Loving someone

[ultimate777]

Can you personally love someone who can prevent horrible things from happening to you if you love them, but will not if you don't love them? Do you think you are like most people in that regard?

[neo-x]

Can you love someone who despises you, doubts your love, leaves you for another and hate you eventually? Do you think you are like most people in that regard?

[B. W.]

Can you personally love someone who can prevent horrible things from happening to you if you love them, but will not if you don't love them? Do you think you are like most people in that regard?

If God Exists, Why Is There Evil?
by Norman Geisler


...God Will Make Everything Right

Further, God is going to fix it up, but He hasn’t done it yet.

Here is the age-old dilemma: If God is all-good, as the Bible says, then He would want to get rid of evil. If He is all-powerful, then He could do it. But even a casual look at the evening news, to say nothing of the Virginia Tech tragedy, informs us that He has not defeated evil. Hence, the argument goes, there cannot be an all-good and all-powerful God.

While this logic sounds tight and painful, it is not faultless. Because God has not yet defeated all evil does not mean that He never will defeat it. Indeed, both good logic and the Bible declare that He will yet do away with evil. How so?

First, if God is all-powerful then He can do it, and if He is all-loving, then He wants to do it. And whatever He can and wants to do, He will do (Psalm 135:6). His very nature as an omnipotent and omni-benevolent being demands that evil will be vanquished.

Second, God already has done something about evil. He sent His only Son into the world to die for the world and to defeat evil. Evil was defeated officially at Christ’s first coming through His death and resurrection (Colossians 2:14, Hebrews 2:14, Ephesians 4:7-12). His victory over sin and the grave ensured Satan’s eventual defeat. The same Bible that accurately predicted Christ’s first coming through nearly 100 fulfilled prophecies promises that Christ will come again and will completely defeat evil.
Meanwhile, What Do We Do?

Jesus answered this in one word—repent. In Luke 13, Jesus hears the story of the Galileans “whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.” He asks if this happened to them because they were worse sinners than those who had not suffered such a tragic death. His answer was instructive: “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, NKJV). In short, in a free and fallen world, tragedies happen to people who are no more sinners than those to whom such events do not happen.

We are all sinners and we all need to repent and “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved” (Cf. Acts 16:31). Life is brief. You can never be sure how long it will last. We all should be prepared to meet our God at any moment.

http://www.billygraham.org/articlepage. ... icleid=821

ultimate777, your question is from someone who has been influenced by some very bad doctrine. So what has been your spiritual journey so far - church affiliations or any?
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[ultimate777]

Can you love someone who despises you, doubts your love, leaves you for another and hate you eventually? Do you think you are like most people in that regard?

Maybe if I thought they were dong all that because they thought I was abusing them (even if I saw things completely different)I might love them enough to try to show them that was not the case. And if I failed, own it, and love them still.

[PaulSacramento]

Can you personally love someone who can prevent horrible things from happening to you if you love them, but will not if you don't love them? Do you think you are like most people in that regard?

I think that humans are, on the average, reciprocal lovers, they pay love with love and hate with hate.
Not all are like that of course, but most of us are.
We put conditions on love ( though we'd love it of others didn't put conditions on their love for us of course).
The exception MAY be kids, I know for me I love my girls without any conditions, regardless of how good or bad they are or whether they reciprocate that love.
All that said, when speaking of God ( which I assume you are) we need to realize that, putting human attributes on God is how humans TRY to understand God.
The problem with that is that many times we also put human limitations on God or human "understanding" on God, in short, we end up making God in OUR image and not as He truly is.
That is where we get notions that God can "hate" or demands/commands Our Love or that He will only reciprocate love for love.

[1over137]

Can you personally love someone who can prevent horrible things from happening to you if you love them, but will not if you don't love them? Do you think you are like most people in that regard?

First, you made an assumption, that most people 'love' someone if that someone 'loves' them. I put the word love in apostrophes since it is not really love. Love is not conditional. We are loved despite what we really are, sinners. From the fact that you made this assumption I assume that you do not know many people who really love. I hope that in your life you will meet more and more such people.

If I love someone I really love that person. The person can even say to me that I do not love that person (this really happened to me), but I still loved that person and still love.

You know what love is? This is love:


1 Corinthians 13
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
The Excellence of Love

13 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body [a]to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of [c]prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I [d]became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror [e]dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the [f]greatest of these is love.

[Jac3510]

1. As 1/137 notes, you need to be more explicit about your definition of love. You may as well ask how it is possible to love someone who hates you, spits on you, reviles you, lies about you, and wants you dead. Yet the Bible says that though we do and did just that, God loved us anyway (John 3:16). So, again, something is wrong in your definition of love, which is causing you to have some unnecessary emotional interference in the question.

2. Not to sidestep your question, verses like Rom 8:28 can be taken to establish the premise of your question. If we love God (not just if we are saved), we are promised a particular blessing--although I would note, that blessing is not to be protected from bad things; look at the verse in question yourself, and then after that, read the life of Joseph and focus especially on the climax in Gen 50:20. In general, I would say that there is a certain way in which God loves all of us, whether we love Him or not. That (that is, His grace) is both the basis of and motivator for our love for Him. When we find that our love for Him prompts a special blessing, then we are driven to love Him all the more. There is nothing particularly abnormal about that. Any parent with multiple children can tell you that while they love them all the same, quite often there are some who have honored them more and some who have, unfortunately, dishonored them; and while the relative honor or dishonor those children bring them does not change their love for them (they love them all the same), it is usually--and rightly--the case that they are more willing to help and bless the ones who have honored them more quickly than they are those who have dishonored them.

God, as a heavenly Father, is no different. He loves us because we are His creatures. When we place our faith in Christ, we become His children and He loves us--all of His children--in a special way. But those who go on to love Him deeply and seek to glorify and honor Him He is more willing to bless and honor, while those who dishonor and disobey Him He chastises. And all of that is rooted in His love for us.