Disobeying God = Disavowing God?

[aperture]

I’ve been thinking about this recently and am not quite sure how it would work. My understanding is that the Catholic church says that a mortal sin, unforgiven, condemns one to hell because one has chosen to turn away from God and made their choice to not go to Heaven.

However, I don’t “get” how doing something that displeases God is synonymous with choosing to not be with God. For example, Catholics are often encouraged to “love the sinner, hate the sin,” to separate the person from their behaviors.

Why, essentially, would we be required to love all that God loves in order to be with God? Is it not possible to love someone without loving all that they love?

 

[puzzleannie]

I’ve been thinking about this recently and am not quite sure how it would work. My understanding is that the Catholic church says that a mortal sin, unforgiven, condemns one to hell because one has chosen to turn away from God and made their choice to not go to Heaven.

no, it is unrepented mortal sin that dooms one to hell, God has already forgiven the sin.

However, I don’t “get” how doing something that displeases God is synonymous with choosing to not be with God. For example, Catholics are often encouraged to “love the sinner, hate the sin,” to separate the person from their behaviors.

Why, essentially, would we be required to love all that God loves in order to be with God? Is it not possible to love someone without loving all that they love?

you have this backward, love the sin hate the sinner talks about our relationship to other sinners, not to God, since obviously God does not sin. God never ceases to love us, no matter what we do, or we would cease to exist.

doing something so serious, so deliberate, that so damages your relationship with God means you have turned your back on him, totally failed to respond to his love with love in return. That is the definition of mortal sin. He does hate the sin and love the sinner, but it is a lie to say “love the sin, love the One who made you and who told you not to sin because he loves you”. Not only a lie but a logical absurdity.

 

[aperture]

Can you…clarify your post? I still don’t quite understand what you’re saying.

 

[aperture]

Alternatively, doing something that someone dislikes is not synonymous with disliking that person.

 

[erigby27]

If I do something that offends someone, that doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t love him. But if I truly and sincerely feel remorseless for having offended him, that would suggest I don’t love him. We tend to regret hurting the ones we love. God loves all of us, and because of that does not force us to love Him. He allows us to choose to love Him, and therefore be with Him in Paradise. When we hate Him, we eternally die apart from Him, and He grieves.

God does not despise a contrite heart.

We tend to think of Hell as God’s punishment for doing bad things. But that is not really what Hell is. Hell is the absence of God. If one says “no” to God, one is choosing the absence of God. Because the absence of God means the absence of good, Hell is likely unpleasant.

It should pain us to offend our Lord, whom we love. If it doesn’t pain us, we don’t love Him.

 

[erigby27]

Also, it’s not that God “dislikes” or “hates” sin, though He does. It’s much more serious than that. Sin actually hurts God. When I sin, I’m literally driving a nail into my Lord’s hand on the cross. It took me a while to truly understand this, and it that understanding has helped me shake a lot of habitual, deliberate sins, though I am still sinful by nature.

Sometimes we hurt our friends. Sometimes we even hurt our friends deliberately. And when I say hurt I don’t mean we did something to inconvenience or annoy them. I mean we actually hurt them. When we betray our friends, we send the message that we don’t love them. But when we could care less and are completely unrepentant, we definitely don’t love them.

The Church gives us guidelines to help keep us on track. We are supposed to be living the law of love, which is written on our hearts. But if we aren’t following the law, that’s a pretty good indication that we aren’t following the law of love. If we were completely full of love, we wouldn’t need the law- we would just naturally behave as we were intended. So the law isn’t there for itself. It’s really there to help the faithful gauge themselves.

 

[aperture]

But if I truly and sincerely feel remorseless for having offended him, that would suggest I don’t love him. We tend to regret hurting the ones we love.

I don’t know if that’s true. Are you saying that you are in 100% agreement with the people that you love? I, for instance, love some people who love different things than I do. For example, I do not drink, but have friends that do. I wish they wouldn’t and find their drinking offensive, but they still drink. That doesn’t mean that they don’t like me, but that they disagree with me on this subject. However, we can still be friends.

Love, it seems to me, is not the same thing as totally agreeing with someone…

 

[curlycool89]

I’ve been thinking about this recently and am not quite sure how it would work. My understanding is that the Catholic church says that a mortal sin, unforgiven, condemns one to hell because one has chosen to turn away from God and made their choice to not go to Heaven.

