Can God love?

[Drich]

This whole idea that God would love me 'if', is, I think, rather beside the point.  If God chooses not to let me near because of some supposed flaw, or whether he cannot, is, I think an irrelevant distinction.  

Again God loved the world and remove all sin. Sin, morality, qualifying for heaven all gone by word thought and or deed all gone. what is left? your desire to go to God's side in God's Heaven and live His way... Or do you want something else? do you want to hold out to modify your heavenly experience? or do you want heaven as advertised with God? (bottom line do you want anything other than what God offers?)

God has removed everything between Him and us via Christ on the cross and what is left is a simple question God will honor by holding you to your desision no matter what He may want for you. It is not a matter of can not or will not for God. it is a matter of you not choosing to Go to His heaven and live by His side.

He will not drag you into His life kicking and screaming.

Love, in order to be real, has to actually involve, you know, "loving" the other.

that's crap. does a baby know his mother his sister his brother his father? is the baby less loved by his family just because the baby does not reciprocate? Storge phila eros all require mutual love. Agape does not. IE Jesus died for ISIS fighters who would kill Christians/take a poke at Killing Jesus Himself, That is still an expression of love from God to the ISIS fighter allowing him the same question to answer that you have. will you serve and live with the God of the bible or will you demand something elses?

 If God neither does actually let me near, regardless of whether he simply won't, or because he can't, then God's love for me is never actualized.

Here is something I ask Kimmie all the time.. If you don't take the time to know and approach God on His terms how will you be able to discern if God is near or not? If you earnestly prayed at any point and got nothing it is because your idea of God was so far off the God of the bible God refused to support your guy lest you go spiraling out of control with a false deity.

What if Obi wan sent you to dagoba to learn from yoda the greatest of all jedi masters, but because your idea of a jedi master was an old white guy in brown and cream colored robes you spend month looking for yoda and never find him even with help from a little frog man who you befriend? How far must God go to meet you on your terms? how far would the queen of england must go to meet you for tea? How far would you go if she invited you?

In Luke 11 we have the one on one invitation. God PROMISES to sit down with you IF and only IF you meet Him on His terms. why? so that you know He is God, not only in act and deed but in your heart. Meaning you know you are not equals. You don't get to dictate terms. Meaning you can't demand God fit your profile. (you must seek yoda as Yoda is, rather than demand He fit your understanding.) That said it does not mean He will not give you the keys to the kingdom.. It's all on you and what you do with what you already have.

 Love that is never tested isn't really love, it's just the idea of love.

Two words wind and rain. God will send the wind and rain to test your knoweledge and love rather God will make life hard for you so much so you will be made to depend on Him or put you in a spot that you know in your heart only he can get you out of or see you though to a better outcome. Don't worry your love your understanding of God will be test so much, that it will remove ALL doubt that God is real and which side of eternity you stand on.

You will be test so completely Jesus tell a parable about the wise and foolish builders. If you build you house/faith/works on the truth of God or the truth of Christ your house/faith works will stand. if however your works faith are built on a god of your own design or the design of some big religion that is like building your faith sand, which will collapse when tested by the storms of life.

 We have no idea whether God would or would not embrace me in spite of my flaws because he never actually does.

 Again if you do not know God, how can you feel His embrace? Again know all your sins past present and future are already Gone. All that is left is to learn who God really is and then decide whether or not you wish to spend eternity with Him. The only thin keeping you from eternity is you.

So this idea that God has agape for me is hollow, empty, and meaningless.

As with any new born, but it does not mean the parent could not love that baby any less. that new born is loved more than he will ever know, literally.

 It is like the teenager's "undying love" for her boyfriend that turns out not to be so undying after all.  God's love cuts and runs at the first sign of trouble.

book chapter and verse?

 How Christians consider that agape, or anything at all, is beyond me.  That's not love, it's just a romantic notion.  It's the idea that God would love you if he could, but he can't, so he shan't.  It's nothing real, it's just empty words.

I wish I could give you the moment He gave me.. Ask for it maybe you will be able to experience a little more of it than I did, without having to go through Hell to feel his love.

