oladotun Posted January 31, 2008 Share Posted January 31, 2008 For the life of me, I could never understand the Christian concept of "love" during my fundie days? I would hear over and over again how much God loves us and how his disciples were supposed to be vessels of that love, but this is what I discovered about this so-called love. Christian love is just a tool used to manipulate people. For instance, how many times have you heard preachers say "hate the sin, but love the sinner." And I would always wonder to myself, "but Mr. Preacher man, I thought you told me that we have all sinned and fallen short of God's glory, so if you hate the sin, and I do sin, according to the Bible, then won't you end up hating me?!" Of course, the way this is carried out practically is always by selectively picking and choosing the sin of the day which is a hot button issue. So sexual immorality is a favorite to pick on, and so is homosexuality and abortion just to name a few depending on which denominational branch you belonged to. I found it very interesting that I rarely heard anything about stuff like greed, pride, envy, coveting and all that other stuff mentioned in the Bible... Ultimately, what I realized is that this so-called "love" that Christians talk about and profess to show ends the minute you stop agreeing with their fundementalist garbage. That is when terms like secular-humanist, liberal or any other "godless" name is then used to brand you and justifiably hate you. Any thoughts? Is Christian love a myth? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-Captain Posted January 31, 2008 Share Posted January 31, 2008 I would say they capitalize on the meaning others give to the word love, while their love means something else entire. Say god and christ and church are love enough and a few lonely sorts will believe it. Sad really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godlessgrrl Posted February 1, 2008 Share Posted February 1, 2008 That "hate the sin, love the sinner" crap always reminds me of a particular adult in my life who used to call me stupid. Her phrase was something like, "For a smart kid, you sure do some stupid things." It's a variant on the simpler phrase, "For a smart kid, you sure act stupid." If called on it, of course, she could always fall back on a literalist wording and claim that she wasn't actually calling me stupid, just calling my behavior stupid; but there was always the implication buried in there that if I were smart for real I wouldn'tve acted so stupidly in the first place. Ergo, it was a slimy and backhanded way of her calling me stupid, and phrasing it in such a way that she could freely get away with it. Truth is, an insult is an insult, whether you dress it up in pretty rhetoric or lay it out plain as day. It doesn't matter if someone pretends that they love you, if they talk to you like they can't stand you, their alleged love is a fucking lie. So is there such a thing as "Christian love"? Well - I'd say that, Christians, being like any other humans, can be loving people. It just depends on the Christian. But love and kindness and compassion are not the sole property of Christians; they aren't qualities invented by Christians, and they aren't exclusive to Christians. Love is love, just like hate is hate. If a Christian loves someone it's because they're a loving person. But "Christian love"? I call bullshit. Especially since most of it seems to come in a form a lot like the example illustrated up above. How many times have you heard Christians cite Biblical verses calling unbelievers fools, or telling us that we're morally bankrupt by default, or that gay people are defective and living in willful sin, or any of a number of other slanderous, dehumanizing lies? And then how many times have you heard the same people tack on some disclaimer, a brief little phrase along the lines of "but Jesus loves you, and I'm telling you this for your own good, because I love you too"?? Yeah. Right. That's bullshit. Calling hate love doesn't make it love. Calling abuse kindness doesn't make it kindness. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, lays eggs like a duck, and tastes really good smoked with Hoisin sauce, it's not a fucking goose. But the propensity to be abusive and then lie to cover it up isn't uniquely Christian. It's common to abusers of all kinds. If an abuser is caught, they always deny their actions. They either say it never happened, or that they did it but the victim deserved it, or they pretend that their abusive actions were really good somehow - corrective or loving or what have you. It just sometimes happens that people use Bible verses to back up their abuses. But it's crap, no matter how you slice it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oladotun Posted February 1, 2008 Author Share Posted February 1, 2008 That "hate the sin, love the sinner" crap always reminds me of a particular adult in my life who used to call me stupid. Her phrase was something like, "For a smart kid, you sure do some stupid things." It's a varia ow you slice it. I could not agree with you more. I sometimes wonder how I endured the spiritual abuse called Xtianity for so long. I guess for me it was the futile attempts to rid myself of all the "sinful tendencies" that were being pointed out in me to make myself more lovable. But wait, I thought they said 'God loves you just the way you are..?" Oh, but it always came with a condition "but he doesn't want you to stay there, he wants you to be holy.." So then I slaved trying to be holy to be more acceptable, and this in turn led to more frustration because not only arr the holiness standards of the Bible impossible to keep, they are self-defeating. So you can imagine the mental madness I was going through before I said. "Fuck this, I'm outta here, this is all nonsense and the ultimate form of abuse..." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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