What is Love?

[KingandPriest]

This topic is vitally important to those who accept and maintain a belief in Jesus Christ. As such, the topic of love must be understood before one can even attempt to understand or know God.

So in short, I ask:

I. Non-theistic definition of what is love?
or
Theistic definition of what is love?

II. What is the greatest expression of love one can have for another?

[KingandPriest]

Love is the depth of feeling that one has for another person.

I would suppose that the greatest expression of love is to genuinely care for another more than you care for yourself.

(The phrase love as found in the bible does not carry the same connotations as we use today. In some instances there was a specifically different word used to describe the one word we use today.) Follow up questions.

Can love only exist from person to person?

Is the one word love adequate to describe the many ways we use the word today?

Should we do as the civilizations which came before us and separate love into categories such as phileo, eros, agape, etc.?

[JLB32168]

Really? You don't understand deep feeling? Most of us do.

I have an idea, but it seems very self-centered to me and since thats the case its flighty and can leave so its not too deep, IMO.

It's what brings things like empathy and compassion. It's what we feel when we see our new born baby, or what we feel when we look into the eyes of our partner.

Right " its how I feel. Oh yeah " and youre in on it too.

I would call it a state of being.

And I think that sounds like emotional American fluff.
In an Iron Age society where most marriages are arranged then how can you command a husband to love his wife and vice versa? Whats the sense of Have deep feeling for someone you might not know too well? Are you supposed to manufacture those deep feelings on the fly?

A person can do this without loving someone.

Yes, but a person cant love someone w/o doing it.
But you know I have deep feeling for you.
So you say but Im from MO. You have to show me.
How do you love a street beggar in a soup kitchen that you met five minutes ago? Deep feelings dont appear overnight.

It's not love if the emotion is not there. It's just an action.

And its not love if the action is not there. Sometimes a persons spouse is difficult for a month or two and you might not stand being around him/her. The only deep feeling you have is Im stick to death of your sorry attitude. How do you push through that? You do loving things and thats how you pull through the rough times.
Love as a deep feeling is vapid emotionalism and very American.

[Closingaccountreadgmailna]

This topic is vitally important to those who accept and maintain a belief in Jesus Christ. As such, the topic of love must be understood before one can even attempt to understand or know God.

So in short, I ask:

I. Non-theistic definition of what is love?
or
Theistic definition of what is love?

II. What is the greatest expression of love one can have for another?

Love is I don't like to clean my room, but I am going to make a small sacrifice, for my mom.

[marco]

What is the greatest expression of love one can have for another?

Sacrificing one's life or one's own aspirations for somebody else is love. Love is not sacrificing somebody else to make us look good, so Abraham being prepared to kill his son does not demonstrate love but servility and cruelty. God giving his son to be crucified is not love; in terms that we understand, it is senseless and cruel, the very antithesis of love.

Shakespeare suggested that love alters not, but is an ever-fixed star, that shines on tempests and is never shaken. Pushkin finished one of his beautiful poems with
" I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly that I hope to God you can be so loved again by another."

Paul's poetry is nice but it seems to come from someone who has never really experienced human love.

As for humans loving God - there is no possible sense in this impossibility. The mouth can say it, but the heart can't do it.

[Closingaccountreadgmailna]

What is the greatest expression of love one can have for another?

Sacrificing one's life or one's own aspirations for somebody else is love. Love is not sacrificing somebody else to make us look good, so Abraham being prepared to kill his son does not demonstrate love but servility and cruelty. God giving his son to be crucified is not love; in terms that we understand, it is senseless and cruel, the very antithesis of love.

Shakespeare suggested that love alters not, but is an ever-fixed star, that shines on tempests and is never shaken. Pushkin finished one of his beautiful poems with
" I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly that I hope to God you can be so loved again by another."

Paul's poetry is nice but it seems to come from someone who has never really experienced human love.

As for humans loving God - there is no possible sense in this impossibility. The mouth can say it, but the heart can't do it.

[font=Times New Roman]So you understand that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to die for us, good. Do you also understand that God doesn't will evil? Who crucified God? People.[/font]

[OnceConvinced]

And I think that sounds like emotional American fluff.

Not being American, I wouldn't know.

In an Iron Age society where most marriages are arranged then how can you command a husband to love his wife and vice versa?

You can't. It's not possible to command someone to love another.

Whats the sense of Have deep feeling for someone you might not know too well?

Who said there had to be any sense in love? There isn't any sense in love. Love can cause you to have feelings for people you shouldn't even get involved with. I have found that out the hard way.

Are you supposed to manufacture those deep feelings on the fly?

That's just the thing. You CAN'T. Love is not something you can choose. You can't choose the way you feel. You can't choose the emotions that well up inside you. Where on earth did you get the idea that you can choose to love?? To me that is as ludicrous as the claim that you can choose what you believe.