However, I don’t “get” how doing something that displeases God is synonymous with choosing to not be with God. For example, Catholics are often encouraged to “love the sinner, hate the sin,” to separate the person from their behaviors.

Why, essentially, would we be required to love all that God loves in order to be with God? Is it not possible to love someone without loving all that they love?

You need to break it down a little more. I’m an engineering student, so the way I did it is I broke it up in my head like a chemical reaction (sidebar: So a chemical reaction might be A → B, but the underlying steps are A → C and C reacts with D to form B, so the overall reaction is that A → B, but it’s more complicated then it seems).

First you sin. By sinning you are rejecting God’s law (if you accept God’s law you don’t break them). By rejecting God’s law, you are rejective God’s authority to make that law (the easiest way to reject a law is to say that that person doesn’t have the authority to make that law in the first place). But God is the ultimate authority in the universe, and by rejecting God’s authority you are ultimately rejecting God.

 

[aperture]

You need to break it down a little more. I’m an engineering student, so the way I did it is I broke it up in my head like a chemical reaction (sidebar: So a chemical reaction might be A → B, but the underlying steps are A → C and C reacts with D to form B, so the overall reaction is that A → B, but it’s more complicated then it seems).

Light-hearted aside: I’ve known a few engineers and one thing they seem to love doing is making lists. If I ask them how their day was: “1. I bought lunch in the cafeteria, leading to point 1a…” It’s fun.

First you sin. By sinning you are rejecting God’s law (if you accept God’s law you don’t break them). By rejecting God’s law, you are rejective God’s authority to make that law (the easiest way to reject a law is to say that that person doesn’t have the authority to make that law in the first place). But God is the ultimate authority in the universe, and by rejecting God’s authority you are ultimately rejecting God.

This chain is what I have the most trouble with. Can I not disagree with an authority figure and still love them (or at least respect them)? This characterization of God - in which disagreement on one point means complete severance - makes an omnipotent figure seem altogether small and petty. That doesn’t seem right.

 

[curlycool89]

Light-hearted aside: I’ve known a few engineers and one thing they seem to love doing is making lists. If I ask them how their day was: “1. I bought lunch in the cafeteria, leading to point 1a…” It’s fun.

This chain is what I have the most trouble with. Can I not disagree with an authority figure and still love them (or at least respect them)? This characterization of God - in which disagreement on one point means complete severance - makes an omnipotent figure seem altogether small and petty. That doesn’t seem right.

What is God then? God is not just some authority figure, He is the authority figure above all other authority figures; the Alpha and the Omega; the end all and be all. If you say that you can disagree with God, then logically that leads to a picture of God just sitting there doing pretty much nothing. There would be no meaning or point in faith or love or morals or even in Christ’s dying for us. Take a look at Psalm 100:

Know that he, the Lord, is God.
He made us, we belong to him,
we are his people, the sheep of his flock.

 

[aperture]

What is God then? God is not just some authority figure, He is the authority figure above all other authority figures; the Alpha and the Omega; the end all and be all. If you say that you can disagree with God, then logically that leads to a picture of God just sitting there doing pretty much nothing. There would be no meaning or point in faith or love or morals or even in Christ’s dying for us. Take a look at Psalm 100:

Know that he, the Lord, is God.
He made us, we belong to him,
we are his people, the sheep of his flock.

But all I can get from that quote is that God made and loves humans, like a parent. But don’t many of us disagree with our parents over “big” issues and still love them?

I’m not actually saying that morals don’t exist, or that God doesn’t care. What I’m saying is that the black-white heaven-hell divide seems like a false dichotomy.

 

[jmcrae]

This chain is what I have the most trouble with. Can I not disagree with an authority figure and still love them (or at least respect them)? This characterization of God - in which disagreement on one point means complete severance - makes an omnipotent figure seem altogether small and petty. That doesn’t seem right.

The love that we have for God is not a feeling - it’s not “eros” the pleasant burning in the heart. Rather, it’s the action of doing what we know He would want us to do. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.”

Also, we aren’t God’s equals - He is our Creator; not just some guy who lives down the street, so we aren’t free to “disagree” with Him, as if there were some possibility that He could be wrong about something. He is God - there is no chance whatsoever that He is wrong about anything. If you understand who God is, you will understand that He can’t be wrong about anything - even if He disagrees with your most cherished beliefs.

