When it comes to spiritual love I think a lot of people often have the completely wrong idea.

Spiritual love is not the same as romantic love, nor is it even the same as the love that we have for a parent, child, or sibling.

To love someone in a spiritual sense simply means not to hate them. That's all it means. Period.

To hate someone is to wish them ill-will. To love someone is to not wish them ill-will.

I think it's the totally wrong picture to think that you somehow need to embrace your enemies and rejoice in their behavior.

This is especially not true if their behavior is hurtful to other people. Why would you want to rejoice in that?

To simply not be out to get them is to love them. To not wish them ill-will or seek revenge is to love them.

That's all it means. It doesn't mean that you need to give them a pat on the back and approve of their dastardly deeds.

So the whole 'love your enemy' thing is often blown way out of proportion.

Just don't hate them, and that's automatically love.

You don't need to hug and kiss them and show approval of their dastardly nature.

That would truly be foolish.

Just like the witch's say.

Do as you will and harm none.

Harming none is LOVE.

Period.

It's simple.

Just don't hate and love is automatic.

Agreed...

But, we don't actually have to love Jesus in order for these principles to apply, do we?

I realize this is a bit off the OP, but...

If love were the only thing that could cause these "monsters" to change, why would we continuously support the perpetuation of war? If Christianity supports the application of love to cause change of these vicious patterns, why support war?

Not saying that you personally support it...

I'm reminded of a line from Men In Black.

Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it....

Love can work on individuals, but it doesn't work so well when you are talking about a large government or group of people. Any mob of people is more likely to act than think. Sometimes war is a necessary evil. It's still an evil, but it's a lesser evil than not doing anything at all. If the US had invaded Rowanda to stop the massacre, it would have been a lesser evil than allowing millions to be killed. I could go on, but you get the point. We have to weight the evils objectively and choose the lesser of the two. For this reason we can't take a position that war is always wrong, so we will allow murders and rapes and torture to occur because we oppose war. That's an absolute moral position, which is not taught in the Bible and is actually far less moral in practice than an objective moral philosophy.

My greatest hope is that humankind is getting smarter and less panicky. That we begin to see more of the similarities and less of the stark differences between different cultures / religions (or non-religions). I guess this requires a bit of "faith" in humanity.




I promise not to go on and on about war in this thread...

...but, I'll end by saying that going to war under the guise of a moral position and promotion of democracy, only to seek domination of precious oil at the cost of far too many innocent lives, seems like quite the lie to me... I mean, where can we turn when we find that our own gov't is up to these kinds of shenanigans? How do we, as a people, take a moral position?

Sorry... Okay... No more hijacking...

Much Love

I'm in complete agreement with you on this one Spider.

This is what so many people have been saying all along.

We don't truly have Free Will in the truest sense of the concept.

All we have are choices. And we have limited things to choice from. It is those limitations that curb our freewill.

In fact, it is this very concept that runs against the Christian idea that all men are sinners.

If they only reason that all men are sinners is because they only only given choices that are various degrees of evil, then who's fault is that?

It's impossible to live a perfect life in an imperfect world.

Think about this for a moment in the Christian picture.

God sends his only begotten Son as the sacrificial lamb to pay for man's sin.

Yet, here you are suggesting that the real world is nothing more than choices of which action is the least sinful.

What if a person stands by and doesn't go to war to stand up for the rights of those who are bring wrongly oppressed?

Would that be the "saintly" think to do?

I don't think so. Most people would claim that it's cowardly.

Maybe it's no so obvious in the context of wars, but think of it as standing up for your family and loved ones.

If you would fight to save your loved ones from wrongful oppression, then you'd fight in a war where you beleive you were saving innocent people from wrongful oppression.

And to refuse to act would not be 'saintly' but rather it would be cowardly.

A lot of people probably have guilt complexes associated with their fear to stand up for righteousness.

But it that's the saintly thing to do then why should they feel guilty for their fears?

It just makes no sense for a God to sacrifice his son to pay for the choices that men have no choice but to make.

I would love nothing more than to live a perfect life.

Unfortunately this life isn't perfect, and therefore it just isn't a choice.

So my choice is to be perfect, but I don't have the free will to make that choice because the world I live in is not perfect.

I'm forced to choose between the lesser of the evils.

Is that my fault? Is that man's fault?

Clearly not.

So a religion that tries to pin this onto mankind has missed the point of life altogether.

If the point of life is to make the least evil choices as possible, then so be it.

Let's not make up myths about gods sacarificing their sons to pay for the imperfections of men when men have no choice in the matter.

All that does is place unnecessary burdens of guilt onto people who truly have no free will to be perfect. That choice simply isn't available to them.

I'm with you on that.

I certainly didn't mean to condone or support war without good cause.

Just because an idiot president invades a country against his the wishes of the people of his nation doesn't make it right.

In fact, war should be an absolute last resort to solving problems.

And if we had diplomatic leaders that had any smarts at all war would be a totally unnecessary thing in most cases.

Once in a while you get a madman like Hitler and then reason won't stand a chance, and you have no choice but defend against his madness.

But that's a far cry from something like invading Iraq, for example.

So I never meant to support war.

I was just keying on the concept that we don't truly have free will. We have limited will based on what choices are avaiable.

That was the point I was attempting to focus on.

A little hijack of my own...

Bush and Cheney divested everything they had in Oil Companies.

The Oil Companies in the US don't buy from Iraq, the US oil companies only account for 2% of the worlds oil (that includes ExxonMobil).

The Iraqi oil money is only going to help the Iraqis, it's not coming to the US, Bush, Cheney, Haliburton, etc.

Haliburton is one of the few companies in the world that do what they do. They are the largest US company that does oil services. They have ALWAYS been the company used by the US government. Way too much has been made of Cheney's past employment for that company. They would have gotten the contract if Cheney had never even heard of Haliburton, as I have already said and has been public knowledge since the Carter years, the US uses Haliburton's services almost exclusively for oil services and all of the other services they provide.

You can love your enemy if you want.

Your enemy may even "love" you.

But you are what you are and they are what they are.

You may be a cow and they may be a cattleman. You may love them and they may love you.

But in the end they will still send you to the slaughter house.

Its just who they are.

Its just who you are.



(I'm talking about the draconian aliens here I think you know.)

I dont think faith is going to get us any closer to peace.

Objective understanding is the only way to shed ignorance which perpetuates evil.

Understanding someone, being able to relate because you know they are not different from you, because you understand biology, know that we are all the same to an amazing degree. Even culture is really only flavor, like a dish, the end result is the same, we get nourishment from the food.

I see no better way to create peace then education, and I see no bigger topic to bring people together then science, and especially evolution.

Faith and archaic belief systems are getting in the way.

If we have the will to build the school, that is great, if we have the resources to fill the school with healthy children that is great, but if we do not have the will to see the truth and allow them full access to it without constraints, then all is for not, we are perpetuating ignorance, and creating strife by highlighting difference that are literally only skin deep (and only a minor expression difference in a gene we all have - unless your albino, which happens to all races . . . hmm)

You want to know about good and evil. I think its better to know about people, and what we all have in common, and how we came to be . . . both cosmologically, and biologically.

. . .

Srry oT.

Very well said Billy.

I agree completely.

I agree completely and would add that...

Being able to relate, knowing there are vast and beautiful differences makes it an even more fascinating adventure.

of all the forums in all the towns, in all the world - she walked into mine -


just felt like quoting some bogey -