If nothing else know the love God has has already removed all barriers between you and him, the only thing that stands in the way are the obstacles you put into place. God is not the problem here God is like a 24 hour white castle, ors are always open and he is always serving those awesome little hamburgers. If you go to bed hungry it isn't because of anything white castle has done, you simply have not put yourself in a position to enjoy those little burgers!

---

based on what? what you read here?
what if I went idk just a little deeper than that?

All we can go on is what you post.  If you want to be seen as something better, then you have to write accordingly.  Give it a try.

I post so much more than what you all go on. You selectively seek the negative and ignore or dismiss anything that does not support the narrative you have created.

I have accomplished a great deal. i share those thing because I've been asked to show or share what God has done for me in my life. None of those things would be possible if 1/2 of what you all have put into my shared character profile were true. yet you still only focus on the negitive.

Understand turn your world view on it's ear and demand you think for yourself is the biggest reason I am here. because if you learn to actually think for yourself you could find so much more than what you are being told is out there.

[Angrboda]

This whole idea that God would love me 'if', is, I think, rather beside the point.  If God chooses not to let me near because of some supposed flaw, or whether he cannot, is, I think an irrelevant distinction.  Love, in order to be real, has to actually involve, you know, "loving" the other.  If God neither does actually let me near, regardless of whether he simply won't, or because he can't, then God's love for me is never actualized.  Love that is never tested isn't really love, it's just the idea of love.  We have no idea whether God would or would not embrace me in spite of my flaws because he never actually does.  So this idea that God has agape for me is hollow, empty, and meaningless.  It is like the teenager's "undying love" for her boyfriend that turns out not to be so undying after all.  God's love cuts and runs at the first sign of trouble.  How Christians consider that agape, or anything at all, is beyond me.  That's not love, it's just a romantic notion.  It's the idea that God would love you if he could, but he can't, so he shan't.  It's nothing real, it's just empty words.

God has certainly 'actualized' his love for everyone even prior to any one person's salvation experience:

1. John 3:16, For God so loved the world...he died to atone for anyone's sin. Romans 5:6-8, God proved his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
2. God continually preserves this message of hope and constantly orchestrates events so that people hear it. Mark 4:3-20 (the parable of the sower/seeds)
3. When a person's heart is receptive to this hope, he is waiting there to respond. I John 1:8-9


So, your whole point above is wrong: God has already shown his love for us. There is no "God would love you if he could, but he can't, so he shan't."

My references are not exhaustive, rather are just one of many places in the NT where you get the same principles.

Try to keep your eye on the ball, Steve. The question was not does God love a certain class of people who meet his conditions, but rather does God have agape toward the unbeliever, who, according to you, he is metaphysically unable to approach. And the answer to that latter question is no, he doesn't have agape toward them, for the reasons outlined. As for the other class of people, his love toward them is conditional, so that's not agape either, though for different reasons.

But let's get something else out of the way. Your God did not die for anybody's sins because your God did not die. And he knew he wasn't going to die. That's the same lie that Christians have been telling for 2,000 years and no matter how many times you repeat it, it's still a lie. Jesus was temporarily inconvenienced for my sins, maybe; but what is that to an eternal God? Fuck if I know. Generally when it comes to God's pseudo-sacrifice, the explanation breaks one of two ways. Either Christ's "death" was merely symbolic in order to facilitate our rapprochement toward God, or it was in some sense metaphysically necessary. In the first case, it being symbolic, it wasn't necessary, it had no substantive effect upon God's relationship towards man, and was little more than a calculated PR campaign. In the second sense, Jesus' crucifixion becomes some sort of magic spell, requiring the right physical ingredients and saying the right magic words. Why God needs a cantrip to forgive someone is never fully explained, it's just an ad hoc supposition required to make sense of the story. That's not how the rest of the world forgives. Me, I just will myself to forgive, and it's done. Apparently, if God wants to forgive someone, he has to sacrifice a goat. Your God is the most emotionally inept God I've ever heard of.

Regardless, the Christian is always attempting to make disbelief some kind of moral failing for which we are culpable. It's not, so all the gymnastics attempting to justify God's justice ultimately fail. At the end of the road is a God who loves some people and not others, specifically because of who they are. That's not agape, no matter how you slice it. Since you've abandoned the possibility that God is capable of other kinds of love right out of the gate, the final conclusion is that no, God does not, or cannot, love.

