I have an idea for something I want to do and I would like to know if this is a true representation of love...
I would like to have a bunch of kids with the soul purpose of loving me and accepting my ideals. All throughout their lives, I will have them give me 10% of their income and actively recruit others to my way of thinking. I will also expect them to read my book which I have written to outline all of my ideals.
If they do all of these things, I will buy them a big house and give them enough money for early retirement so they can have an existence of leisure without a care in the world...
However, if they don't do this, I will burn them alive and torture them. I will tell everyone that it's not the way I wanted it to go down and that I am the one who's being hurt by this.
So...is this a fair situation and an accurate representation of the love that a parent should have for their child?
If no, tell my why???
Is this love? No. It's a business transaction. You do what I say, and I pay you. You don't do what I say, and I torture you. It is a contract of diress, like saying, "If you love me, I will give you your heart's desire. If you don't, I will shoot you in the head. But I've given you an out, a free gift to save your life. Please don't make me shoot you!"
Anyone who is willing to shoot you doesn't love you.
This is the unfortunate Ogre God presented in Modern Day Christianity. It believe that it is the ultimate sacrelige of what God is. God is nothing like that, but the saved, happy with their own salvation, callously shrug and say, "ah, well. You had your chance. I'm going to heaven..." And you deserve it, don't you? I mean, look how good you are! You aren't like "thoooooose people", who lie, and steal, and take drugs, or have sex, or who knows what else. You practically deserve heaven. I mean, seriously, do you want to live in heaven with homosexual? Eeewwww.
Then they scratch their heads, not understanding why we don't want to join their Whites Only golf club, where it's exclusive, so you feel special.
My brother was a former pastor, and at my father's funeral, we were talking one night. I said, "I don't really think God cares much at all about sin. If all you can say is, "Look at me! I don't steal or kill people", you are pretty pathetic. What God is concerned about is us loving each other, as he loves us, and in so, we are loving God (whenever you have done this for the least of these, you have done the same to me.) What are you doing to help others? To comfort others? To sacrifice your time, or money, or possessions, to help another desparately in need? If we all loved our neighbor as ourselves, the world would be much, much different. But we unfortunately are selfish. Our greed creates polution, strife, anger, and frustration, and strangle our love, like the seed in the rocky ground. Our ego strangles our humility, and exhalts us, making us feel good, but leaving others angered by being put down. We have the capability of traveling into space, or finding cures for disease, and the capability for splitting atoms and destroying the world. God loves us, so that we will love others, and create heaven on Earth. It's that simple, but so simple, that no one understands it. They make it compicated, with theology, and rules, and ritual, and get so tangled up in the manmade ways, convinced that they have found the fine print that God demands, when it is quite the opposite. They show a God that demands blood, a sinless virgin human sacrifice, to appease his anger, and will even watch The Passion, saying, "Wow, Jesus really suffered. Now I know how much he loves us," as if giving one's life isn't enough unless there is excrutiating pain involved. At that is man's understanding. Man killed Christ, not God. If that is all God wanted, he would have led Herod to baby Jesus, and killed him right there, and be done with it. But Jesus forgave sin prior to his crucifixtion. He forgave the adulterous. He forgave the prostitute. He forgave the man whom he healed. And he told us to forgive each other, to not demand a revenge price, but to forgive, and to do so endlessly.
My brother said, "You know, this is the way I have come to look at it, after all my schooling, and all my life experience. God loved us. Man disobeyed, and didn't love God back. God continued to love us, and sent Jesus to teach us what that love means. And man rejected Jesus, and killed him. God continued to love us, and keeps loving us, until we understand what love really is, and love one another as he loved us.
It was oddly in line with what I was saying. God doesn't "demand" our worship. That is a manmade idea, of bowing to kings, or laying hands on cardboard cutouts of Bush. Rather, I would liken it to this: My partner and I adopt a child who came from a pretty terrible home. He's angry, he's learned to trust no one, learned to look out only for himself, because no one else will. My partner and I take him in. We make him food. We buy him clothes. He resents us, hating having "My Two Dads," and in return, we simply love him. We listen to some of the times when he was emotionally hurt, and do what we can to comfort him. Feeling vulnerable, he pulls away. He says he hates me. And I understand, and love him in return. He grows to trust us, to like us, but this is something that he isn't used to. Everyone he has ever trusted has betrayed him, so he acts out. I come home, and he has broken a window, even gloats about it. He would rather see the rejection coming, than inadvertantly find himself kicked out of the house one day. I tell him that it makes me feel upset, and I call the window repair. I may tell him that he is grounded. He is confused, because I don't want to ship him off, like he has been by every other foster family. He starts to realize that we love him unconditionally. He stops acting out. He starts to trust. He starts to reach out, and to create, instead of destroy, and sees that the love is always constant, always there, has no sudden expiration date. And one day, he realizes that he loves us, too. Like friends, we don't demand that love, but it just naturally flows out from one another, fully reciprocal. Soon, he is treating others in the name of love, and healing, and healing the others by his words, thoughts and actions. They, in turn, treat others in kind, and he has spread love the way the sun lights up the morning. When they stop to be greatful, and thank him for what he has done, he smiles and says, "Don't mention it. It was nothing." He becomes a new creation, one his former family probably wouldn't even recognize. He "tithes" 10%, not to fill the temple with gold - what does God need gold for? - but to give to others in need - charities, the hungry, the sick.
Do I demand for his love, demand that he sit at my feet and tell me I'm the Man? Of course not. It isn't self love. I love him, and I am happy only when the love that I give him is instilled in him, able to love others. That is my hope, and what I want in him.
And that's all it is.