As an adult, you can disagree with your parents, because it is possible for your parents to be wrong about some things. (Even though, in the end, they usually turn out to be right.)

If you disagree with God and deliberately disobey His commandments, there is a major problem. Either, you have no idea who God is (ie: you think it is possible for Him to be wrong about something), or, you don’t love Him.

And, how can you love Him, if you have no idea who He is? So in either case, there is a lack of love for Him on your part, either because of a lack of understanding that makes it impossible for you to love Him, or an actual lack of love for Him.

 

[aperture]

The love that we have for God is not a feeling - it’s not “eros” the pleasant burning in the heart. Rather, it’s the action of doing what we know He would want us to do. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.”

Also, we aren’t God’s equals - He is our Creator; not just some guy who lives down the street, so we aren’t free to “disagree” with Him, as if there were some possibility that He could be wrong about something. He is God - there is no chance whatsoever that He is wrong about anything. If you understand who God is, you will understand that He can’t be wrong about anything - even if He disagrees with your most cherished beliefs.

As an adult, you can disagree with your parents, because it is possible for your parents to be wrong about some things. (Even though, in the end, they usually turn out to be right.)

If you disagree with God and deliberately disobey His commandments, there is a major problem. Either, you have no idea who God is (ie: you think it is possible for Him to be wrong about something), or, you don’t love Him.

That last sentence is where I disagree. Suppose that someone believes God is always right, and still disobeys Him, knowing that their action is wrong yet doing it anyway. You say that this automatically precludes love. I don’t see how that makes sense. I have gone against my parents at times when I knew they were right; that does not mean I do not love them.

 

[jmcrae]

That last sentence is where I disagree. Suppose that someone believes God is always right, and still disobeys Him, knowing that their action is wrong yet doing it anyway. You say that this automatically precludes love.

It precludes doing what you know God wants you to do - which is what love for God is.

Again, love for God is not a feeling in the heart, nor is it a feeling of respect. It is the doing of what God wants you to do. Jesus emphasizes this throughout the Gospels, especially in Matthew 25:31-46. Those who ended up in Hell loved Jesus with their feelings; what they did not do, was the things that Jesus wanted them to do. Remember, they said, “We did miracles in Your name” - yes, they respected and loved Jesus in their feelings, no doubt of it. But they didn’t visit the sick or the imprisoned, and they didn’t feed the hungry, or clothe the naked, etc.

I don’t see how that makes sense. I have gone against my parents at times when I knew they were right; that does not mean I do not love them.

You have warm feelings and respect for your parents; that is not the same thing as the obedient love that God wants us to have for Him.

 

[aperture]

So basically God made humans because He wanted us to be exactly like he is? So God is basically the ultimate narcissist?

 

[jmcrae]

So basically God made humans because He wanted us to be exactly like he is?

Even if so, what would be wrong with that? God is very powerful, and very good. What would be wrong with us becoming powerful and good?

However, what God wants, is that we become what He created us to be, which means that we have to do what He has told us we should do. We won’t become Him; we will become ourselves as He (our Creator) intended us to be.

So God is basically the ultimate narcissist?

God isn’t a person like us. It would be narcissistic, if a person like us (our equal, and someone who has no rights over us) wanted us to become like them.

God created us, though. Surely, He has the right to decide how we should turn out, and what we should be like - and to discard any of us who don’t turn out the way He wanted us to - just as an artist destroys everything he creates, that doesn’t turn out how he wanted it to turn out, so that no one can find or sell it under his name.

 

[aperture]

Even if so, what would be wrong with that? God is very powerful, and very good. What would be wrong with us becoming powerful and good?

I only wonder as to the point of an omnipotent being creating a universe in the hopes that everyone will be like Him. It seems sort of pointless.

However, what God wants, is that we become what He created us to be, which means that we have to do what He has told us we should do. We won’t become Him; we will become ourselves as He (our Creator) intended us to be.

Yet if God intended each of us to become like Him, we become Him, not ourselves. Sort of like a divine transitive property.

God isn’t a person like us. It would be narcissistic, if a person like us (our equal, and someone who has no rights over us) wanted us to become like them.

