There has been a lot of talk here lately about Christians and Jews. here is a short sketch of my views on Christianity and Christ.
IMO Christ did not come to found a religion, although it was inevitable that his followers would organise themselves into what would become the various factions and sects that is the Chrstian religion.
His descent, passion and resurrection was a turning point in the evolution of the Earth. It was a turning point in the transition from group consciousness to individual consciousness. His prescription was one that anyone can follow whether they are Jewish, Muslim, atheist, Christian, agnostic or whatever other human invented category they align themselves with.
To truly follow Christ one only has to do as He asks:
John 13: 34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
and:
Matthew 5: 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;.
Very easy to say, but the hardest of paths to follow.
Evolution is a path towards individual conscious freedom. The problem is that humans now bear the responsibility for the future outcome of the direction that evolution will take and it is much easier to follow selfish desires than to love unconditionally.
The latter is something I aspire to but fail miserably to live up to.
True. But keep in mind it’s also much easier to follow unselfish desires than to love [everybody] unconditionally. In fact, I don’t think the latter is possible for anybody, and it’s probably better to just try to get people to try be less selfish occasionally than to ask the impossible.
Did Jesus actually love everybody unconditionally? I don’t know myself, and I’m guessing the evidence is not incontrovertible on the matter. (After all saying one is doing something isn’t the same thing as actually doing it: sometimes it’s just bragging.) But say he really was able to do that: is it actually such a good thing? Should Trump be loved unconditionally? Why?
Just because unconditional love is thought to be unattainable, can that be an excuse for not having it as a goal?
I would say that love of truth should also be an aspiration. It is probably much easier to hate Trump than to love him. But do we really know what made him the man he is? How different would any of us be if we had experienced the same upbringing as he has had? It should still be possible to love Trump while at the same time hate actions he may perform, actions such as lying or behaving in a bigoted manner. As I said, it is not easy! It is possible to try to understand the man without in any way condoning his actions. Maybe for all his riches and privileges he is to be pitied more than hated. That would be a step in the right direction.
I love “the wall” unconditionally.
I prefer Dark Side of the Moon.
I’m a big fan of Pink Floyd too 🙂
Just noticed your post 🙂
A turning point in history, indeed. Loving equivocation is still equivocation. = P
Here’s something lovely (even better if you can find the book “The Ways & Power of Love”), though when it was written his peers thought he was washed-up & nearly crazy for turning away from the disciplinary trends. Soon they recanted, perhaps love was part of it.
https://www.rootswholehealth.com/blog/5-dimensions-of-love
What does that sound like? Woo. Quasi-emergentism?
“Evolution is” … a chocolate eclair & anyone who doesn’t like eclairs just doesn’t need to eat them. & that’s ‘science’ too. ; )
History happens, hurrah. Why just call history ‘evolution’ thus muddying the communicative waters involving many other varieties of change?
Yes, love.
CharlieM,
I don’t see any contradiction between (1) believing that Trump is an utterly vile human being who ought to be despised and (2) recognizing that anyone who had been raised as he was, in the environment he was raised in, would have ended up being pretty much just like him.
As for the opinions I have expressed here, you are free to believe or not. The fact that the commonly used Western dating system is centred around the time that Jesus was thought to have been born is evidence that it has been generally considered to be a turning point in the Western world.
Thanks for the link.
Look at history for an example of this path. There was a time when the masses, who generally could not read or write, were dependent on their leaders to interpret any written works considered to be suitable for them. Individuals were much more under the control of the tribal or clan leaders. Today, as individuals, we are much more free to go where we want, to believe as we want and to act as we want. I’m not sure where a person would think the woo is here.
You are free to believe as you wish; in fact much more so than your ancestors would have been. Do you think that the people living in Europe in the Middle Ages were as free as we are today to criticise Christianity?
I am not trying to muddy any waters. Do you believe that there is such a thing as the evolution of consciousness, or that the earth has evolved along with the life upon it? If you are unsure what I mean when I use the term ‘evolution’ just ask and I’ll try to clarify my position. I do try to justify my beliefs.
