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ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 7/30/2003 9:21 AM (GMT -6) |   | I have a serious question - can someone explain how it is one chooses to love? I hear on this board constantly that "love must be chosen."
I'm trying to figure out how that would happen. Love is an emotional feeling. It's either there or it isn't. Think about your significant other, did you decide to love that person, or were you overwhelmed in love for him or her? It seems htat people become irrational over love a lot of times- saying "I know he's not good for me, but I can't help the way I feel" - people fall in love all the time when they know they should not, and try not to, but yet cannot resist it.
As far as love for a parent or child- this is mostly instinctual. How many of us would love our brother or sister or parents if they were completely unrelated to us and we had no familial obligation? It's not something we really think about. I know I love my parents, but I feel a very strong blood tie to my family that affects why I have these feelings for them. I never "chose" to feel this way. By the same token, I could never choose NOT to love them, even if I wanted to - b/c this love I have for them exists independent of what i want.
As far as to God, how do you "choose" to love God? How would this be exhibited? You either believe in him or you don't, and you follow him or you don't. It's more that you are exhibiting some "action" in response to God, whether it is worshiping him, obeying him, etc., that shows that you love God. You can choose to love God, or anyone else, if by that you mean you are choosing to sustain this relationship- for example, if you are in an arranged marriage where you don't love your partner initially, you can choose to make the best of it and work at it, and hope that one day feelings of love will come. But can you say, I choose to have feelings of love for my spouse, even though you don't? We all know this feeling of love, you either have it or you don't, you can't "WILL" love into existence.
So i need some examples of how this choosing to love works. Thanks.
"Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow." - C. S. Lewis | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/30/2003 9:26 AM (GMT -6) | | Well, I don't know if this applies to everyone, but I think I subconciously try to maximize my personal suffering in such matters.
But then agains, I'm a masochist. Otherwise, I wouldn't get in so many board exchanges with Pow.
 
dlw
I-uh-scream-uh,
You-uh-scream-uh,
We-all-uh-sceam-uh for
Ice-uh-cream-uh!!!
Roberto Bernigni in
Down by Law.
I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things (especially selling) seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.
C.S. Lewis | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/30/2003 10:11 AM (GMT -6) | | Hey RD,
As I understand it, the Greek language lends a hand. In Greek, there are different words for "love," unlike English. There's the erotic love (Eros), there's brotherly love (Phileo--where we get Philadelphia for "City of brotherly love"), there's another, but then there's the notorious "Agape": that kind of love that is volitional and is of respect. But it's more; however, it serves the purpose, I believe, to address your question.
Agape is the kind of love one gives that is neither necessarily felt nor emotional. It is the decision--based on what is instinctive: that all men are created equal and should be treated as such--to treat people accordingly. When it comes to God, it means that in view of Him being God we are to be committed to Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strenght; none of these necessarily requiring emotion of feeling. It is Agape love that God asks of us and asks us to give to others. THAT is why it is so hard and why Jesus made it the greatest commandment; because there is no feeling in it (well, not all the time, at least!)
There's an interesting play-off of words in the end of John's Gospel, I believe it is. It's where Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love Me?" to which Peter answers "Yes, Lord, You know I do." The catch, however (if I can remember this correctly), is that Jesus asked Peter if He "agape" loved Jesus; Peter responded with "Phileo" love. So, what you have is Jesus asking Peter if He really loves Jesus in complete surrender, submission, and complete devotion, regardless of how Peter feels. Peter (who's probably VERY gunshy after having just denied Jesus) has learned something about sticking his foot in his mouth. He doesn't commit himself to such devotion; he commits only to brotherly love. Eventually, however, you see Peter in full agape love to both God and mankind (remember those Gentiles!).
I hope this helps a bit,
Starkman
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Leila
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 93
| Posted 7/30/2003 10:45 AM (GMT -6) | | | Hi Starkman. I don't know if you helped RD or not, but you did help me. I've had the same questions about love myself. Thanks! | | Back to Top | | |
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ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 7/30/2003 10:47 AM (GMT -6) | | That IS helpful, Starkman, but doesn't that boil down to defining love for God as "obedience" to God? Surrender, submission, taking up your cross - that's what you mean by choosing to love God? OK, but then I'm wondering if this becomes based on works- you're not really in a 'love relationship" with God that you claim is so essential if you have to surrender, submit, obey, etc., you could do all those things without having any feeling for God whatsoever. You could do them b/c you're motivated by fear, or maybe respect, or tradition and culture, etc.