[Drich]

God has certainly 'actualized' his love for everyone even prior to any one person's salvation experience:

1. John 3:16, For God so loved the world...he died to atone for anyone's sin. Romans 5:6-8, God proved his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
2. God continually preserves this message of hope and constantly orchestrates events so that people hear it. Mark 4:3-20 (the parable of the sower/seeds)
3. When a person's heart is receptive to this hope, he is waiting there to respond. I John 1:8-9


So, your whole point above is wrong: God has already shown his love for us. There is no "God would love you if he could, but he can't, so he shan't."

My references are not exhaustive, rather are just one of many places in the NT where you get the same principles.

Try to keep your eye on the ball, Steve.  The question was not does God love a certain class of people who meet his conditions, but rather does God have agape toward the unbeliever, who, according to you, he is metaphysically unable to approach.  And the answer to that latter question is no, he doesn't have agape toward them, for the reasons outlined.  As for the other class of people, his love toward them is conditional, so that's not agape either, though for different reasons.

But let's get something else out of the way.  Your God did not die for anybody's sins because your God did not die.  And he knew he wasn't going to die.  That's the same lie that Christians have been telling for 2,000 years and no matter how many times you repeat it, it's still a lie.  Jesus was temporarily inconvenienced for my sins, maybe; but what is that to an eternal God?  Fuck if I know.  Generally when it comes to God's pseudo-sacrifice, the explanation breaks one of two ways.  Either Christ's "death" was merely symbolic in order to facilitate our rapprochement toward God, or it was in some sense metaphysically necessary.  In the first case, it being symbolic, it wasn't necessary, it had no substantive effect upon God's relationship towards man, and was little more than a calculated PR campaign.  In the second sense, Jesus' crucifixion becomes some sort of magic spell, requiring the right physical ingredients and saying the right magic words.   Why God needs a cantrip to forgive someone is never fully explained, it's just an ad hoc supposition required to make sense of the story.  That's not how the rest of the world forgives.  Me, I just will myself to forgive, and it's done.  Apparently, if God wants to forgive someone, he has to sacrifice a goat.  Your God is the most emotionally inept God I've ever heard of.

Regardless, the Christian is always attempting to make disbelief some kind of moral failing for which we are culpable.  It's not, so all the gymnastics attempting to justify God's justice ultimately fail.  At the end of the road is a God who loves some people and not others, specifically because of who they are.  That's not agape, no matter how you slice it.  Since you've abandoned the possibility that God is capable of other kinds of love right out of the gate, the final conclusion is that no, God does not, or cannot, love.

It is not disbelief. Thomas did not believe till He could touch the wounds of Jesus and when He did it was enough for him to die a martyr. Salvation is based on what you want. That is what life is all about. it's not a free will thing. life boils down to whom do you want to serve. Sin or God. Sin we know God we have to find.

[Silver]

life boils down to whom do you want to serve. Sin or God. Sin we know God we have to find.

Thank goodness we know sin is invented nonsense concocted by the church to sell an imaginary cure known as salvation through Jesus and God.

[Drich]

life boils down to whom do you want to serve. Sin or God. Sin we know God we have to find.

Thank goodness we know sin is invented nonsense concocted by the church to sell an imaginary cure known as salvation through Jesus and God.

to what end?

What am I gaining here?

What do I charge to answer your questions?

Where am I sending converts? to whom are they paying?

The answer is no one. I strive to put you in front of God Himself and let you ask your own question and get your own answers.

[Angrboda]

This whole idea that God would love me 'if', is, I think, rather beside the point.  If God chooses not to let me near because of some supposed flaw, or whether he cannot, is, I think an irrelevant distinction.  

Again God loved the world and remove all sin. Sin, morality, qualifying for heaven all gone by word thought and or deed all gone. what is left? your desire to go to God's side in God's Heaven and live His way... Or do you want something else? do you want to hold out to modify your heavenly experience? or do you want heaven as advertised with God? (bottom line do you want anything other than what God offers?)

