From: daveb@pogo.wv.tek.com (Dave Butler)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Perfect Love loses meaning (was: Perfect Love(...by def...))
Date: 14 Dec 92 22:44:44 GMT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville,  OR.

John Muehlhausen states that his god's perfect love is not "love" as we know
it, but is rather just his god's will:

> God can do whatever He wants, and it is loving.  Period.  That is the
> definition of love: whatever is in God's will.  Whatever is not in God's will
> is not love.  He made us in His image, and His love applies to us as well.

Mr Muehlhausen, this renders the phrase "god's perfect love" quite
meaningless.  If "God's love" is merely another way of saying "God's will,"
then this "love" has no implicit content or meanings for us.  For instance, we
know that your god can hate, and will even take vengeance to the tenth
generation (I can present verses if needs be).  Of course this hate and
vengeance are both by definition "perfect," as they are expressed by your
perfect god.  Further, they are both expressions of your god's will, and so
are thus both expressions of your god's "love." Thus we get the rather
Orwellian statements of "Love is vengeance" and even "Love is Hate." We can
even use such reasoning to justify the conclusion "Love is..." for any other
expression of your god's will/love.  The statement "God love us," thus becomes
meaningless; it could mean just about anything from: "God feels tenderly and
compassionately about us, and wants to us to be happy for all eternity," to:
"God is truly and perfectly sadistic and wants to torture us horribly for all
eternity."  If either was true, it would consequently, by definition,  be an
expression of that god's will, and thereby, also by definition, an expression 
of that god's "love."  This redefinition of love also makes a mockery of the 
passage: "For God so loved the world... ."

I also see another problem; when we think of love, we think of affection,
friendship, compassion, benevolence, kindness, devotion, empathy, and etc. 
This is invariably the emotional content you are trying to capture when you
tell us that your god loves us, and we should return that love.  Further it
would seem obvious that you mean for such statements to compel us to commit
ourselves to a highly devotional, agape love, but if so, then you are using
the fallacy of equivocation, as your god's love is not agape love at all;
rather it is divine will, which can expressed as bitterness, hate, disgust,
vengeance, cruelty and other things which we would find contradictory to human
agape love.  These more negative components of divine will are hardly the type
of "love" which you are trying to exhort us to return to your god, as I
find it very unlikely that you would be trying to get us to feel bitterness,
hate, disgust, or etc towards your god. 

So Mr Muehlhausen either you should agree that your god's love resembles human
love, and deal with the resultant issues which are raised, or you should
realize that your new definition of "love" which does not resemble human love,
is rather meaningless as man is concerned, and you should not use your god's
"love" as being somehow compelling as a reason for us to love him "in return." 
 
				Later,

				Dave Butler

    A word which is semantically unbound so that it can have any meaning, 
    will end up having no meaning.
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.pagan