How do you fine love?

Love is a movement outward, where infatuation is a movement inward, it is green
 
Quirkybird said:
Can you explain what you mean by that statement, please?
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I mean that language is not entirely sufficient to describe love, so the language I use is imprecise. However, language can perhaps indicate something of its nature, and such is the way I use language here. So how to give further explanation?

Can you understand that infatuation is a movement inward? A person infatuated is concerned about filling some need within themselves (Perhaps, a lack of centre) and attempts to move something exterior to them inward

Love is, in a way, the opposite. Love comes from fullness, abundance and the person is not concerned with a lack in themselves (Even if they may have such a lack), in fact they may be concerned with a a lack in another

Green? I just see it that way

Strictly speaking all that is nonsense, it is, I believe, true however.
 
I think I mostly understand you, Thomas. Here's a brief summary of what I think you were saying, with some questions, in red.

You defined four Greek words which can roughly be translated as love. I can see why it must be difficult to understand religious love when one word can be used in so many ways. Do you happen to know whether this is "one love fits all" is generally true in languages other than English? Is it easier to "get it" in some languages because they make the necessary distinctions? For example, does modern Greek still have the four words?

Your four words:

storge affection

philia, familial love, deeper than storge

eros, ecstatic love: lust, religious ecstacy. Is lust necessarily "adultery in the heart" or can it include passion for one's spouse?

agape, unconditional selfless, ascetic, love, God's love, the deepest love

· God loves unconditionally, and demands that we love each other as He loves us. We must love God in an ascetic way, but aside from Jesus when he was on earth, he doesn't love us ascetically, does he?
· God loves His creation, and will go to great lengths to preserve it. e.g. Jesus dying for our sins?
· Yet his love is a tough love. He’ll send us to hell if we don’t believe in Him and repent? Do we have to believe in Jesus as son of God to qualify?
· Jesus’ love was a strength that allowed him to reach out selflessly to his oppressors. tax collectors? those who crucified him? Any other examples?
· If we all share that love the world would be a paradise — heaven on earth. Does God really think this can happen? Doesn't Armageddon and the Rapture presuppose that this will not happen?
Can you live comfortably, have a family whom you love, give generously to charities and have a personal relationship with the Christian God and still meet the standards of agape? It sounds like you would have to live like a monk, organize for the poor, save people from burning buildings, and empty your heart of all bodily pleasures in order to succeed. Yet you are still a sinner and must repent. Are we expected to try for agape, while knowing that we will never succeed?
 
Re: How do you define love?

This is embarrassing but please disregard my previous post #25. Something weird happened and it seemed to be deleted before I got a chance to post it. I'm quite sure it wasn't here when last checked the thread a few minutes ago. So I rewrote and improved upon it. I'm going to ask to have #25 deleted, so if it isn't there, don't worry about it.

Thomas, I think I mostly get what you are saying. Here’s my summary with some questions in red. Please set me straight where necessary.



Summary and Questions​

There are four ancient Greek words that mean love. “God’s love” is expressed by the word “agape”, a word not in common usage at the time the NT was written. I can understand why religious love would be hard to comprehend when it can be confused with other types of human love.

The four words:

storge 'affection'

philia, familial love, deeper than storge

eros, ecstatic love: lust, religious ecstasy. Does “lust” include passion for one’s spouse or is that another aspect of eros?

agape, unconditional selfless, ascetic, love

· God loves us unconditionally, and demands that we love each other as He loves us. If God’s love for us serves as a model of our love for each other, and we’re supposed to have an ascetic love, then is God’s love ascetic?

· God loves His creation, and will go to great lengths to preserve it. e.g. He sent his only son to die for our sins? I expect you’ll say “Isn’t that enough?” but I have to ask, is there anything else?

· Jesus’ love was a strength that allowed him to reach out selflessly to his oppressors. Tax Collectors? His crucifiers?

· Yet his love is a tough love. He’ll send us to hell if we don’t believe in Him and repent?
Does believing in him require Christian belief?

· Asceticism involves self-denial, self-discipline, selfless service, humility, opening one’s heart to others (compassion?) and repentance. Is there any room for joy?

· If we all share God's love with each other, the world would be a paradise — heaven on earth. Does God really think we can achieve this if we try had enough? Don’t Armageddon and the Rapture suggest that He doesn’t? I'm guessing this is a hypothetical "if".

Can someone who is comfortably off, loves his family, gives generously to charities, and has a personal relationship with the Christian God ever achieve agape without leaving his family and possessions to become an ascetic?