It seems that the OV holds it essential that love cannot exist without free will, and that love is the highest value. But if this love is actually "actions showing submission and surrender"- that can exist without free will - . OVers say that God didn't want robots- he wants people to freely love him. But if that means only that he wants people to worship and obey him (deny self, take up cross, etc.)- that is not equivolent to wanting real love, it seems he could have made robots after all if what he wants is worship and obedience and doesn't care about the genuine feeling of love. | | Back to Top | | |
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ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 7/30/2003 10:54 AM (GMT -6) | | To continue - perhaps there's a problem of definition here. To me, to choose means to be able to opt between choices, all of which are equally possible. In other words, I can choose to have chocolate ice cream over vanilla, I can choose to watch TV over reading, etc. all b/c I can see myself doing any of them. (I accept that I can do any of them)
However, when it comes to other things, the choice we make we are aware of, but we can't explain. For example, if I'm a white male who has a preference for white blonde females, how do I explain that choice? Could I make myself choose to find African american women attractive if I don't? Or say I'm a woman attracted to strong muscular men. Could I make myself find obese men attractive by my choice to do so?
If I'm physically repulsed by liver and onions, can I choose not to be repulsed? So if i'm faced with a choice between liver and onions and pizza, I choose pizza, but is that really a choice?
Similarly, do you choose your belief in Christianity, or is it that there is no other option for you? Could you accept Islam instead, even though you just don't believe it?
Could you join the flat earth society, when they give you all their (BS) reasons for their belief - and try to convince you - could you accept that even though it goes contrary to your own reason and preference?
"Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow." - C. S. Lewis | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/30/2003 11:14 AM (GMT -6) | | RD,
Two things! First, I don't have time to respond at this second, though I wish I could; Second, I hope I can respond later.
(And you thought I was going to say something of notariety, something profound, something stupendous? Who, me? Never!)
Starkman
Starkman | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/30/2003 11:16 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Starkman
RD,
Two things! First, I don't have time to respond at this second, though I wish I could; Second, I hope I can respond later.
(And you thought I was going to say something of notariety, something profound, something stupendous? Who, me? Never!)
Starkman
Starkman
maybe we should start a poll?
dlw
I-uh-scream-uh,
You-uh-scream-uh,
We-all-uh-sceam-uh for
Ice-uh-cream-uh!!!
Roberto Bernigni in
Down by Law.
I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things (especially selling) seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.
C.S. Lewis | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 7/30/2003 4:01 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/31/2003 4:29 AM (GMT -6) | | Hey all,
quote:
... but doesn't that boil down to defining love for God as "obedience" to God? Surrender, submission, taking up your cross - that's what you mean by choosing to love God?
No, those things are results of having first made the choice to love God. And one chooses to love God, and mankind in general, because God is worth it. He, as all of us are, is worth loving. The nobility of mankind makes each of us worth loving each other. Not love driven by feelings, but love driven by respect. So, it isn't just to God to whom we become servants, it is to all men. But obviously God is worth more than just our being His servant, so we give him our all, because He is worth that kind of respect. That's why an understanding of the enymology of the word "worship" is important: it is literally worth-ship. To worship is to express worth, and only God is deserving (worthy) of this kind of expression. A robot, however, cannot express love, worth or respect; it can only do as it is programmed.
(Oh, and just a side note here ... it isn't just the Open View that declares that love means there must be freedom. The Armininan view holds this also. It's the apparent contradiction of "free yet exhaustively foreknown" that bifurcates Arminianism from the Open View; for both camps of believers believe God wants to be loved, and both camps believe that freedom is required to do so. But this is a side note!)
God is not interested in people just worshiping and obeying Him just because He (God) is God, anymore than God is not interested in our being servants to each other simply because we are humans. It is the very intrinsic worth and respect--a worth given to us in our highly created nobility--that comes from Him who is Most Noble. If we understand why we should serve and love each other (because each of us is worth being served and loved), we will understand something about Him who gave us this command and about having been created in His very image!
