jar - On Christianity

IMHO the other thing that must be emphasized is that the Second Commandment is a two parter. Before you can love others you must first love yourself.

What you are doing is trying to graft modern pop psychology onto the Bible. I don't there's anything in the Bible about how we need to learn to love ourselves. That sounds very unBiblical to me.

robinrohan:

I don't there's anything in the Bible about how we need to learn to love ourselves. That sounds very unBiblical to me.

We have the statement 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.'

A certain amount of self-love is understood.

Without it, no one is loved at all.

Edited by Archer Opterix, : Concision.

Edited by Archer Opterix, : Restored original wording to match quote.

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Archer

All species are transitional.

A certain amount of self-love is understood.

I know but it's spoken of in a different way. It's taken for granted that we love ourselves in the Bible. Jar is talking about the pop psychological concept popularized in the 60s and 70s. Very different.

IMHO it is really an important point. The really hard part IMHO is that it requires you to really look at yourself honestly. It is none of the soft sentimental self-esteem bullshit that many folk try to sell, Rather it is an honest personal evaluation, that then leads to actual actions relating to what YOU do, then to what you do oustside.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

jar writes: IMHO it is really an important point. The really hard part IMHO is that it requires you to really look at yourself honestly. It is none of the soft sentimental self-esteem bullshit that many folk try to sell, Rather it is an honest personal evaluation, that then leads to actual actions relating to what YOU do, then to what you do oustside.

IMHO I think that you're ascribing too literal a meaning to that text. Jesus was quoting the scripture from Leviticus when He made the statement about "loving your neighbour as yourself", when he was asked which is the greatest of the commandments, referring to the Jewish scripture. His answer was limited to what was written in the those scriptures.

The whole story of the NT is that we are to be imitators of Christ. Christ loved us enough that he died for us. We are actually called upon to love our neighbours more than ourselves. Eph 5: 1-2 says: "Be imitators of God, therefore as dearly beloved children 2; and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to Go."

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion. :)

Christ loved us enough that he died for us.

Yeah, some Christians believe that. It never made much sense to me though. I believe that he lived for us.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I would agree that both are true, although I am with you in that I don't understand Him dying for us either, but I believe that it is part of his message so I take it on faith. I don't expect to understand everything.

Let's stick to Him living for us. His whole life was a life of service to others. He could have been a powerful figure in the church and lived a life style that would have been the envy of the vast majority of that society.

He didn't. He put others ahead of himself and lived a life of relative poverty in order to fulfill his mission to others. In other words he loved his neighbour more than himself, and we are called to do likewise. Again I think that when you look at Christ's quote from Leviticus you are taking too literal a reading of it. He is just quoting the Jewish scripture.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion. :)

Well, it may be slightly more than "just reading". He was asked what was most important wasn't he?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" 29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.[e] 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'[f] 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[g]There is no commandment greater than these."

It was a response to a "teacher of the law" who was asking which was the most important of the laws as presented in Jewish scripture. Christ's teachings went beyond what was written in the OT.

GDR wrote.

It was a response to a "teacher of the law" who was asking which was the most important of the laws as presented in Jewish scripture. Christ's teachings went beyond what was written in the OT.

You're suggesting this summation was incomplete in some way. I don't see how. Everything in Christ's teachings expresses the same categories--loving God or loving others.

It's an excellent summation.

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Archer

All species are transitional.

The really hard part IMHO is that it requires you to really look at yourself honestly. It is none of the soft sentimental self-esteem bullshit that many folk try to sell, Rather it is an honest personal evaluation, that then leads to actual actions relating to what YOU do, then to what you do oustside.

An eccentric definition of the word "love."

ABE: I want to know where in the Bible it says we have to learn to love ourselves.

Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

Archer Opterix writes: You're suggesting this summation was incomplete in some way. I don't see how. Everything in Christ's teachings expresses the same categories--loving God or loving others. It's an excellent summation.

I agree that it is an excellent summation of OT law. Christ's life and teaching went beyond that. Christ's life gave us the example of living for others. It wasn't just a matter of balancing off his own needs with his ministry, but it was about a life of total service. We are called to love our neighbours more than we love ourselves. That is the message of the whole NT.

Frankly, IMHO that is one of the problems with literalism. If you take the statement of loving your neighbour as you love yourself literally you are only get a part of the message. When you take the Bible, Christ's life and human experience together it is obvious that a life of service that is born from a true love of others is a life full of joy. Those that spend their lives looking after number one find that in the end they are serving a god that can never be satisfied.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion. :)

Christ's life and teaching went beyond that. Christ's life gave us the example of living for others. It wasn't just a matter of balancing off his own needs with his ministry, but it was about a life of total service.

I don't quite see that or that his message is of total service. His message was about living life. He partied, threw fishfries, went to weddings, laughed and cried with his friends, played jokes on them and chided them at times.

Jesus did not make EVERY lame person walk, or all the blind to see or raise all the dead or cure every leper he passed. He lived life. He did not seek out the sick, the lame, the blind, the leper. He didn't open a clinic or hospital, nor a soup kitchen or church. He lived life. When an opportunity came along he took it.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

jar writes: I don't quite see that or that his message is of total service. His message was about living life. He partied, threw fishfries, went to weddings, laughed and cried with his friends, played jokes on them and chided them at times.

I life of service is a life of joy. Isn't it an act of service and love to bring acceptance and laughter to others at a party? The neighbour that you are to love can actually be the guy who lives next door, your best friend or even your spouse and the kids.

jar writes: Jesus did not make EVERY lame person walk, or all the blind to see or raise all the dead or cure every leper he passed. He lived life. He did not seek out the sick, the lame, the blind, the leper.

And He still doesn't. However, His whole life was, (and is), focused on loving others, whether it was by what He did or by what He said. We are an eternal people. Sure it is wonderful to see a leper cured, or to have the blind see but in the final analysis those are cures in a temporal world. Isn't it far better to be spiritually cured in an eternal existence. In that way he brought the cure for every man, woman and child. It is up to us to take the medicine.

jar writes: He didn't open a clinic or hospital, nor a soup kitchen or church. He lived life. When an opportunity came along he took it.

Absolutely. He lived life as he encountered it then. Paul writes that the greatest gift of the Spirit is love and we are called to use that gift when we encounter an opportunity in our time.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion. :)

His message was about living life. He partied, threw fishfries, went to weddings, laughed and cried with his friends, played jokes on them and chided them at times.

This characterization of the story and message of the Gospels is rather odd, to say the least.