God has removed everything between Him and us via Christ on the cross and what is left is a simple question God will honor by holding you to your desision no matter what He may want for you. It is not a matter of can not or will not for God. it is a matter of you not choosing to Go to His heaven and live by His side.

He will not drag you into His life kicking and screaming.

Love, in order to be real, has to actually involve, you know, "loving" the other.

that's crap. does a baby know his mother his sister his brother his father? is the baby less loved by his family just because the baby does not reciprocate? Storge phila eros all require mutual love. Agape does not. IE Jesus died for ISIS fighters who would kill Christians/take a poke at Killing Jesus Himself, That is still an expression of love from God to the ISIS fighter allowing him the same question to answer that you have. will you serve and live with the God of the bible or will you demand something elses?

 If God neither does actually let me near, regardless of whether he simply won't, or because he can't, then God's love for me is never actualized.

Here is something I ask Kimmie all the time.. If you don't take the time to know and approach God on His terms how will you be able to discern if God is near or not? If you earnestly prayed at any point and got nothing it is because your idea of God was so far off the God of the bible God refused to support your guy lest you go spiraling out of control with a false deity.

What if Obi wan sent you to dagoba to learn from yoda the greatest of all jedi masters, but because your idea of a jedi master was an old white guy in brown and cream colored robes you spend month looking for yoda and never find him even with help from a little frog man who you befriend? How far must God go to meet you on your terms? how far would the queen of england must go to meet you for tea? How far would you go if she invited you?

In Luke 11 we have the one on one invitation. God PROMISES to sit down with you IF and only IF you meet Him on His terms. why? so that you know He is God, not only in act and deed but in your heart. Meaning you know you are not equals. You don't get to dictate terms. Meaning you can't demand God fit your profile. (you must seek yoda as Yoda is, rather than demand He fit your understanding.) That said it does not mean He will not give you the keys to the kingdom.. It's all on you and what you do with what you already have.

 Love that is never tested isn't really love, it's just the idea of love.

Two words wind and rain. God will send the wind and rain to test your knoweledge and love rather God will make life hard for you so much so you will be made to depend on Him or put you in a spot that you know in your heart only he can get you out of or see you though to a better outcome. Don't worry your love your understanding of God will be test so much, that it will remove ALL doubt that God is real and which side of eternity you stand on.

You will be test so completely Jesus tell a parable about the wise and foolish builders. If you build you house/faith/works on the truth of God or the truth of Christ your house/faith works will stand. if however your works faith are built on a god of your own design or the design of some big religion that is like building your faith  sand, which will collapse when tested by the storms of life.

 We have no idea whether God would or would not embrace me in spite of my flaws because he never actually does.

 Again if you do not know God, how can you feel His embrace? Again know all your sins past present and future are already Gone. All that is left is to learn who God really is and then decide whether or not you wish to spend eternity with Him. The only thin keeping you from eternity is you.

So this idea that God has agape for me is hollow, empty, and meaningless.

As with any new born, but it does not mean the parent could not love that baby any less. that new born is loved more than he will ever know, literally.

 It is like the teenager's "undying love" for her boyfriend that turns out not to be so undying after all.  God's love cuts and runs at the first sign of trouble.

book chapter and verse?

 How Christians consider that agape, or anything at all, is beyond me.  That's not love, it's just a romantic notion.  It's the idea that God would love you if he could, but he can't, so he shan't.  It's nothing real, it's just empty words.

I wish I could give you the moment He gave me.. Ask for it maybe you will be able to experience a little more of it than I did, without having to go through Hell to feel his love.

If nothing else know the love God has has already removed all barriers between you and him, the only thing that stands in the way are the obstacles you put into place. God is not the problem here God is like a 24 hour white castle, ors are always open and he is always serving those awesome little hamburgers. If you go to bed hungry it isn't because of anything white castle has done, you simply have not put yourself in a position to enjoy those little burgers!

Yet another post where you were too busy masturbating to your own fantasies to actually comprehend what I wrote. Your reply was simply irrelevant to the argument made.

Try to keep your eye on the ball, Steve.  The question was not does God love a certain class of people who meet his conditions, but rather does God have agape toward the unbeliever, who, according to you, he is metaphysically unable to approach.  And the answer to that latter question is no, he doesn't have agape toward them, for the reasons outlined.  As for the other class of people, his love toward them is conditional, so that's not agape either, though for different reasons.

