Ship of Fools: God loves you?

Thread: God loves you? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

Some threads have focused on the inability of God to feel or suffer pain.
Other threads may have included an objection to the idea that God could feel let alone exercise wrath or anger.

How then does God 'love' people?
Is it personal affection for us?
Does he 'like' us?
Does he think about us and enjoy being with us?
Does he actually have feelings for us?

And if not, does that mean love is an automatic obligation of goodwill - much in the way that a gardener would have goodwill to a plant he's cultivating?

How does God love us?

[ 14. April 2014, 17:40: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

I believe that God feels all that we feel, that the whole story of Jesus shows us that every time we suffer or know joy, so does God. The relationship between God and us is as close as that. So when we harm other people or ourselves, apologies to God who feels the pain too are in order.

The love of God is greater than any love we can imagine. 'I in you and you in me' means intimacy.

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

To clarify then, God's emotions are merely reflections of our own? He just magnifies what we feel first?

Or can his love come from him first?

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

We affect each other imv, as must be the case in relationship. The emotions are closely connected to spirituality.

Posted by daisymay (# 1480) on :

God is full of love - for us all and of course for Jesus. We often have the information about God loving at church. And we feel fine and sad about the time just coming about Jesus being killed, but to save us.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

All human love is participation in God's love. We don't know what God's love is in itself: we just know when we love we are taking part in it. Whoever loves abides in God.
A parent's love for his or her child is an image of the love of God. A gardener's goodwill towards his or her plants is also an image of the love of God. God's love is greater than both and includes both.
God enjoys being with us in the sense that God delights in our good. But not in the sense that God is concerned with God's delight rather than with our good. God's love is in no way an expression of God's emotional needs; it has no wish for God to avoid sorrow or seek happiness. God is simply and utterly focussed upon us.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

Love is feeling? Love is an action, as in the older word, charity? The older word distances me from the deity, to the level that I understand better. Kindly, but not directly loving in behaviour as I might express directly towards, you, my friend.

Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :

Cross-posted from the "What is religion for?" Thread:

You've probably heard this before, but the original Greek in the New Testament says that God is "Agape," which can be translated as "charity," "unconditional love," or, as Wikipedia quotes Thomas Jay Oord, "an intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being." I would translate it as saying that God is "giving for no personal benefit whatsoever" or "pure other-concernedness."

...

So basically God is an eternal never-ending charitable act that encompasses all charitable (ie, altruistic, selfless) things that were ever done, are being done, and that will ever be done. God is able to to act of infinite concern for everyone's good without ever needing to divide His love into smaller and smaller pieces for each of us because the love that He is is boundless. He also is an eternal act of charity to His selves in the Trinity. The begetting of the Son by the Father and the obedience of the Son to the Father are acts of charity that never began and will never end. The same is true with the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son (or just from the Father, if you prefer) and with the Holy Spirit's obedience to the Father (and the Son?).

And you can go on by saying that the Father and the Son are both in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit and the Son are both in the Father, and the Father and the Holy Spirit are both in the Son. This being completely outside of oneself and completely in the beloved is like what Platonism described as the perfect and purest kind of love - ie, Platonic love. I'm not sure if the Platonists used "Agape" for that love, though.

Posted by QJ (# 14873) on :

you know your girlfriend loves you if she calls on the phone just to know how you are doing. god incarnates himself and asks a woman for a drink of water and shortly thereafter she launches into a theological series of questions. the simplest look at the situation is god wanted to be there with her and have a chat. god wants to spend time with us. it is our unbelief that slows that from happening. the woman is having a problem due to her being kept from getting physically close to god due to her lineage and locality. as she tries to understand god by listening to the profit in front of her she misses what is obvious to us "readers" being that god has made a special trip just to see her. God would like to see each of us every day. we can cease worrying about not being able to go to some special place and enjoy him in our home, work, or while at happy hour with friends.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
How then does God 'love' people?
Is it personal affection for us?
Does he 'like' us?
Does he think about us and enjoy being with us?
Does he actually have feelings for us?

As with any wise and loving parent, the answers are "yes," "yes," "yes," and "yes." And since he is infinite love, he has an infinite love for each of us.

quote:
How does God love us?

As Dafyd points out, when we love, we are participating in God's love. But that's not just true about love, it's true about everything good and everything worthwhile that we ever experience. They are all ways that we participate in God's infinite goodness and mercy.

