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.