Two properties of Christian Love

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ArlissWhiteside
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Two properties of Christian Love

Post by ArlissWhiteside »

I recently read the book "How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian" by John Dominic Crossan. John is a well-known and widely read Christian author. In this book, John argues that Jesus Christ strongly advocated two activities:

1. Nonviolence toward other persons

2. Distributive justice, providing all persons with all they need.

John concludes that these two activities are specific aspects of Jesus' more general commandment to "Love one Another."

wvanfleet
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Re: Two properties of Christian Love

Post by wvanfleet »

And I think Jesus was advocating something very good. However, I think that we can go further than that.

There would be many disagreements as to what "violence" consisted of. For instance, is spanking children an example? Some would say yes, others no. Does "violence" consist of both physical violence and non-physical violence? Some would perhaps say no, that violence was only physical. But if there is non-physical violence, where is the line drawn between that kind of violence and anything another person doesn't like?

The REUEP would go beyond that. I, a Humanian, would say that we should refrain from hostile acts in general, whether violent or not. I would also say that we should work toward the elimination of punishment, and learn non-punitive child rearing. We do not consider grounding a child or taking something away to be violence, even though it is punishment. And I think locking people up for non-violent substance abuse-related behavior is not considered to be violence, though we are beginning to see how inconsistent that is with the REUEP (even though we provide all they "need" while locked up, presumably).

Distributive justice is a good thing, I would say. But what things are needed and what are just desired? I believe we should work toward giving people more than they need, if possible. I believe in fostering good feelings in people, not just refraining from fostering bad feelings.

But from what you say, I gather that loving one another does go beyond these two things--that these two things are specific aspects, but do not constitute all included aspects.

I believe that Christianity, and all the religions, need to keep improving, moving in the direction of Humanianity.

ArlissWhiteside
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Re: Two properties of Christian Love

Post by ArlissWhiteside »

Of course, the author of this book provides more details than I included in my very brief summary. However, neither Jesus nor the author try to state these things with the precision desired in the Humanianity Belief Manual. (It might be interesting to consider why they do not.)

wvanfleet
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Re: Two properties of Christian Love

Post by wvanfleet »

I think one reason is that precision of word usage is an acquired procedure, not inherent in the way all of us learn language. We all start out poetic. We to a greater or lesser extent become technical. Precision of word usage is required the more important it is to accomplish precise results.

Another reason is that what determines what we do is highly dependent upon our emotions or motivational states, and so we learn how best to influence each other by having an effect on each other's emotions and motivational states. That is done best by poetry, not technical language (which is designed to prevent error that might be introduced by non-relevant motivational states). Effective poetry derives its effectiveness, not by precision, but by connotation and innuendo.

But for us to stop having ethical beliefs that cause PSDED, we have to make our pursuit of our basic ethical philosophy a technical activity.

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