Why is God's love conditional?

[Guest joe]

Hi,

I asked this question in the Questions and Answers section because I wanted a real and mature and thoughtful answer and as it relates to church teachings, and not a grade school recitation of doctrine. But apparently no one there is going to tackle the question. So here it is again:

[url="http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=41888"]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=41888[/url]

I'm not going to retype the question here, just read it over there, and answer here.

Perhaps there is no answer for me in this world, or perhaps I am in serious need of your prayer and God's gifts of grace for daring to ask such questions. But this is just one of many questions I now have about the religion I was brought up in - questions that are now rocking my faith in my Church.

Any thoughts on a possible answer? If not, please pray for me...

joe

[Guest T-Bone]

God does love us unconditionally. It's when we don't love him that causes problems.

There's your grade school rendition. Now lets get to the meat. (Hopefully I make since. This is my first stab at a real apologetics type question.)

First off a quick cap on evil:

If we accept the following:

Everything created by God is good

and

Evil is not good

Then we conclude that:

Evil is not created by God

xxxxx

We also accept that:

God created all things

Since Evil is not created by God, then we must conclude that Evil is not a thing.

xxxxxx

If Evil is not a thing, then it is nothing. Much like Hot and Cold. Cold is not a thing--it is a lack of Hotness. Evil is not a thing--it is a lack of Goodness. However, evil is not just an absence of goodness...it is lacking of goodness--an absence where there ought to be goodness.

(With me so far?)

xxxxx

There is an hierarchy to the universe

God - the ultimate reality - I AM (Ex 3:14)
Angels
Human Souls
Devils
Bodies

as you descend the scale, reality decreases.

God is the ultimate reality. He is the creator, he is not above reality, he is still a part of reality, but he is more than reality as well.

The further down the scale, the less real, the less good things become (not more evil, just less good). Everything created by God has some good. If something didn't have any good, it would be nothing.

Things higher on the scale should have power over things lower on the scale. However, higher things can give power to lower things.

(Human souls can give power over themselvs to thier bodies)

This causes a disorder, an injustice in the hierarchy. Evil happens when this disorder takes place.


edit: continued on the next post

Edited November 18, 2005 by T-Bone

[Guest T-Bone]

We can easily live our lives without even giving a thought to God. We can give our bodies, or even devils, power over our souls, and "happily" live out this disordered existance.

I think the main point of your post is:

[b]Why should I not do what feels good[/b]

I think I have covered why "doing what feels good" instead of what is right fairly well in my explaination of evil. It disorderes reality, it is unjust, and it lacks goodness where there ought to be.

God, being the ultimate reality, is not like our parents in every regard. Yes, he "gave birth" to everything, just as our parents gave birth to us.

But, being the ultimate reality (I AM) all of creation needs to seek God. It is natural. If you make the decision to reject God, to disorder the rest of reality, then God is not going to stop you.

[Guest joe]

[quote]We also accept that:

God created all things

Since Evil is not created by God, then we must conclude that Evil is not a thing.[/quote]

Thank you, I shall give it serious thought tomorrow when I'm more awake. And I'm sure I'll have more related questions.

There is one possible slight flaw, but which may not really change the end conclusion, but thought I'd ask for clarification anyway.
God doesn't really create all things, but only allows their creation by others, true? I can build a toy boat, and that's my creation, not God's. And God can create beings with free will, and if those beings (people or angels) choose to create evil, it seems then that evil is a thing, a very real thing.

Thanks again, I shall digest what you had to say.

joe

[Aloysius]

of course, everything you made the toy car out of is a thing created by God. you are merely shaping things he created into something. As human beings created in the image and likeness of God, have a natural creative instinct, but our creative instinct is only to create things out of things that already exist. Only God has ever created anything out of nothingness, and in fact He created everything out of nothingness. If He had not done so, all you would have to use to build you toy car is... nothingness. Obviously it is far beyond our human capacity to create a toy car from nothingness.