But since he is infinite, and therefore has an infinite love for each of us, it would be completely overwhelming and suffocating if he were to let us be aware of all his attention and devotion to us. Raptor Eye's reference to intimacy is nothing compared to the actual reality. We tend to want to be aware of him in limited ways - maybe a voice that we occasionally hear, or a person we occasionally see somewhere nearby. But if we were to really be aware of him, it would be way beyond intimate - we would find out that he is infinitely aware of every cell in our body and every thought in our mind every moment of every day. We would literally lose our identity as a person if we experienced just how intimate his love for us is (no one can see God's face and live). So like any wise parent, he makes sure we are not directly aware of the full extent of how much he loves us and thinks about us.

Instead, he came up with a perfect system to experience his love indirectly by experiencing it through each other, so we can share and participate in the joy that is inherent in his love, and yet feel that joy as though it is our own. And when we collectively managed to stop doing that, he became one of us to remind us how to do it.

[ 15. April 2014, 06:01: Message edited by: W Hyatt ]

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

In one of Charles Williams' novels, a character says, "Pardon and love are given to us just for fun; basically we don't and can't."

The idea is that we can only let God's pardon and love flow through us.

Moo

Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :

Moo - where is that? Williams is a bit of a hobby of mine, and I'd like to be able to identify the source.

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:

But since he is infinite, and therefore has an infinite love for each of us, it would be completely overwhelming and suffocating if he were to let us be aware of all his attention and devotion to us. Raptor Eye's reference to intimacy is nothing compared to the actual reality. We tend to want to be aware of him in limited ways - maybe a voice that we occasionally hear, or a person we occasionally see somewhere nearby. But if we were to really be aware of him, it would be way beyond intimate - we would find out that he is infinitely aware of every cell in our body and every thought in our mind every moment of every day. We would literally lose our identity as a person if we experienced just how intimate his love for us is (no one can see God's face and live). So like any wise parent, he makes sure we are not directly aware of the full extent of how much he loves us and thinks about us.

Instead, he came up with a perfect system to experience his love indirectly by experiencing it through each other, so we can share and participate in the joy that is inherent in his love, and yet feel that joy as though it is our own. And when we collectively managed to stop doing that, he became one of us to remind us how to do it.

I disagree that we would lose our identity. Rather, our true identity is revealed in the light of God's love, which we can become aware of directly, to an extent.

I agree that we may know God's love through each other too, and through our own love for others, both of which are God's gifts to us.

Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :

I went on about agape but I have also heard people talk about divine love as eros - as some kind of fire that gives one the impulse to unite or merge with the other.

Lots of RC sources argue that to have this kind of "conjugal" love for more than one person, you can't have any sex at all since sex gets you all wrapped up in desire for that one person. Which is why ministers whose job is to be able to drop everything and give themselves to anyone anytime (which needn't include all priests, I would argue) have to remain celibate.

I'm all for divine eros - I am more comforted by thought of being "erotically" taken by God than by just about anything else. I just don't get why the only human examples we have if it are marriage and celibacy.

I also never quite got why God's eros is not sexual. It's conjugal but not sexual? Aside from the Son, God doesn't have a body - I get that - but Jesus at least has a body. Can't he make sweet sweet love to the Church so that all of us fingers and toes of the Church can participate in the sexytime?

And why is there no sex in heaven? I've heard that heaven (after the resurrection) is where everyone is in a glorified body and married to everyone else (which is why Christ said we're not given in marriage in heaven but are like the angels (except with bodies)). So in this erotic embodied lovefest there's no sex? I think there's a bit of associating sex with sin in all if that. We probably don't eat food or breathe air like we understand those things on earth in heaven, so the same is probably true in sex. But if we're all giving our selves and bodies completely to everyone else, it will probably be pretty much like sex, if not also different and better beyond our wildest dreams.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Moo - where is that? Williams is a bit of a hobby of mine, and I'd like to be able to identify the source.

It's in Descent into Hell in the chapter called 'The Tryst of the Worlds'. Stanhope says it to Pauline.

Moo

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

In his book, Water Buffalo Theology, Ksuke Koyama pointed out that the Westen God is an engaged God, a God that does experience emotions. This is counter to the Buddhist ideal of detachment. Yes, God experiences the full range of emotion. Can't remember the Psalm, but it says God grieves at the death of his saints.

Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :

Many thanks - will have to dig out my copy and read it again. I wonder which box it's hiding in?

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