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To: kosta50
FK, read my sentence again, and I mean read it. It starts with "you can respect but not love..." Obviously there is a difference and obviously they are not interchangable. While it is possible to respect without loving, it is impossible to love without respecting.

In your earlier response to me on this you were mixing different kinds of love, which I would say you can't do. You asked if I can love my wife without respecting her, and I would say "No". But, one of the reasons I have chosen to love her is that she has earned my respect. The love between us and God is not like the love between a man and wife. Perhaps the closest we can compare is to that between a parent and child. When my two children were born I had all the love in the world for them, but I did not have feelings of respect because they hadn't done anything yet! Now that they are teenagers they have both done things to earn my respect in certain areas.

I know you said that we cannot merit God's respect, which is why I thought you might be using the words interchangeably. You give a further clue when you say that "you can respect but not love..." . I fully respect the Olympic athletes I'm watching right now, and not love them in a sense because I do not know them. However, I certainly CAN love them in a Christian sense, right? OTOH, I would not say that I do not "respect" Castro even though he has been in power since 1959. He is not respectable. He has not earned my respect.

So, it depends on how you define "respect" and to what kind of love you are comparing it. That's what I can't figure out from your answers.

2,577 posted on 02/12/2006 11:04:16 PM PST by Forest Keeper
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To: Forest Keeper
FK, find me one example of love void of respect.

I think you are confusing resepct as something one "earns" in human terms. In those terms, we are unworthy of God's love, as I am sure we all agree. But God doesn't follow our style or logic! Lucky for us!

Although you said you didn't respect your children, but loved them nonetheless, I say you are deceiving yourself because you did respect their humanity, their space, and their rights.

The whole concept of human rights -- universal respect for all human beings as equals -- is grounded in love for your neighbor as for yourself, in the idea that God gave each and every human bieng this earth and that we all have wqual right to this world.

I repeat: you cannot separate respect from love; where there is love, there is respect. Now, you speak of "different kinds" of love and I gree. Conditional love is based on conditional respect. But unconditional love is inseparable from unconditional respect.

God's love for humanity is unievrsal and unconditional, because nothing we can do can "justify" or "earn" His love for us. As such, His respect for his creation is equally unconditional.

2,605 posted on 02/13/2006 3:14:10 PM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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