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Hey Meph,
From the "What it Love?" thread, you wrote the following:
Love is when a person A acknowledges another person B’s unique existence, and on that basis,
1) attributes positive aesthetic appreciation to person B’s individual, unique existence,
2) has some form of personal relationality with person B and,
3) seeks, whenever possible, to empower the other person B to have the ability to become more of a person before God and him/herself in such a way that the empowered person B is NOT dysfunctionally reliant upon the empowering person A.
and…
4) seeks to, whenever possible, enhance the intensity of beautiful experience for person B.
This conception of love can be instantiated in the God/God, God/world, and world/world arenas. This also holds the Kierkegaardian conviction that God is always the "middle term" in any earthly loving relationships. In my view, any Christian trinitarian worldview's concept of love HAS to be able to do this.
Question:
In view of the "Calling Mephi to the Witness Stand" thread, how does love, as you've defined it here (quite eloquently!), square with how WE love God? In other words, not God/God, God/world or world/world, but world/God?
Item 1) seems fine, though, it seems superfluous to attribute positive aesthetic appreciation to someone who doesn't need it.
Item 2) seems fine if it's of any importance to God that we would like to be in relationality with God.
Item 3) "seeks, whenever possible, to empower the other person B to have the ability to become more of a person . . ." God can't be anymore empowered by our loving Him, obviously.
Item 4) "seeks to, whenever possible, enhance the intensity of beautiful experience for person B." Obviously way out there; we enhance the intensity of beautiful experience for God?
Give me some feedback here, Meph, in view of the conclusions of the "Meph to the Witness Stand."
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? |