When we talk of choices between foods or spouses, we are outside of the arena requiring the specific kind of love (agape) that we are to give to all; for we are free to choose what food we will eat and the spouse we will marry (unless, of course, God for some reason says otherwise). Expressing worth to God and mankind is not, however, given with an option of the same nature one has in choosing between foods and spouses. by this I mean we can choose to not serve God, to not love mankind, but then we will have unrobed ourselves of the image of God in which we are made in. The results of this "option" is the mess you see the world has gotten itself in. When this "option" of the negative is expressed in its totality--lived to its fullest--it is the slaughter of thousands and millions which result: one "options" for insisting the worthlessness of someone else and finds the world a better place without that person or race of people in existence. So, it is not an option, in the true sense of the meaning, to choose not to love God or one another as it is to choose liver over pizza or a brunette over a blonde. (Here then is something about what I say often: we are not as free as we think we are. In one case we are free to choose foods, but in the other we are really not free to not love God and not love others. That we think we are free to do so is to have fooled ourselves ... "For the day you eat of the fruit of the Tree, you will die.")
We were created with built-in programming to deliver an expression of His image in us to both Him who made it and to those He made. We were not made in our "own" image with our own autonomy. We were made in His image with His type of nature and the ability to express it as such. To do otherwise is to self-destroy and to destroy others. Our freedom to choose, then, is quite limited. It is only when we turn to God, in appreciation for having been so nobely created in His image, and express our gratitude for such gifts that we will find an understanding of why we are to love, both Him and others. And it is only then that we can make peace with the fact that we aren't really free to do otherwise. That is how He created us.
So, to love in agape is to love within the framework of respect and worth; respect and worth that God alone deserves in our expression of worshiping Him and that all men deserve in action of loveing them.
Once again, I hope this helps some,
Starkman | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 7/31/2003 5:33 AM (GMT -6) | | RD: I have a serious question - can someone explain how it is one chooses to love? I hear on this board constantly that "love must be chosen." I'm trying to figure out how that would happen. Love is an emotional feeling. It's either there or it isn't.
Tom: Hi RD! I wanna ask a question in reponse:
How is it possible to choose to HATE? Is hatred not a thing we believe is a wrong thing to do, something we should and can avoid doing? How does one choose to hate? It's an emotional feeling. It's either there or it isn't.
I don't know about others, but I choose to love my wife. There's nothing overwhelming about it.
Tom  | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/31/2003 6:39 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
I don't know about others, but I choose to love my wife. There's nothing overwhelming about it.
Yeah, well when I tried to love your wife, you had a fit and kicked me in the butt!  What's up with that! (And he has the never to say "There's nothing overwhelming about it.") (Kiddin' ya, bro! [:X]
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/31/2003 6:41 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
I don't know about others, but I choose to love my wife. There's nothing overwhelming about it.
Yeah, well when I tried to love your wife, you had a fit and kicked me in the butt! What's up with that! (And he has the never to say "There's nothing overwhelming about it.") It's a choice, it's a choice (said in my neener-neener-neener voice!) Kiddin' ya, bro! [:X] | | Back to Top | | |
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ReasonableDoubt
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 7/31/2003 7:39 AM (GMT -6) | | Thanks for the answers!
About hate, no I don't think you can choose to hate either. you can choose to not act on that hate, choose to make an effort to be nice, choose to forgive, etc., but if you can't stand someone, you can't stand someone. You can act like you do, but i don't think you can force your feelings.
Basically what's being said is we're talking about love as an action, that you can will yourself to do. I agree with that. I also agree that you can change your attitude.
But I believe the core emotion of love, hate, sadness, etc., are there and we can't change them at our will. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/31/2003 7:42 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by ReasonableDoubt
Thanks for the answers!
About hate, no I don't think you can choose to hate either. you can choose to not act on that hate, choose to make an effort to be nice, choose to forgive, etc., but if you can't stand someone, you can't stand someone. You can act like you do, but i don't think you can force your feelings.
Basically what's being said is we're talking about love as an action, that you can will yourself to do. I agree with that. I also agree that you can change your attitude.
But I believe the core emotion of love, hate, sadness, etc., are there and we can't change them at our will.
So when the wine runs out and the marriage crumbles, that was meant to be or just indicates that the union was never based on "true love" in the first place?
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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ReasonableDoubt
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 7/31/2003 8:04 AM (GMT -6) | | DLW- leave it to you to twist what i say, AGAIN. You can choose to make your marriage work EVEN IF YOU DON'T FEEL IT- in fact, many couples romance dies down over the years- familiarity can breed contempt - but people should choose to honor their commitments- REGARDLESS OF FEELINGS.