Real nice job on that explanation, T-Bone.

btw, the Church Scholars on the Q&A forum tend to take their good old time on every question, so rest assured someone will answer it eventually.

[Era Might]

[quote]Why can't God love us as a sinner, and especially accept us as a sinner, as we are, without expecting us to change and conform to His morality, and indeed punishing us if we don't change?[/quote]

The fundamental concept here, I think, is will. Consider what Chesterton has to say in "Orthodoxy":

[quote]All the will-worshippers, from Nietzsche to Mr. Davidson, are really quite empty of volition. They cannot will, they can hardly wish. And if any one wants a proof of this, it can be found quite easily. It can be found in this fact: that they always talk of will as something that expands and breaks out. But it is quite the opposite. [b]Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.[/b] That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act. [b]Every act is an irrevocable selection exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses. If you become King of England, you give up the post of Beadle in Brompton. If you go to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life in Wimbledon[/b]. It is the existence of this negative or limiting side of will that makes most of the talk of the anarchic will-worshippers little better than nonsense. [b]For instance, Mr. John Davidson tells us to have nothing to do with "Thou shalt not"; but it is surely obvious that "Thou shalt not" is only one of the necessary corollaries of "I will." "I will go to the Lord Mayor's Show, and thou shalt not stop me."[/b] Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. [b]The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel.[/b] Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called "The Loves of the Triangles"; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.[/quote]

"Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel". This is an essential truth about reality. We live in a world of goodness and truth, evil and error. Man was created to walk in the freedom of goodness and truth. When we frustrate this natural order, this subjection of our wills to goodness and truth, we disfigure our very nature. Like the camel with no hump, we cease to exist as the "world of facts" would have us exist.

Chesterton observes that, contrary to those who imagine a "freedom" in moral licentiousness, no such freedom exists. "When you choose anything, you reject everything else". When you choose to serve your desires, your flesh, your will, you thereby "reject everything else", including God.

The Lord says in the Gospel, "You cannot serve two masters". St. Alphonsus Liguori expounds on this principle:

[quote]The habit of sin not only blinds the understanding, but also hardens the heart of the sinner. "His heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smith's anvil." By the habit of sin the heart becomes like stone; and, as the anvil is hardened by repeated strokes of the hammer, so, instead of being softened by divine inspirations, or by instructions, the soul of the habitual sinner is rendered more obdurate by sermons on the judgement of God, on the torments of the damned, and on the passion of Jesus Christ.[/quote]

I can attest to this personally. A conscious resistance to the will of God is like a deep sleep. The deeper you get, the more you don't want anyone to rouse you. Your will becomes the God you give everything to, to the point where you no longer care about goodness or truth or salvation. There was a point when I was honest with myself, when I realized, in the state of mortal sin, that even though, in the back of my mind, I held out the possibility that I could repent before I died, I wouldn't want to repent. If I had a heart attack, I could not produce sincere repentance, even in the face of eternal damnation, because repentance implies a turning away from self. But when self is your Lord and Master, your savior, it's impossible to serve another Lord and Master, or to call on another Savior. And there was actually a point where I had an impulse to blaspheme God, in a literal way. I had turned myself so far away from him, that I had grown almost to hate him.This is the essence of hell. When we die, our wills are set in their way. We have totally given ourselves to ourselves, and we will not bear to give that up. Heaven is an eternal self-giving. This is impossible for those who have disobeyed the Truth.

God does love us unconditionally. St. Paul says "God showed his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." But the essence of love is self-sacrificial; and more than that, it must be mutual. The Holy Trinity is the eternal self-giving communion of three persons. When we cannot return the self-giving love that God has revealed to us, because we have given ourselves already to ourselves, then there is nothing more God can do. He cannot force us to empty ourselves. Not even God can buy love. Eventually, he must let us live with our choice. Because we are eternal beings, these consequences are eternal.

