How the Church Undermines Love for Neighbour

 
Love means to value the wellbeing of and involves an attitude of love and acting upon that love.

 

For believers in God, this includes supporting one in their relationship with God.  It says that atheist love is inadequate.
 
Christians are told to love God totally and the neighbour as oneself. It is telling they are not to love God as themselves. It is not enough. This commandment is the reason why the atheist should be happier than the believer for the atheist is not bogged down by a law that is impossible to keep for more than three seconds.
 
Valuing the wellbeing of a God who needs nothing from you is a waste of love. It would be cruel of God to ask such a huge sacrifice from you. What would you think of the richest man in the world if he wanted you to sacrifice all your savings for him? It is about him laying down rules - it is not about goodness. People suffer because love is wasted. Believers may say that valuing the wellbeing of God who does not need it is still the right thing to do for he values your wellbeing so you have to love him back. But this overlooks the fact that if he does not need the love he should not ask for it or want it. The best parent is the one who cares for his child but asks for nothing back. If the child responds in love he is pleased, but he does not command this love. If the child does not respond in love but loves others instead he is still happy. It is not about justice for him but about whatever the child thinks is best. In reality, the biggest commandment should not be to love God totally or with all your heart. There should be no commandment for love cannot be commanded. Instead, there should be the major piece of ADVICE. It is love yourself and you will love and serve others if you do.
 
God supposedly brings good out of evil but that would imply that because of his plan to bring about the greater good, there is no way he can bring good out of it for some people. You might suffer terribly for his plan and gain nothing. So the believers would say that in that case though he may not be able to act loving to you he still loves you and that is what matters. It is actually selfish to build a relationship with God in order to fit his plan when you believe that you will get something back - you are afraid that if you step out of the plan you will not gain from it. That ulterior motive is the reason why so many believers hate people who they see as a threat to their faith or relationship with God. It is the reward they are after. Nobody wants to be casualties of God's plan. Believers are hypocrites.
 
It is ludicrous of the believers to thank God when things go well - they are assuming he is doing them a favour instead of assuming it might only be done as a means to bringing about a greater good. Who the greater good will serve is not the point. The point is you are arrogantly assuming God is in the business of making your interests the greater good.
 
More importantly, if what matters is that God loves you even if he cannot act on it for whatever reason, then what about parents and spouses who love you but through weakness let you down? If they were able, they would love you infinitely. Like God, they cannot act out the love very well. The thought that God loves you passively does not mean we should love God any more than we love our family.
 
Christians demand that you love your neighbour as yourself when they don't believe in it themselves. Do they sacrifice themselves to provide organs for those who will die without them? Catholicism puts faith before people by commanding married poor African women who are having sex not to ask the straying husbands to use condoms even though pregnancy and disease can result. Asking is bad enough but commanding is worse.
 
Catholicism says that Mary never sinned.  That a trivial enough doctrine that wasn't obligatory until the middle of the 1850's.  You can be excommunicated from the Catholic Church for saying Mary was a sinner but if you are a Hitler you are still in communion with the Church! You are not excommunicated - thus the Church associates and indirectly links itself with your evil and how bad you are as a person. It even goes as far as to lie that it hates your actions and not what they say about you. That is pure hypocrisy for the problem is you and what your actions say about you. Countless examples could be given.
 
The Catholic claims to love others while holding that some of them should not be allowed to receive communion in Catholic Churches for they are Protestants. Others practice open communion and claim to love others so much that they welcome them to communion and see it as a tool for unity. Religious love does not help much with the important question: "How should I treat others?" It would be easier if we didn't have religious laws and superstitions making an already over-complex matter far more complex.
 
Love your neighbour as yourself is unnatural and difficult - actually impossible is the right word. It can only lead to frustration and pent-up anger and self-condemnation that is taken out on the ones that deserve your devotion.
 
Human nature prefers looking good to being good. That is why those who hide their good works are few and far between. That is why if people get bad food in your cafe they tell the neighbourhood and say nothing to you. They feel bad about telling you but they do not feel bad about talking behind your back and ruining your business. Love your neighbour as yourself could be a smokescreen.
 
It is harder and more unnatural if the neighbour is considered to be a bad mean person. Love the sinner and hate the sin is as silly as love the nurse and hate the woman who is the nurse. The teaching that we must love the sinner and hate the sin because we are sinners ourselves suggests that hating the sinner is good but only if you are not a sinner! It involves wishing you were in a position to be able to hate the sinner! That is a fine love - it is really a demonstration of how we prefer looking good to being good.
 
The self-righteous forgiving people boast about the freedom they have when they forgive.
 
If they think the evil people they forgive are sick then that was not forgiveness but condescending pity.
 
They can't think that the evil people they forgive will benefit. They forgive for their own sake. Not theirs. That is not forgiveness - it is just refusing to let oneself be hurt by what happened.
 
If they say they forgive for God's sake only then they are not thinking of the evil people at all but of God. In so far as you forgive a person for somebody else, you do not really forgive that person.
 
Real forgiveness requires that you judge the evil people properly first to see how responsible they are. The Christians assume the worst and then forgive. Forgiving like that is not forgiving at all.
 
Hell in this work means everlasting punishment for sin from God.
 
Catholics see many minor misdemeanours as grave sins deserving of everlasting torment in Hell. For example, a short spell of masturbation. If a person does wrong and you see that wrong as very heinous though it is not, and you forgive, what you are forgiving is not them at all. You are playacting. You choose to be very offended and unreasonably offended and then you let go. That is orchestrated.
 
To like is to value. You do not value money if you feel disdain for it or if you feel nothing for it. You do not value person A who you dislike as much as person B who you like. The Church says that you love your neighbour even if you feel intense dislike for them by dong good for them despite your feelings. They separate love from feelings. This is nonsensical. It is refusing to admit that intense feelings of dislike are hate, failure to love. The Church tells the lies in order to persuade people to hate each other as they proclaim themselves to be loving. The Church wants people to become fake and deceitful in the name of God. Nobody would bother with Christianity if it taught that we must like our neighbour as ourselves for that is a very demanding ethic. It sets people up for failure and is too harsh. It is so soul destroying that it will only wreck human relationships and asphyxiate people with guilt. The Church is thinking purely of itself and not the harm that a strict morality that nobody can live out and which will remove all pleasure from life can do.
 
Many believe that to say you may help others and that is love even if you can't feel any love for them is to contradict the command of Christ that we must treat others as we like to be treated and we like people to express the fact that they like us by doing things for us. That being liked is more important than anything they do.
 
The rule of love your neighbour as yourself is just more cheese in the Christian mousetrap. It makes people feel good and attracted to Christianity. It makes them feel secure and they delude themselves that when God gave the command he really cares about our happiness. Yet they know better. They know that if you give away most of your fortune there is no way to be sure if you have loved yourself as much as your neighbours. They know that it is not clear if you are loving yourself as much as your neighbours when you get the charges dropped against them for beating you to a pulp. I could write out more examples and it would take ten years to cover a quarter of them.

 

There is that issue but "Love your neighbour as yourself" is not commanding you to love yourself.  It is not, "Love your neighbour and yourself and as yourself."  It is only admitting you already love yourself and you cannot really command somebody to love themselves.

 

If the love teaching were valid, it is ruined by all the nasty accessories and the theological context.

 



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