His brother became a drug addict
CharlieM,
You wrote a bunch of stuff, but I don’t think you answered my question. Why should Trump be loved unconditionally?
Just so. He’s a glory addict. There are, no doubt, lots of reasons for this. But that doesn’t make him lovable.
Then you do not understand Jesus when He is quoted in Luke 23:34 as having said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”.
I have never met Trump so I only know him from what I get from the media. I have witnesses him on TV doing and saying some nasty things. If we are going to despise anyone he is an easy target. But I believe he acts in ignorance. If he had a better grasp of right and wrong he would not act as he does. Whether or not I hate him will make no difference to him, but I do think that such hate does not do me any good. So I try to despise his actions where I think these are justified and I try to avoid judging the man himself. Why should I let another person have control over my feelings when I myself can judge his actions and decide which I find despicable.
I believe his own action will judge him in the end. I certainly would not want to be in Donald Trump’s shoes.
To be honest I really don’t care about what Jesus is reported to have said or not said.
I can accept that giving into feelings of hate is psychologically destructive to the person who feels that hate. But I don’t think there’s anything to judge of anyone apart from their actions.
Because for love to be pure it should be given without any thought of reward or personal gain. This is unconditional love.And we should aspire to treat everyone equally. Loving another person does not mean keeping quiet about anything we consider to be wrongdoing on their part. In fact it is the person who loves the other that would be the most suitable person to tell them that they are wrong in what they are doing.
Loving others leads to unity and hating leads to division. IMO we should all be striving for unity. If we really knew ourselves we would understand the saying, ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. Who knows what we are each capable of given the circumstances.
We should be able to separate the person from their actions. Even the people that we think are the biggest villains are capable of some loving acts. Feeling of love or hate has more of an effect on the giver than the receiver. And when feelings of hate are acted upon in the extreme then things like terrorism arise.
I don’t think that there are very many people, including myself, who find Trump to be lovable. That is the whole point.
And so you are saying the same thing as me, we should judge their actions.
Well, I dunno. Seems to me rather than wondering whether to love him, folks should have thought harder about whether to vote for him.
I don’t think we can or should separate a person from their actions. I think that a person is (more or less) the sum of their actions, large and small, and that is the story we tell about them when they have died.
This semester I plan on teaching some James Baldwin in my existentialism class. Here’s a quote relevant to the present discussion:
I basically think of Trump as being like Sheriff Clark: what is doing to the country and to the world is ghastly; but something happened to make him what he is which is (in some ways) much, much worse — his moral life has been destroyed by xenophobia, misogyny, and affluence.
Charlie,
I never agree with walto but he is right. The love Jesus showed and asked his followers to display was impartial but not unconditional…Otherwise Judas Iscariot would have gotten a pass…
Thanks for the OP…. It made me reevaluate my impartiality and love…
ETA: If love were unconditional I would have to agree with the oxymoron of directed evolution by Entropy. Or entropy = information…I can’t! I won’t!
I think that we get the leaders we deserve. People quite often vote for the candidate that they think can give them the most personal benefit. So if selfish desires are the motives then Trump obviously convinced those who voted him in that they would be better off.
But asking one’s self the question; is there any way I could actually love Trump? This turns my attention back onto myself. I am prompted to examine my own thoughts and feelings. I have to look within and be honest with myself which is a good exercise. If we decide that there is no way that we could ever love Trump then I would say that is a measure of how far we fall short of God’s love.
What would you say about two people who perform the same actions for different motives, say, someone steals in order to feed their starving family and another person who steals for personal gain?
Telling a story and judging are two different things. It is very easy to pre-judge without having all the facts.
Yes, reading passages like this and books like, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee makes one question how human beings can treat each other in this way. And then you see the other side, the dignity and strength of those being mistreated, and you think that there is hope for humanity. And any normal person will know exactly which one of the two they should aspire to become like. The irony is that any sparks of hatred we feel for the perpetrators if allowed to develop will make us more like them than their victims.
