That was good, I like how you see love as our primary objective.
I think we would agree on a fair amount of things, but I think we are coming at the "God thing" from different perspectives, and different terminology of words and ideas.
I will give you an example- you said "eternal life is one of the results of us fulfilling our earthly objective" I see our earthly objective as are we going to be part of Gods Kingdom and rule and reign with Jesus and complete his prayer that " we would be one with him, even as he is one with the Father". God is building a Kingdom and he has invited us in to join him and become part of the ruling family, living in this age that is the promise of God. For me Gods love is a given, its who he is, he can do nothing other than love, and we are called to aline ourselves with him and when we do, we become like him and love is the byproduct of our alignment with God.
If people reject the Holy Spirit( blaspheme the Holy Spirit) and live for self, when they die, go to the LOF for refinement Mat25:46 they go to aionios kolasis, which is the refinement of the age, once all that is not of God is purged, they bend the knee and confess with their tongue, and they are the subjects of the kingdom.
I see our time on earth like a qualifying lap for a race, how we do now determines our placement in the next age.
another example of how I see things differently - you talk about " accepting God's charity (Love)" , to me that sounds as if his Love is an aspect of God we need to accept, like his justice or wrath or mercy. I see God as Love itself its his essence and character, not an aspect of him we can either accept or reject. This makes everything that God does love, his wrath is love, his judgement is love, his mercy is love.
So if a non believer loves his children he is demonstrating God, even though he doesn't know that is what he is doing.
As for Jesus having to go to the cross and die a horrible death in order for humans to fulfill their objective. I really am on another page.
Because I believe God is love and can do nothing that is not out of love, God because he is creator and for him to get this creation to the place he wants it to be, needed to allow evil in so that we could have free will. Because God allowed evil knowing that it would accomplish his objective , but at the same time evil would bring death,pain, suffering and all kinds of bad stuff, in love he must bear the cost of his actions, so God/ Jesus paid the price for our freedom, Jesus became human, lived a sinless life and was brutally killed and became sin. 2 Cor 5:19" In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting peoples trespasses against them" Jesus entered into our delusion of separation from him and brought all humanity to himself, but the process is still playing out and will not be done till 1Cor15:28 When God is all in all .
God is infinite and no one can 100% know all about him, we are on an eternal journey to become more conformed to Jesus and that never ends.
You have brought up a lot of heavy topics, which would take us a ton of words and questions to address, but I am willing to do just that, but do you want to go down that path?
I briefly tried to define “Godly type Love”, but since God is Love, we cannot ever explain it fully and many a book has been written on it.
Yes! God being the epitome of Love, all His wrath, justice, discipline and punishments are fully controlled by His Love, but that takes a ton of words to explain.
To begin with what you said:
“I see our earthly objective as are we going to be part of Gods Kingdom and rule and reign with Jesus and complete his prayer that " we would be one with him, even as he is one with the Father".” And “we are called to aline ourselves with him and when we do, we become like him and love is the byproduct of our alignment with God.”
You are cheapening “Godly type Love”, by suggesting it is a “byproduct” and the result of “when we do align with God”.
Godly type Love is way beyond: logic, something we can learn or develop, but we can accept it automatically by accepting God’s Love in the form of forgiveness of an unbelievable huge debt, (our offending the Creator of the universe), so the result is automatically obtaining an unbelievable huge “Love” (Luke 7). Some reason this does not happen is because people think they are not really responsible for their sins, so they are really forgiven of little and “love” little. Others feel they do not have to humble themselves to the point of accept pure undeserved charity (we all find this difficult and will do almost anything to avoid having to accept charity), since God has already forgiven us so there is nothing we can do.
Once we initially obtain, through accepting Godly type Love, that Love can grow with use, but Love comes first. 1 Cor. 13: 1-7 tells us if we do anything without first being compelled by agape/Love it is totally worthless, so would Love not have to come first?
You say: “I see our time on earth like a qualifying lap for a race, how we do now determines our placement in the next age.”
