Demanding Love At Gunpoint

[Exalt]

God demands love.

God informs us that if we do not return his love, he will throw us into the fires of hell, where we will burn in eternal torment forever and ever.

How can anyone truly bring himself to love someone who threatens him or her with death? If someone held a gun to your head and demanded you feel love towards them - could you bring yourself to do it? Would it even be possible?

There is a curious phenomenon that occurs sometimes in hostage situations. The victims become emotionally attached to their captors. It’s called Stockholm Syndrome. One psychological explanation is that it’s an emotional defense mechanism - one becomes emotionally attached to the nearest person with the most power in order to increase chances of survival and emotionally cope with the situation.

Perhaps a similiar phenomenon occurs with Christians. You love a tyrant who threatens you with the worst torture imaginable. You genuinely feel attached to a being that demands love while holding a gun to your head. Perhaps you’re merely suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

Unfortunately, however, Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t occur with every victim. In fact, many people would never be able to become emotionally attached to the person who is holding them captive or threatening them with harm.

Which brings me to a paradoxical point: If those people who simply do not have the psychological disposition towards Stockholm Syndrome find that they are unable to bring themselves to love the God that holds a metaphorical gun to their heads, is it really their fault? Can they be held culpable for not loving a tyrant who threatens them with unending torture in a lake of fire? To condemn someone merely because they lack the psychological disposition towards loving their potential assailant seems very unjust. This, of course, means God would be unjust. And, of course, God can’t be unjust.

Maybe this supposedly loving God who demands our love in return (or else) doesn’t, in fact, exist.

 

[VociMike]

My my, you must have to work hard to get it so wrong.

God is love. To be with God, and with his family, is to have all that is good. To be away from God, and from his family, is to have nothing that is good.

One cannot both be with God and be away from him at the same time. Thus one cannot reject God and still have anything good. This is not God being mean, this is a logical impossibility.

Each of us (even you) is given the choice between real good and false good. You seem to be the one who would force all persons to be with God at Gunpoint, no matter what they truly desire.

 

[Peter29]

This is both new and interesting!

You haven’t considered purgatory.

 

[Namesake]

You seem to be the one who would force all persons to be with God at Gunpoint, no matter what they truly desire.

I think Exalt makes a very interesting point and I can’t find a logical flaw.

The flaw in your counterargument is that God has made the rules, not Exalt.

 

[Lancer]

Exalt…and Namesake:

Yes, I understand, but…in the end its not about logic…its is all about Faith, Hope and Love…only these three will endure…and the greatest of these three is Love…agape.(cf. 1Cor13:13).

The “Potter” is the creator…not the pot…and the pot is always a vessel of fragile clay. Get that Truth wrong…and it is very, very difficult to get anything else right.

Pax Christi

 

[Viki63]

There are so many logical flaws in Exalt’s argument it’s hard to know where to start. We really need a logician.
However, I could just point out that God is like a father who conceives and raises a son, who decides he doesn’t want to live at home anymore. He’d rather go it on his own, so he takes off to live with thieves, loose women, and ends up in a pigsty since he’s not really good at supporting himself.
At home he has good food, useful work, people who love him, but he’s turned his back on them.
Is his father at fault for this situation? Should he send him lots of money so he can buy a better pigsty, or live without working? Or is the situation the consequence of the son’s rebellion, and can only be resolved by his repenting and returning home?

Of course there’s more, God sent his son to rescue us, at great pain and cost to himself.

 

[Dtmccameron]

I think Exalt makes a very interesting point and I can’t find a logical flaw.

The flaw in your counterargument is that God has made the rules, not Exalt.

The flaw is in his claiming that God hold the gun to our heads. We hold the pistol to our own heads, and we pull the trigger, we condemn ourselves to Hell, we choose not to love, we choose sin over holiness, vice over virtue. We stubbornly refuse to Love him, and blow our brains all over the wall in defiance!

We enslave ourselves, God frees us. God doesn’t demand, for goodness sake! If He was all about forcing things out of people, He could just as soon make us all perfect and take us into Heaven right now! No, Love is about choice.

 

[Paladin_V]

God demands love.

I can see where you are coming from. Love God or die. It would seem like a raw deal if God were some other person whom we are equal to. The fact is, God is not some random person that demands our love. God is our creator and brought us into existence, designing us for a purpose. We were made **by **love and **for **love… loving God is what most fulfills us and living eternally fully united with Him in a loving relationship is our supreme end, it is what we are for, what our purpose is.

In the hostage situation, there is an outside force that is not at all loving and doesn’t give a hoot about our happiness or our eternal life. God does. He created us out of love and then suffered and died for us so we could love as He loves, thus living forever.

So yes, God demands love… and even if He didn’t, we owe Him our love. He doesn’t, however, force us. He allows us to not love Him. The fact is, if we choose not to, we are choosing the opposite of what we were created for. We cannot be eternally happy not loving God because we would not be doing what we were made to do and designed to do. This is what Hell is; it is being eternally separated from our purpose, eternally separated from love. God does not separate us from loving Him… we do. God does not put us in Hell… we put ourselves there.

 

[mlchance]

I think Exalt makes a very interesting point and I can’t find a logical flaw.

As if logic alone were proof from error, such as this one:

God demands love.

God doesn’t demand love (and by “demand” Exalt means “force,” which itself is false conflation). Rather, as a matter of justice, we owe God everything that we have and that we are, since without God, we are quite literally nothing. This demand of justice is part of our very being. Exalt’s OP might be logically sound, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t mere sophistry.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[terrysa]

I understand your angst, but I believe God doesn’t demand love. He asks for it. If He demanded love, he wouldn’t have given you free will. You can choose not to love Him, but you would be saying no to the source of everything good in your life.