The love of God is sometimes termed agape.
It’s like, say, a mother’s love for her wayward son. She knows he has done wrong and she might be aghast at some of the things he has done, but she loves him all the same. This does not mean that she believes he should get away with suffering the consequences of his actions. She will be happy to let justice take its course and so will not give him a free pass. None of this affects her love for him.
Thanks for the thanks 🙂 Unconditional love does not mean unconditional agreement. It means recognising differences but loving in spite of this.
From 1 John 4:8 (KJV):
Yes, that is exactly the point. If you told me we should fornicate with everyone–impartially, whether we find them sexually desirable or not, I’d say, “Why in the world would we do that?” Because it’s obviously an absurd suggestion.
The same is true for love. It’s just silly to ask me to love Hitler or Trump or Ayn Rand. I think it makes more sense for me to ask everyone to despise them. If Jesus loves them, he’s confused.
ETA: Oh, and this has nothing whatever to do with whether the lover “gets anything” out of the bargain. That remark of yours was off the point. No one has suggested that one should love only those where one gets something in return. What I’m suggesting is that it’s silly to love people with no (or extremely few) redeeming qualities. Perhaps this is because I don’t share your moral relativism.
Anyhow, there’s only so much time in the day, you know?
I’m not sure to what extent I can will ‘love’, to be honest. I think a general attitude of goodwill towards people, living things in general, or even the vague ‘the planet’, is healthy, but I have no aspirations to make it unconditional, or to call it love. If I saw Trump walking in a rainstorm, I’d give him a ride, because my default position is to try and be generous. But he’s still an odious little man, and I would take some perverse pleasure in seeing him topple.
Not me, in fact I would time a puddle to soak him further. He has caused damage to a lot of people, he can be the greatest wet person ever.
I would love doing that if that counts.
I think that, in many cases, a better translation than love would be treat compassionately. Treating others as you would have them treat you, if you were in their circumstances, is something that you can practice consciously. (I know that philosophers have complaints about the extended Golden Rule, but I think it almost always works in practice. However unclear the Gospels are in various regards, we can be sure that Jesus was an itinerant teacher. The Golden Rule is a fabulous teaching — something that grabs people, and stands a chance of changing their lives for the better — irrespective of whether it is philosophically bulletproof.)
Oddly enough, when I google the phrase “treat compassionately,” I get hits for a Bahá’í teaching with a “Trump clause”:
For me, the crucial question is how to respond compassionately to the millions of Americans who see Trump as their champion, and to the millions of others who see Trump as an instrument of God. It’s hard not to be angry with them. I am angry with them. I despise their meanness, hypocrisy, and willful ignorance. But the circumstance is that the president of the United States is doing his damnedest to disunite the citizenry. And the only sane response, no matter how difficult, is to take personal responsibility for doing what I can to unite.
Daniel 5:21 seems to resonate with the Trump era of the USA. The last phrase of the line is one I’m surprised we didn’t hear more after the 2016 election.
Tom English,
Now, that’s a toughie. How do you unite polar opposites? We have a similar issue with regard to our exit from the EU. Many of the ‘victors’ in our ill-thought-out national referendum have adopted a ‘suck it up, snowflake’ attitude towards those whose wish was, and is, to remain. Some very good friends are on that side of things, and are acting with what I regard as grossly irresponsible glee towards the prospect of our simply ‘crashing out’, with no new agreements in place, eyed up by opportunistic sharks like Trump.
To me, it’s madness.
And I don’t know how I can ‘unite’ with these people. The margin was narrow, but there is no middle ground. Their own attitude played a large part in shaping my present opposition, far stronger now than at referendum time. The small-minded part of me would love to see their red-faced fury if the whole sorry episode were cancelled, precisely because of that attitude. And yet, if they needed my help – with something else – I wouldn’t hesitate.