What?? We are trying to “qualify”, and it “Determines” some “reward” in the future???
God does not need to test us (He knows), so why this test?
Where do you get the idea, we are doing something to “get” something?
I have already been given everything, with the excepting of physically being in heaven right now, but I have the promise with guarantees of heave.
You say: “if a non believer loves his children he is demonstrating God”, most animals will sacrifice their own lived for their offsprings, but that is
not Godly type Love. A Parent’s “love” for their child in instinctive, but sometimes Godly type Love is added. Godly type Love is giving up your: free time, money, energy, and even life to help your those wanting to kill you.
You go on to atonement which is a huge topic, I could write a book on, so maybe later.
To start with, I use the parable in Matt. 18 extensively as a proof text to show how forgiveness, Love, atonement, grace, and mercy are not one-sided actions but require action on both the giver and receiver to complete the transaction.
This parable is not explained well by every commentary I’ve read.
Before going into this parable, you need to get the context which may not be obvious;
Matt. 18: 21-35
Peter asked a question and Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but 77 times (or 7x70).
I would say: “Jesus answered Peter’s question, perfectly, a strait forward answer, but Jesus’ answer would produce an immediate follow-up question in the mines of the hearers, yet the apostles would be slow to ask Jesus, so what is on their hearts which? This parable is the follow-up answer to the question Peter (and the other disciples) would have on his/their heart(s).
If I was there at this time, when Jesus says 7 times 70 or 77, I would think: “WOW!! How Can we keep from being taken advantage of by our brothers if we are just going to keep forgiving them every time?”
Jesus then needs to address this bigger question with His parable.
Here are some questions I have asked in the past:
The Master (God as seen in verse 35) is the way the apostles and all Christians are to behave.
The (wicked) servant I think would be referring to all mature adults, but am open to other alternatives? (This example, is it referring to all other humans or just other Christian brothers?)
Here is what we might want to further discuss on Matt. 18:
The Master (God) would have to be doing all His part completely perfectly and all He can do in unconditionally forgive the servant, but does the servant accept being forgiven as pure charity (undeserving/unconditional)?
The servant is asked: “Give me time” and “I’ll pay everything back.” Now this unbelievably huge debt is way beyond any possibility of being paid back and the Master states this and the servant would know this also from going through this amount of money, but what would the Master be tell the world about this servant if he gave him more time? Could the servant take pride in telling others: “The Master gave me more time to pay the whole debt back”?
In management 101 they tell us not to give the person a raise at the same time you give them a performance review, why? They come in wanting to hear what raise they got, and that is all they will hear and remember.
This parable might be a classic example of the person hearing what they wanted to hear. The servant came to the master wanting to hear, “I will give you more time to pay all the debt” while he did not even imagine hearing an unbelievable: “Your debt has been totally unconditionally forgiven”, so what did he hear?
If the servant truly accept unconditional forgiveness of this unbelievable huge debt, would he not automatically have an unbelievable huge Love (really Godly type Love), (Luke 7: 40-50) and would that Love have been seen in Loving the Master’s other servants, which it is not being seen?
If a “unconditional forgiveness transaction” had taken place/been completed how could the Master (God) say and do: “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on the other servant just as I had mercy on you?” 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers. He would be punished until he paid back everything he owed.”?
God being Love would be the perfect forgiver, forgiving everyone of all their wrongs all the time, so how could anyone go to hell?
Is there any other debt the servant owes, since Jesus tells us this is what he owed, that the Master “tried” to forgive?
Does the servant still owe the master, because the servant did not accept the unconditional forgiveness as pure charity and thus automatically Love much?
In the parable, which scenario would give the wicked servant more “glory” accepting or rejecting God’s charity or does it even matter, since all the glory in the story goes to the Master no matter what the wicked servant does?
Can the wicked servant take pride (a false pride) in the fact that, in his mind, he did not “accept” charity but talked the Master into giving him more time?