---

But let's get something else out of the way.  Your God did not die for anybody's sins because your God did not die.  And he knew he wasn't going to die.  That's the same lie that Christians have been telling for 2,000 years and no matter how many times you repeat it, it's still a lie.  Jesus was temporarily inconvenienced for my sins, maybe; but what is that to an eternal God?  Fuck if I know.  Generally when it comes to God's pseudo-sacrifice, the explanation breaks one of two ways.  Either Christ's "death" was merely symbolic in order to facilitate our rapprochement toward God, or it was in some sense metaphysically necessary.  In the first case, it being symbolic, it wasn't necessary, it had no substantive effect upon God's relationship towards man, and was little more than a calculated PR campaign.  In the second sense, Jesus' crucifixion becomes some sort of magic spell, requiring the right physical ingredients and saying the right magic words.   Why God needs a cantrip to forgive someone is never fully explained, it's just an ad hoc supposition required to make sense of the story.  That's not how the rest of the world forgives.  Me, I just will myself to forgive, and it's done.  Apparently, if God wants to forgive someone, he has to sacrifice a goat.  Your God is the most emotionally inept God I've ever heard of.

Regardless, the Christian is always attempting to make disbelief some kind of moral failing for which we are culpable.  It's not, so all the gymnastics attempting to justify God's justice ultimately fail.  At the end of the road is a God who loves some people and not others, specifically because of who they are.  That's not agape, no matter how you slice it.  Since you've abandoned the possibility that God is capable of other kinds of love right out of the gate, the final conclusion is that no, God does not, or cannot, love.

---

It is not disbelief. Thomas did not believe till He could touch the wounds of Jesus and when He did it was enough for him to die a martyr. Salvation is based on what you want. That is what life is all about. it's not a free will thing. life boils down to whom do you want to serve. Sin or God. Sin we know God we have to find.

I serve neither God nor sin in any real sense. So, no, this is just more mental gymnastics aimed at making my disbelief into something it is not.

[Silver]

to what end?

What am I gaining here?

What do I charge to answer your questions?

Where am I sending converts? to whom are they paying?

The answer is no one. I strive to put you in front of God Himself and let you ask your own question and get your own answers.

Those are great critical thinking questions. Perhaps you need to delve deeper into philosophy to properly understand. It's not hard, it's just your cognitive dissonance that prevents you from progressing past your religious mindset.

[Drich]

The problem is that you have a stance that is perfectly in line with western culture never mind how it compares to hitler or ISIS.

So in order for me to be unlike ISIS I have to be against western culture?!!! This is beyond retarded.

btw here's a little meme

western culture does not = american culture. Western culture includes all the values westerns hold like germany's age of consent, france spain and portugal's free incest laws, Canada live birth abortion, need I go on? My point is if America adopted all of thee laws where you could your tweenaged sister and then she has the child sees it is deformed and then have the doctor murder it, would your value system allow you to say, no this is gone too far? 

If not then you are prime canidate for ANY culture's propaganda. if you were born in NAzi germany with your current level of acceptiblity towards the pop culture what would stop you from murdering jews? remember yu base all your morals on what soceity says... so what happens when your "good soceity" adopts evil?

Then sport you become evil all the while telling people like me you are the 'good guy.' because "pop morality allows you to do that.


You have nothing in your bag of 'morality' that tells you anything pop culture does is wrong. thus you are of the same mindset of a ISIS fighter or a nazi citizen. you completely rely on your peers to define right and wrong.. So what happens when your peers go off the evil end?

What do you have in your 'morality' that will have you stand up against society and say no that is too far???

[Angrboda]

Drich, you're derailing this thread with off-topic concerns. If you want to talk about whether God can love, fine. If you want to talk about something else, I suggest you start a new thread.

[Crossless2.0]

@Drich: That pop culture morality schtick of yours is getting really fucking old. I assume you are aware that there are people on this forum with a sense of history, who read, who don't necessarily buy into whatever the present culture is peddling. So stop pretending you don't know that.