The point is that I cannot ask you to love anyone or anything. The love that I am talking about, pure love, is intimately bound up with freedom. Loving, if it contains any measure of compulsion whatsoever, is not a free act and therefore is not pure, unconditional love. This unconditional love is given as a pure outpouring towards what is loved and is unaffected by anything the giver of love receives or has received from any external source even if it stems from the entity that is loved.
Pure love is never silly. A being that is able to love Trump in this way (and I have grave doubts that there are any human beings alive who can), does so in freedom. Nothing that stems from Trump has any effect on this love. On the other hand anyone who hates Trump does so precisely because they are allowing him to have an effect on their feelings. The compulsion to do so comes from without.
Yes I do. That is why I am sometimes slow to reply.
I agree that love of life and existence is very healthy. And I would say that taking pleasure in the misfortunes of those we despise is common to us all, but I don;t think it is something we should aspire to (I’m not saying that you do). I would not call this sort of feeling healthy. So personally I would want to aspire to what is most healthy and try to avoid what is unhealthy.
Here you are using the word ‘love’ to mean something that gives you pleasure, self-gratification. This is not unconditional love. But I’m sure you already know that.
Thanks for your input and the quote. I think you have the right response to the Trump regime.
I do have misgivings about the Golden Rule and the related categorical imperative of Kant:
One problem with treating others as you would have them treat you: What if it were a masochist employing this rule? Being strung up and whipped is not how I would like to be treated 🙂
If I am obliged to follow a universal law then, even if my act benefits others, I am not acting freely. The only free acts are those carried out from unconditional love, where there is no compulsion from without. I freely decide how to act and I treat every circumstance on its individual merits.
And acts of loving kindness do not give the person/s they are aimed at a free pass. We have all heard the phrase, you sometimes have to be cruel to be kind. A parent chastising their child for running into the road is doing so out of love although the child will probably not see it that way.
We need someone with the power to effectively chastise Donald in a way that he will take heed for his own good and for the good of the planet. 🙂
CharlieM,
You opened with quotes from Jesus. I don’t see the choice to follow those injunctions as any more a ‘free act’ than any other rationale one could offer. I don’t think one gets far trying to rationalise morality, though there are carrots and sticks involved in the equation, which incentivise. But the child’s “yes, but why?” soon hits the buffers.
So you don’t see the difference between doing something out of duty and doing something out of love?
You can obey many commandments through a sense of duty, but nobody can command you to love another person and Jesus knew that. He knew that genuine love must come from within.
Oh, how that resonates with me. My own mother-in-law… can you believe it?
CharlieM,
I’m certainly not going to defend Kantian ethics, but I do want to make sure it’s correctly understood.
1. The source of the categorical imperative is (Kant tells us) “pure practical reason”. So it’s not like something outside of myself and tells me to act in conformity with the moral law. Rather, the moral law is reason itself at work within me. Reason is not something other than me; it is what I most essentially am, as a rational being. If I’m being “commanded”, it’s not that something outside of me is commanding me; it’s rather that my own reason, what I most essentially am, is commanding what is within me but not what I am essentially am: my selfish “inclinations”.
2. The moral law tells me that I should only act according to that maxim that I can at the same time will to be a universal law. In other words, the only actions that are morally permissible are those that would also be rationally acceptable in a possible world where everyone always performed that action. That doesn’t mean that I have to always do to others what they would like to have done to themselves — I’m not morally obligated to torture the masochist. I am morally obligated to respect everyone as a source of value in their own right and never treat anyone as a mere instrument for the gratification of my own pleasure.
Putting those two thoughts together: Kant thinks that treating everyone as a source of value in their own right and never as a mere instrument for the gratification of selfish pleasure is what would be required if everyone only acted in ways that would be rationally acceptable in a possible world where everyone always acted in that way.
That’s the content and the form of the moral law, and that’s the foundation of all moral standards — not in revelation or in experience but in pure practical reason alone.