Imagine an analogy. A mother gives herself to her children throughout their lives. She loves them, she does everything she can for them, she tries to be there for them. But one of her children becomes engrossed in heroin. He's living on the streets, sticking dirty needles into his vein, and just about killing himself. The mother does all she can to help him, but he won't leave his situation. She makes it known that she will always be there to help him, but she does not enable him; eg, she doesn't allow him to shoot heroin in her house. Eventually, her son kills himself. She is devastated. But there was nothing she could do. Her son made decisions in life, and as much as she wished he chose another path, she (and he) had to live with his decisions. All the money in the world couldn't change his path. Only he could.

Hope that helps.

Edited November 18, 2005 by Era Might

[Laudate_Dominum]

If I may comment: your question on the QA was about 20 questions, and thus doesn't meet the forum guidelines for the QA. I personally try to answer these questions anyway, but if a question will take more than 5 minutes to answer, it has a good chance of getting buried. I apologize.

I might still answer it someday even in spite of this thread (assuming someone else doesn't get to it first). Every now and again I will look beyond page 1 for unanswered questions when I have a good chunk of free time.

[Paphnutius]

[quote]Why can't God love us as a sinner, and especially accept us as a sinner, as we are, without expecting us to change and conform to His morality, and indeed punishing us if we don't change?[/quote]Because one way of describing sin is a rejection of God.

[Guest]

[quote name='Era Might' date='Nov 18 2005, 06:11 PM']The fundamental concept here, I think, is will. Consider what Chesterton has to say in "Orthodoxy":
"Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel". This is an essential truth about reality. We live in a world of goodness and truth, evil and error. Man was created to walk in the freedom of goodness and truth. When we frustrate this natural order, this subjection of our wills to goodness and truth, we disfigure our very nature. Like the camel with no hump, we cease to exist as the "world of facts" would have us exist.

Chesterton observes that, contrary to those who imagine a "freedom" in moral licentiousness, no such freedom exists. "When you choose anything, you reject everything else". When you choose to serve your desires, your flesh, your will, you thereby "reject everything else", including God.

The Lord says in the Gospel, "You cannot serve two masters". St. Alphonsus Liguori expounds on this principle:
I can attest to this personally. A conscious resistance to the will of God is like a deep sleep. The deeper you get, the more you don't want anyone to rouse you. Your will becomes the God you give everything to, to the point where you no longer care about goodness or truth or salvation. There was a point when I was honest with myself, when I realized, in the state of mortal sin, that even though, in the back of my mind, I held out the possibility that I could repent before I died, I wouldn't want to repent. If I had a heart attack, I could not produce sincere repentance, even in the face of eternal damnation, because repentance implies a turning away from self. But when self is your Lord and Master, your savior, it's impossible to serve another Lord and Master, or to call on another Savior. And there was actually a point where I had an impulse to blaspheme God, in a literal way. I had turned myself so far away from him, that I had grown almost to hate him.This is the essence of hell. When we die, our wills are set in their way. We have totally given ourselves to ourselves, and we will not bear to give that up. Heaven is an eternal self-giving. This is impossible for those who have disobeyed the Truth.

God does love us unconditionally. St. Paul says "God showed his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." But the essence of love is self-sacrificial; and more than that, it must be mutual. The Holy Trinity is the eternal self-giving communion of three persons. When we cannot return the self-giving love that God has revealed to us, because we have given ourselves already to ourselves, then there is nothing more God can do. He cannot force us to empty ourselves. Not even God can buy love. Eventually, he must let us live with our choice. Because we are eternal beings, these consequences are eternal.

Imagine an analogy. A mother gives herself to her children throughout their lives. She loves them, she does everything she can for them, she tries to be there for them. But one of her children becomes engrossed in heroin. He's living on the streets, sticking dirty needles into his vein, and just about killing himself. The mother does all she can to help him, but he won't leave his situation. She makes it known that she will always be there to help him, but she does not enable him; eg, she doesn't allow him to shoot heroin in her house. Eventually, her son kills himself. She is devastated. But there was nothing she could do. Her son made decisions in life, and as much as she wished he chose another path, she (and he) had to live with his decisions. All the money in the world couldn't change his path. Only he could.

Hope that helps.
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nice man.....real nice