Thanks for your time.
 
Re: How do you define love?

Marcialou said:
This is embarrassing but please disregard my previous post #25. Something weird happened and it seemed to be deleted before I got a chance to post it. I'm quite sure it wasn't here when last checked the thread a few minutes ago. So I rewrote and improved upon it. I'm going to ask to have #25 deleted, so if it isn't there, don't worry about it.

Thomas, I think I mostly get what you are saying. Here’s my summary with some questions in red. Please set me straight where necessary.



Summary and Questions​

There are four ancient Greek words that mean love. “God’s love” is expressed by the word “agape”, a word not in common usage at the time the NT was written. I can understand why religious love would be hard to comprehend when it can be confused with other types of human love.

The four words:

storge 'affection'

philia, familial love, deeper than storge

eros, ecstatic love: lust, religious ecstasy. Does “lust” include passion for one’s spouse or is that another aspect of eros?

agape, unconditional selfless, ascetic, love

· God loves us unconditionally, and demands that we love each other as He loves us. If God’s love for us serves as a model of our love for each other, and we’re supposed to have an ascetic love, then is God’s love ascetic?

· God loves His creation, and will go to great lengths to preserve it. e.g. He sent his only son to die for our sins? I expect you’ll say “Isn’t that enough?” but I have to ask, is there anything else?

· Jesus’ love was a strength that allowed him to reach out selflessly to his oppressors. Tax Collectors? His crucifiers?

· Yet his love is a tough love. He’ll send us to hell if we don’t believe in Him and repent?
Does believing in him require Christian belief?

· Asceticism involves self-denial, self-discipline, selfless service, humility, opening one’s heart to others (compassion?) and repentance. Is there any room for joy?

· If we all share God's love with each other, the world would be a paradise — heaven on earth. Does God really think we can achieve this if we try had enough? Don’t Armageddon and the Rapture suggest that He doesn’t? I'm guessing this is a hypothetical "if".

Can someone who is comfortably off, loves his family, gives generously to charities, and has a personal relationship with the Christian God ever achieve agape without leaving his family and possessions to become an ascetic?

Thanks for your time.
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Were you to replace the word ascetic in your definition and what follows from it with the word abundance, would your confusion be reduced?
 
Re: How do you define love?

Hi Marcialou.

Does “lust” include passion for one’s spouse or is that another aspect of eros?
Lust is the desire to possess, to want something for one's own sake. It doesn't take its object into consideration, and cares little for it. It simply wants it, for its own gratification. Once satiated, this desire often vanishes ... so it never was love, in any dimension.

Eros is not bad, eros can flower into agape, of example.

I would say 'eros' infers getting carried away, whereas 'lust' infers being driven. Eros is like getting drunk. Lust is like being a drunk.

If God’s love for us serves as a model of our love for each other, and we’re supposed to have an ascetic love, then is God’s love ascetic?
No, God's love is not ascetic. God transcends all categories. It is evident that for us, some degree of self-discipline is necessary to aspire towards the 'love' that is the opening of the self towards the other, to rise above the modes of love in its less perfect forms, which at its lowest is a love that is really nothing more than the gratification of carnal desire and the will to possess.

Love doesn't seek to own, it seeks to give.

e.g. He sent his only son to die for our sins? I expect you’ll say “Isn’t that enough?” but I have to ask, is there anything else?
Well, God could have said, "They're really not getting this, are they?" and scrapped the whole cosmos, to start again.

The Crucifixion for me is not a 'one-time' event, it's a dynamic that was realised, actualised, in place and time, but its happening in every moment. It's a process in the soul.

Tax Collectors? His crucifiers?
Yep.

He’ll send us to hell if we don’t believe in Him and repent
No, God doesn't send anyone to hell, it is we who estrange ourselves from His love by refusing His outreach. By 'tough love' I meant Christ was willing to undergo the Passion, even while His persecutors spat on Him.

As He Himself said, loving those who love us is easy. Where's the virtue in that? (cf Matthew 5:46, Luke 6:22).

Does believing in him require Christian belief?
Well you can't believe in what you don't know ... do you mean does one have to know of Christ to be a Christian?

Then no, anyone who seeks the good, seeks Him. So any person who acts towards the good is, by definition, a Christian, whether they've heard or Christ or not.

Sadly, on the other hand, I have to say 'yes', because today people come at it the other way round. Rather than model themselves on Christ, they model Christ on themselves, they define someone according to their own limitations. So what you end up with is a Christ that's really just a projection of their own self-love.

compassion?
Yes.

