I don't ask them, I simply observe what they do, where they spend their time, what they expends their energy pursuring, what they nurture and what they ignore. I do not treat those who would harm my family the same way I treat my family.
Since I have never really known what other people mean by, "hate," (maybe something missing in me), I only mean by it, despise, as in "Esau despised his bithright." He didn't 'hate' it, he only held it as valueless. That is exactly my view of those who would harm me, or mine, or anyone else. I only have so much time and so many resources in this life, I beleive it would be wrong to waste them on those who are evil, when those same resource ought to be used to serve the good. It is still wrong to take the children's meat and cast it to the dogs. The dogs are welcome to lick up the crumbs.
You did not comment on these two verese. Would you please.
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.
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 this:
1 Cor 6:3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
Thanks!
Hank
Hello A-G! Noticed you and Hank were chatting, and he dropped my name. I thought my description of Stalin, Hitler, et al., accurately reported by Hank, was a pretty objective one. You can tell it's true simply by looking at the victims. Hank asks if we have a Christian duty to love these men "in the same way as we love God, our wives, our children," et al.
It is easy to love one's spouse, one's child, etc. -- "do not the publicans likewise?" Yet Christian love sets a much higher standard, to love others as ourselves even when it's difficult, even when we find people to be wholly repugnant, even when they are our enemies. The point is God asks us to love our neighbor as a witness to our love of Him. He asks to to forebear judgment, leaving that up to Him.
Basically, Christian love calls us to acknowledge the common humanity that we share with all God's human creatures, to not forget that they are still our fellow men, despite the fact that we may hate the things that they have done or may do. They may treat their fellow men as animals; but we must not forget that those who do so are still men, still God's human creatures -- despite the fact that they revile God and have turned away from Him.
The turning away from God's ordering Word pertaining to human kind is the reason why they can treat their fellow human beings in the manner they do. They reject God and His law, setting up their own "laws" instead, and ordering their own lives according to those "laws."
And thus does evil enter the world that God made "Good." The willful rejection of the Good is the mystery of iniquity, spreading evil and disorder throughout creation. Men do not cease to be men when they do this. And God will judge them as men, not as the animals they so often appear to resemble.
When men utterly reject God's ordering law of love and justice and live according to their own "wisdom" and ways, they become disordered; and can only act disorderly toward others precisely because they do not recognize those others as their fellow men. Thus the "unfavored" classes that become their victims may be treated like animals with impunity, for with the rejection of God comes the rejection of the idea of accountability for the Judgment that God renders.
But "freedom from God" is an illusion. God cannot be "killed." Men can turn away from God; but God does not turn away from men. His Judgment falls on each and every man, be he a believer or an unbeliever.
This insight is much older than Christianity, dating back at least to Heraclitus. He observed that the divine Logos "was one and common" for all men. But that "the many" withdraw into their own "private worlds," as if dreamers asleep.
This may be a good opporunity to renew my dialog with Hank:
Q: “…a strict individualist is self-sufficient and never uses coercion against anyone else. Tell me how that leads to personal and social disorder.”
A: “Because the concept isn’t capacious enough to describe human existence.”
It seems to me that a person who can think of himself as a “strict individualist” is focusing on only one aspect of human personality. Arguably, to omit “the rest” of what affects the human condition and experience is to develop a false picture of human reality, personal and social. In effect, to let self-selected moral criteria supplant the absolute authority of the Logos is to turn way from reality into a "private world."
Clearly, there is an individual self, a psyche. But there is also built deep down into human nature – into individual psyche -- natural connections to larger wholes, such as family, community, society, nature, and God.
To say that our entire moral duty consists in non-aggression and self-sufficiency may well be an abstraction designed to relieve us of any further obligation to our fellow men, such as the duty to respect and honor them as our brothers in the sight of God.
There have been some incredibly cynical and contemptuous things that have been said about man on this thread. To the extent that such views seem to become increasingly common, even "fashionable" these days, is an indication of how far we humans have gone in expressing contempt for our neighbors, and thus of God's law. How a decent society can be expected to result when the common opinion turns on contempt for our fellow human beings is, to me, the main question of our age.
I can't help but think such views may evidence a certain self-contempt. For the things we say about others may be less indicative of the actual status of the person(s) being criticized, and more indicative of our own existential experience of order (disorder). Such comments may, in a certain sense, amount to a confession of character.
I'm not criticizing anybody here, just trying to shed light on problems. Though it does hurt to read some of the "slanders" that have been written about man on this thread. FWIW.