Or at least that’s the Kantian story. There’s a lot wrong with it, and for the record (not that anyone asked) the use of “Kantian” in my username is a reference to Kant’s transcendental psychology and correlated critique of dogmatic metaphysics, not to his ethical theory.
IMO the whole system of government needs to be changed. After WW1 Steiner proposed a threefold social order in which there were three spheres of organisation, a cultural, political and economic sphere each dealing with their own affairs. It is based on cultural freedom, equal treatment of individuals in the political sphere and economic fraternity where everyone’s needs are met.
Others have had this vision as is seen in the French Revolution with calls for liberty, equality and fraternity.
But I think that any radical change of this sort would mean that those in power would have to give up far more than they would be willing to consider.
Steiner went into detail about what would be required to achieve this in his time. But these would have to be greatly revised for it to function in a different time and place. Camphill communities such as here and here are usually run along these lines where possible.
CharlieM,
Ah, Rudolf Steiner, a rather curious esoteric soul-ciologist. That’s where you get ‘evolution of consciousness’ from is it, CharlieM? Rather than Dennett?
Gregory,
“Soul-ciologist” is my new favorite portmanteau!
CharlieM should read Teilhard de Chardin or (even better) Hans Jonas. Similar to Steiner in overall view but much more careful and rigorous.
Nonetheless, you talk of what Jesus wanted, taking that as a standard, not what is within. If purely ‘within’, it would need no pointing out by prophets, and people would not feel obligated to make an extra effort for their sake. And indeed, there is something within – I ascribe it to our history as social animals – which is why atheists like myself can behave in much the same way as your average theist, without being directed to by religious figures.
Charlie’s statement on love is simply wrong.
Can’t do it? Then you aren’t born again.
On might argue that the love under discussion is behavior rather than feeling, but that is contradicted by the “all your heart” clause.
I do have empathy for the members of my species.
You could say the same about person without any feelings towards Trump at all.
And you would be quite right, the choice to follow his injunction to love your enemies cannot be called free. It doesn’t matter if we regard the Gospel stories as truth or fiction we can still study the characters therein and the stories make it clear that Jesus was a charismatic character who had great influence over his followers.
And so if any of his disciples resolved to put into practice the advice to love their enemies it was probably due to his powers of persuasion. They acted, not in freedom, but because they were doing what they were told.
But the actual act of loving your enemies cannot be achieved by any external persuasion. You can be persuaded to act in a way that mimics this love but this is not the same thing as actually feeling genuine love towards them. This must be a free act for it to have any meaning.
So if it is us who are commanding ourselves then we are capable of free will?
So where does the obligation come from? Can I will myself to do something against my own will?
The problem is that in laying down universal moral laws, moral standards which must be obeyed, does not lead to freedom. This does not mean that there should be no laws of the land laid down. We need these precisely because we are imperfect and need these restrictions to safeguard society.
But if we look at how modern culture has evolved we can see a progression towards freedom. The Ten Commandments were laws laid down from without much like present day state laws. They were laws which the people were obliged to follow. And most of them were telling the people what they should not do. Jesus said basically, ‘I am telling you something that, if you as an individual can achieve, will make these external laws unnecessary.’ You will then act within the law, not because you are compelled to do so, but because you want to do what is right and just.
So you believe in an unknowable, ‘thing in itself’?
Steiner and others such as Owen Barfield just pointed out the obvious, consciousness evolves.
Do you believe that consciousness evolves or do you believe that it has remained as it is throughout the history of life on earth?
I have read Teilhard de Chardin. Thanks for pointing me towards Hans Jonas. I have found this video on youtube which I will look at more carefully when I get the time. It is a comparison of the thoughts of Jonas and Whitehead on “The Concept of Organism”
What is it that this something is contained within?
What prevents its existence from being objective?
Are you arguing here out of your own free will, or are you being compelled to do so? Could you be expressing you own personal thoughts here without the help of the teachers who have educated you and brought you to your current level? Are they still with you telling you what to write?
What do you mean by, ‘born again’?
What do you think is meant by these words?