A person can do this without loving someone.

Yes, but a person cant love someone w/o doing it.

That's not true. There are many circumstances where you can love someone but be in no position to provide loving actions. I have been in that situation before.

But you know I have deep feeling for you.
So you say but Im from MO. You have to show me.

Your deep feelings drive you to doing loving actions. Of course if you love someone you will want to perform loving actions for that person and you should. However actions alone do not prove you love someone. And that is the main point I am making. You can perform so-called loving actions when it comes to someone you despise.

It's like the whole faith vs works thing. Works alone are not going to save you. You must have faith. However faith without works is useless. Works should come as a result of faith. Likewise loving actions should come as a result of your love for someone.

How do you love a street beggar in a soup kitchen that you met five minutes ago? Deep feelings dont appear overnight.

You can't. You can't just choose to love someone. That's not possible. Feelings don't appear over night that is true. That is why love at first sight is a myth. Feelings develop. But until those feelings develop you can't claim to love someone no matter how many kind and benevolent acts you do for them.

You could be doing those loving acts for non-loving reasons. We see it all the time, with people who feel guilty about things. So what do they do? They volunteer their time and money to charity to make them feel better. That's not love. But yet according to your logic it is.

It's not love if the emotion is not there. It's just an action.

And its not love if the action is not there.

And what if you are far from that person and cannot perform those actions? What if you love someone, but that person you love refuses to have anything to do with you? What then? Also is it not possible to love someone secretly?

Some times it's not possible to perform loving actions.

Sometimes a persons spouse is difficult for a month or two and you might not stand being around him/her. The only deep feeling you have is Im stick to death of your sorry attitude. How do you push through that? You do loving things and thats how you pull through the rough times.

Certainly not by performing loving actions. That's not going to change your feelings for them. You are still going to be fed up with them.

Love as a deep feeling is vapid emotionalism and very American.

This sounds like the attitude of someone who may lack compassion and empathy. I might expect this from someone with sociopathic tendencies or from someone who perhaps is Asperger's syndrome. Not from a person who claims to be a Christian.

[OnceConvinced]

Love is I don't like to clean my room, but I am going to make a small sacrifice, for my mom.

This is an interesting one. It seems in this scenario that you want to do this to make your mother happy. Is that because you love her or is it because you know she would demand it? Would you be wanting to escape her anger if you had a messy room?

Is it done so that your mother will continue to do good things for you?

Is it done out of a moral obligation?

Are you doing it to make yourself look good?

Are you doing it out of a sense of guilt because every other time she has had to clean it for you?

Is it really a sacrifice? After all it's your room, not hers. You are the one living in it.

There are many reasons you might decide to clean your room for your mother, but they might not be done out of love.

[OnceConvinced]

[font=Times New Roman]So you understand that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to die for us, good. .[/font]

Now here we go. The most famous scripture in the bible which tells us that God did a loving act BECAUSE he loved us. Thus love must be a feeling he had to begin with, which drove him to perform the loving action.

[theStudent]

[Replying to post 4 by Divine Insight]

As far as I can see the concept of love is a human concept. Therefore it's open to the subjective opinions of humans. Different humans will most likely have different definitions for what the concept means to them. In fact, this appears to be precisely the situation we observe.

So DI, you are saying that love does not exist outside of man's mind, am I correct?
In that case, love can be like a light switch that someone can turn on and off, have one minute and then the next minute, not have it. And it is dependent on who is in front of them.
So for example, a man could beat the stuffing out of another, rob and rape an innocent young lady, kick someone's cat, just because, and go home and care for his aging mother, and feed his two akitas. That person has love?

The way it looks to me is that this kind of love lacks coherence and consistency.
What I mean is that a person is either honest, or they aren't. A person can't be honest and at the same time be dishonest. They can't steal John Doe's sheep, and claim they are honest, because they don't steal Jane Doe's.

How can someone say they have love, if it is only limited to those whom they choose?

Perhaps I am not understand this definition. Probably it's because it's so dependent on how each person views it.

Thankfully that's not the way my fellow spiritual brothers and sisters view love, otherwise I could just see how so disunited they would be - as the world and its religions are.
https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesse ... nmar-2014/

[marco]

[font=Verdana]


So you understand that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to die for us, good. Do you also understand that God doesn't will evil? Who crucified God? People.

For a human to sacrifice a son would not be an act of love. For God to allow his "son" to be tortured and crucified because people subjected him to their laws and found him guilty is madness. Worse still is calling this his redemptive plan - killing Jesus somehow appeased God's primal anger. Through this "love" Jews were pointlessly branded as God-killers, generating centuries of hatred.
And this is divine love?


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