Is there any room for joy?
Yes. Beyond measure.

But it should not be a requirement, a condition of faith. Because today people are conditioned to be consumers, we want something before we make the effort, else why bother?

If you're doing it for the reward, then your heart's not really in the right place. That rule applies to everything, I think.

Does God really think we can achieve this if we try had enough?
What's hard about it?

Just think what could happen if every one of us said, "Today I'm going to do something to make someone's life just one degree better than it was."

Don’t Armageddon and the Rapture suggest that He doesn’t?
Sadly this infatuation with Armageddon and Rapture is another fabrication of American fundamentalism, like Creationism and Intelligent Design.

Can someone who is comfortably off, loves his family, gives generously to charities, and has a personal relationship with the Christian God ever achieve agape without leaving his family and possessions to become an ascetic?
Yes. Asceticism is a state of mind, it's not the measure of material value or comforts.
 
VoiceofWood,

Yes, abundant love sounds better than ascetic love to me but I doubt that it is what Thomas means.

Merriam Webster online:

Ascetic: practicing strict self-denial as a measure of personal and especially spiritual discipline
Abundance: a large amount of something

Ascetic love sounds like you can't take any pleasure in it. Abundant loves sounds like you have so much of something that it's a pleasure to share.

Thomas, Care to comment?
 
Marcialou said:
Merriam Webster online:
Ascetic: practicing strict self-denial as a measure of personal and especially spiritual discipline.
Click to expand...
Well in a consumer society, asceticism will always be seen as 'a bad thing' :rolleyes:

The Greek term askēsis means 'training' or 'exercise'. The original usage did not refer to self-denial, but to the physical training required for athletic events. Its usage later extended to encompass the disciplines that are common to the major religious traditions, meditation or fasting, for example.

But we're not really discussing asceticism as a spiritual discipline, in which case I would say that the modern world finds the regimen too austere for its tastes, we're discussing asceticism in relation to love.

+++

The German sociologist Max Weber made a distinction between innerweltliche, 'inside world' and ausserweltliche 'outside world' asceticism.

'Inner-' or 'Other-worldly' asceticism is in line with the desire to enter ever-deeper into the Mysteries of the Deity, such as monks or hermits, and this is what most dictionaries have in mind when they define the term.

'Worldly' asceticism refers to people who do not withdraw from the world, but hold certain values and principles with regard to their engagement with it. A common principle, regardless of how the worldly ascetic might define himself, is that the world — and our neighbour — is not there to be used for our own gratification. It's not there for me.

Yoga, for example, was originally an 'inner world' spiritual discipline, which has been packaged for our consumer culture as a means of keeping fit and the pursuit of 'well being' ... so you have to be aware of the distinction between, say, 'Hatha Yoga' and 'Health Club Yoga'.

But that is not to imply that the world ascetic doesn't know how to have a good time, or enjoy themselves!

Actually, I would argue they know better, and derive a greater enjoyment than those who pursue pleasure for its own sake.

So I would say the assumption that ascetic means the denial of, say, physical intimacy, is an over-simplification of the idea.
 
Marcialou said:
Yes, abundant love sounds better than ascetic love to me but I doubt that it is what Thomas means.
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Well Divine Love abounds, indeed is super-abundant, in fact it is boundless ...

... So I agree that love abounds, but looking round I see that the vast majority of what most people assume love to be is nothing of the sort at all, or very, very shallow if it is.

I'm not critiquing anyone's relationships, but I would point out that the Consumer Culture that is the West works by creating wants where there was no need, the dissatisfaction with what one has almost as soon as one attains it, and the desire for more that knows no limit ... even though we tell ourselves all the time that none of this crap makes us happy, as if that means it doesn't affect us.

It's an addiction, really. It might not be chemical based as Huxley suggested in Brave New World, but it is worse ...
 
Well Divine Love abounds, indeed is super-abundant, in fact it is boundless ...

And your evidence for that statement is?
 
Namaste Jesus said:
Shoot! I'm getting: This video is not available in your country!.

I guess us yanks wouldn't understand....:confused:
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If people are interested they can probably search 'peaceful warrior bar scene' and find a clip of the good parts.
 
Thomas,

I responded to you in another post that disappeared. I'm going to assume that it will show up eventually as it did the last time this happened. If it doesn't I'll repost.

I'm not sure what's happened. It seems that whenever I press some unknown wrong key everything I've written disappears.
 
Marcialou, do you mean while typing? Have you tried Ctrl + Z? It's an Undo in the browser I use. It might get your text back next time.
 
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