I agree that God is love. Whether you know Him by name or not, whether you realize that it is He who has given you good things or not, He is love - and loves you. You can certainly choose not to love Him in return, just as a child can refuse to thank his parents for loving him and giving him good things.

I think what you are really upset about, where the “gun to the head” concept is coming from, is perhaps the idea of a Hell conceived by a loving God. Yet, Hell is just the natural consequence of creating humans with free will.

I think of it like this: If, to your deathbed, you choose to close your heart to God (the source of love and for whose family you were created) than you choose not to be with Him in the hereafter. Hell is the resulting state, a result of the choice to be separated from God. Of course it would be painful, because it would be cutting yourself off from your Source.

I hope this helps somewhat in your search for understanding.

 

[Crimson_Seraph]

I think you have it wrong. Think of it like this.

You’re in the middle of the ocean drowning, God throws you a lifeline and tells you to grab hold and he will pull you in. Now if you refuse to do this or willingly let go of the lifeline, you will drown. A very basic example that isn’t perfect, but better than the one you gave I think.

 

[Namesake]

I think you have it wrong. Think of it like this.

You’re in the middle of the ocean drowning, God throws you a lifeline and tells you to grab hold and he will pull you in. Now if you refuse to do this or willingly let go of the lifeline, you will drown. A very basic example that isn’t perfect, but better than the one you gave I think.

The part that everyone is missing, or ignoring, is that God made all the rules. He made the situation with the choices including eternal suffering as a penalty. He even knows how it will turn out for you.

 

[VociMike]

The part that everyone is missing, or ignoring, is that God made all the rules. He made the situation with the choices including eternal suffering as a penalty. He even knows how it will turn out for you.

So present an alternative universe. Tell us how God could have (should have?) done it differently. Present your case.

 

[magdelaine]

The part that everyone is missing, or ignoring, is that God made all the rules. He made the situation with the choices including eternal suffering as a penalty. He even knows how it will turn out for you.

That’s too legalistic. He didn’t make *rules *he made our natures. A flower flourishes when it sprouts and reaches for the sun. If a flower (having free will) decided to turn from the sun and bury itself in the soil, resulting in its death, would that death be because of arbitrary rules or because it acted against its own nature?

 

[Namesake]

So present an alternative universe. Tell us how God could have (should have?) done it differently. Present your case.

That would be an interesting area to explore maybe, but for now the subject at hand is much different.

How can people legitimately love a God who demands that we love Him under penalty of eternal damnation, even hellfire and brimstone?

Then the premise is expanded to the question of the existence of such a God.

 

[Namesake]

That’s too legalistic. He didn’t make *rules *he made our natures. A flower flourishes when it sprouts and reaches for the sun. If a flower (having free will) decided to turn from the sun and bury itself in the soil, resulting in its death, would that death be because of arbitrary rules or because it acted against its own nature?

I don’t follow your analogy, sorry.

What I do understand is that God made everything including the whole idea of eternal damnation. It’s all His doing, His rules.

So He made the whole universe and all the rules in it. One of the rules is that we either love Him or we are doomed to an eternity in hell. That’s the gun to the head.

 

[VociMike]

That would be an interesting area to explore maybe, but for now the subject at hand is much different.

How can people legitimately love a God who demands that we love Him under penalty of eternal damnation, even hellfire and brimstone?

Then the premise is expanded to the question of the existence of such a God.

No, this is exactly the subject at hand. When you say that the way God is doing things (as you understand it) is wrong, then you need to provide a counter-example to illustrate that God could have done it right. Otherwise your objection ceases to exist, since, if there is no counter-example possible, then the way things are is the way things must be.

So, is the way God does things the only possible way? If so then there is nothing to complain about. If not then offer a better way.

 

[magdelaine]

I don’t follow your analogy, sorry.

What I do understand is that God made everything including the whole idea of eternal damnation. It’s all His doing, His rules.

So He made the whole universe and all the rules in it. One of the rules is that we either love Him or we are doomed to an eternity in hell. That’s the gun to the head.

Sorry, it was confusing. It’s our nature to love God. But he doesn’t force us. If we want to bury ourselves in the mud instead of reaching for him, that’s our decision.

On the other hand, I think you’ve been talking to too many fundamentalists. That is not the Catholic understanding of God and Hell at all.

Hell is simply where there is no God. He doesn’t force himself on us. If you reject Him, then you live without Him forever. Since he is pure light and pure joy, and to be without him is everything the opposite; absolute emptiness and despair. But he would never force himself on you. A rejection of God (and inheriting “hell”) is a decision that only **you **can make.

 

[Namesake]

No, this is exactly the subject at hand. When you say that the way God is doing things (as you understand it) is wrong, then you need to provide a counter-example to illustrate that God could have done it right. Otherwise your objection ceases to exist, since, if there is no counter-example possible, then the way things are is the way things must be.

So, is the way God does things the only possible way? If so then there is nothing to complain about. If not then offer a better way.

Once again, the question was asked how could one love a god (any god), who demands love at the point of a gun.

The question doesn’t necessarily extend to a discussion of alternatives. In fact the question was quite well phrased so to be narrow enough to actually discuss without such extraneous drifts of thought.

There is little doubt that the question is legitimate because it’s all right there in the Bible and I assume in tradition too.

For myself, and I suppose for Exalt ( it was clearly stated as such), one possible alternative is that God doesn’t exist

 

[VociMike]

For myself, and I suppose for Exalt ( it was clearly stated as such), one possible alternative is that God doesn’t exist

OK, so if an omniscient and omnipotent God does exist then he must behave as you and the OP claim he is behaving? He has no choice in the matter?