My question to you is, if you were single and I was in charge of finding a woman for you to marry - and I picked a woman who weighed 300 pounds, had the personality of a brick wall, and resembled the wicked witch of the west - can you will yourself to feel love for her? Can you will the attraction, the excitement, the passion?
This is hugely different than making the decision to ACT LOVING regardless of your feelings. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 7/31/2003 8:22 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by ReasonableDoubt
DLW- leave it to you to twist what i say, AGAIN. You can choose to make your marriage work EVEN IF YOU DON'T FEEL IT- in fact, many couples romance dies down over the years- familiarity can breed contempt - but people should choose to honor their commitments- REGARDLESS OF FEELINGS.
My question to you is, if you were single and I was in charge of finding a woman for you to marry - and I picked a woman who weighed 300 pounds, had the personality of a brick wall, and resembled the wicked witch of the west - can you will yourself to feel love for her? Can you will the attraction, the excitement, the passion?
This is hugely different than making the decision to ACT LOVING regardless of your feelings.
I don't know, does she like foreign films? Its not a question of libertarian freedom to fall in love with whoever one wants, but one can meet people with whom one has an incredible amount in common with, there can even be a "natural" attraction, and still not have both fall in love. Or, one can fall in love and then fall out. But, I believe it is true that the initial wine/love in marriage inevitably fades but that need not consign them into a contempt-ridden familiarity without love.
I have a great-uncle, he actually is both great and the man who married my grandfather's sister(a description that makes him angry when I introduce him as such), who is a pastor to pastors and who told me and my married sister that marriage is the hardest thing we do, but the most important thing.
Now, that presumes the reality of us making choices about how we choose to die to ourselves in some respects so as to honor the other.
I don't find a belief that the notion that it is predetermined who I would fall helps at all in dealing with the important question of trying to build and rebuild healthy, loving marriages(eventually, perhaps).
(And as a pragmatist, I believe that all problems are at bottom problems of conduct, that all judgments are, implicitly, judgments of value, and that, as there can be ultimately no valid distinction of theoretical and practical, so there can be no final separation of questions of truth of any kind from questions of the justifiable ends of action.
That was taken from C.I. Lewis, "Collected Papers" (Palo Alto:Stanford University Press, 1970) p. 108. Taken from Cornel West's "Keeping Faith" p. 109, 1993, Routledge.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/31/2003 9:21 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
About hate, no I don't think you can choose to hate either. you can choose to not act on that hate, choose to make an effort to be nice, choose to forgive, etc., but if you can't stand someone, you can't stand someone. You can act like you do, but i don't think you can force your feelings.
Here is the essence between agape love and, say, another type of love (/hate). Think about it ... can one choose to hate, say, their own friends? I mean, like, "Okay, today I choose to hate you ... no reason, just thought I'd hate today." It can't be done, if by hating one means to feel that hate. Can one choose to just be hateful in action? Probably, but who the hek would want to do that? Not anyone we figure to be working with a full deck. Now the hatred (or dislike) one can feel is different, obviously, then simply trying to hate someone, which we've already noted as pretty abnormal. So, one cannot really hate another by choice, but can hate with feeling (and that's not by choice either).
Now, what about loving? To just decide to love someone without feeling it can be done, if by love we mean that agape love of respecting a person for their worth and value as a human being. This, unlike hating (with no feeling) is not only possible and normal, but is God's requirement of us--both toward Him and toward others. This is the signficant difference between agape love and any other expression of love. So, one can love with or without feeling, and the Greek words for "love" bring more understanding of how this is possible than the English word "love" is able to do.
quote:
Basically what's being said is we're talking about love as an action, that you can will yourself to do. I agree with that. I also agree that you can change your attitude.
And that's agape love.
quote:
But I believe the core emotion of love, hate, sadness, etc., are there and we can't change them at our will.
And that is not agape love but one of those other types. These kinds of emotions and drives are to be kept in check; though each type of "love" has it's place, none of these is to ever overrule the command given us to "agape" others. So, if we don't like someone, or ever hate someone--something we also are commanded not to do--we must then seek for help to subjugate those feelings and bring agape into rule. Not, by any means, an easy task in life. At least it hasn't been for me.
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