Hermes wrote:For me, love is problematic. It can be a positive thing (when your spouse shows it for you thoughtfully), but it can also be terrible (when your spouse uses it to browbeat you into submission). Love exists only a few moments away from hatred, which is its other face (not its categorical opposite: love and hatred turn into and inspire each other all the time; the categorical opposite of love/hatred is apathy or indifference). If Jesus loves, then he also hates. If he loves me today, then he might hate me tomorrow (or I him).
Huh?
Hermes wrote:The next problem I have is the universe itself. I don't see it being loving/hateful. I see it simply existing, outside all my concepts (like love and hatred). The universe is more real than my small idea(s) about it.
You
see a universe that you cannot see? ("more real" outside your concepts)...now that is a nice faith based statement.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.Hermes wrote: I see little things in it, nice things like my kids laughing, and I think, "Oh, the universe loves me!" But what happens when the universe delivers some seriously evil stuff (genocide, starvation, natural disasters obviously outside human control)? How is that love? (The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the love of God and the hatred of God are the same thing.) Even more problematic, how is it coherent? God (love?) doesn't go around making itself known to us simply. I cannot talk to it and get a clear answer. (Maybe I pray and get something nice. Maybe I get something awful. Maybe neither one is my fault. Maybe it isn't the fault of some unknown consciousness running the whole show, behind the scenes where I cannot see.)
one man's trash is another man's treasure.
How can you possibly love your child and also discipline them is seemingly the confusion you are having.
How can you pronounce your love for your own child but then watch (and at times derive humor from) their sincere suffering when you do not buy them that new xbox they so desperately want and that they consider to be "so good"...their suffering is real and your love is real...yet you would question only the latter.
Hermes wrote:I like religions that emphasize building good human values without projecting those values into the world (necessarily: they might be there in some places, but you get no promises that the world is nice). I aspire to make my life nice, but I don't think there is any sure way to do that. I am dependent on things outside my control for happiness (which is always fleeting), and I see no evidence that these things fall under the jurisdiction of a kind omnipotence (whose love makes me happy while making children in Ethiopia miserable: why? where is the love and power here?).
yet, for example, without evidence you consider the universe to be "more real"....why?
ugh