God created us, though. Surely, He has the right to decide how we should turn out, and what we should be like - and to discard any of us who don’t turn out the way He wanted us to - just as an artist destroys everything he creates, that doesn’t turn out how he wanted it to turn out, so that no one can find or sell it under his name.

This whole thing bothers me, though, logically. It’s like the Creation was like God just throwing out a yo-yo, and if we live our lives perfectly, then yo-yo goes back to him when we die. Why go to all the trouble? Heck, when you’re yo-yoing, all the fun is in the yo-yo being out there. Catching is boring.

 

[curlycool89]

That last sentence is where I disagree. Suppose that someone believes God is always right, and still disobeys Him, knowing that their action is wrong yet doing it anyway. You say that this automatically precludes love. I don’t see how that makes sense. I have gone against my parents at times when I knew they were right; that does not mean I do not love them.

It’s analogous to marriage. Here’s a situation:

A man has an affair. He knows it’s wrong but does it anyways. He is unfaithful to his wife. He goes home and says “he still loves her”. Do you believe him? Of course not, because it he loved her then he wouldn’t be having an affair. Saying you love someone and actually loving someone are 2 different things. I can say I love McDonald’s and then only eat at Burger King. Words that aren’t backed up by actions are meaningless; “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). You can say you love God, but if you don’t follow Him then it’s just empty words.

God is also higher than your parents or any person on the earth. God knows what’s best for us always because He knows our hearts, our past, our present, and our futures.

I only wonder as to the point of an omnipotent being creating a universe in the hopes that everyone will be like Him. It seems sort of pointless.

Maybe to our human minds. We tend to make the mistake of thinking God is just some super genius one of us with an IQ of 5 million, but God’s “IQ” would be infinity squared. It’s not even understandable to our human minds. We are limited in our thinking and God is not. It’s one of those things we just have to say that we’ll understand when we get there.

This whole thing bothers me, though, logically. It’s like the Creation was like God just throwing out a yo-yo, and if we live our lives perfectly, then yo-yo goes back to him when we die. Why go to all the trouble? Heck, when you’re yo-yoing, all the fun is in the yo-yo being out there. Catching is boring.

Not quite. God wants us to choose Him freely, which also means we have the freedom to not choose Him. It’s not freedom otherwise. Why though? We don’t know. He’s God, if He wants to He can. Again, we can’t understand because we have limited minds.

 

[aperture]

It’s analogous to marriage. Here’s a situation:

A man has an affair. He knows it’s wrong but does it anyways. He is unfaithful to his wife. He goes home and says “he still loves her”. Do you believe him? Of course not, because it he loved her then he wouldn’t be having an affair. Saying you love someone and actually loving someone are 2 different things. I can say I love McDonald’s and then only eat at Burger King. Words that aren’t backed up by actions are meaningless; “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). You can say you love God, but if you don’t follow Him then it’s just empty words.

Hmmm, that is a different way of putting the situation. Yet I’d argue that what I’m talking about is more along the lines of a husband secretly going to a steakhouse without his vegetarian wife. Is it a betrayal of trust? Yes. Is it a “deal-breaker”? I doubt it.

God is also higher than your parents or any person on the earth. God knows what’s best for us always because He knows our hearts, our past, our present, and our futures.

Maybe to our human minds. We tend to make the mistake of thinking God is just some super genius one of us with an IQ of 5 million, but God’s “IQ” would be infinity squared. It’s not even understandable to our human minds. We are limited in our thinking and God is not. It’s one of those things we just have to say that we’ll understand when we get there.

It would be a lot easier to not worry over understanding if the stakes weren’t so amazingly high.

Not quite. God wants us to choose Him freely, which also means we have the freedom to not choose Him. It’s not freedom otherwise. Why though? We don’t know. He’s God, if He wants to He can. Again, we can’t understand because we have limited minds.

I have to take issue with this definition of freedom. It is not freedom to say: “You may choose Path A or Path B. Path A is tough, but the end is very rewarding. Path B is easier, but the end is eternal agony.” True freedom would be the ability to choose Path B and, say, live on the path forever. Keep on living and never be condemned to hell. What we have - according to the Catholic Church - isn’t real freedom.

 

[curlycool89]

Hmmm, that is a different way of putting the situation. Yet I’d argue that what I’m talking about is more along the lines of a husband secretly going to a steakhouse without his vegetarian wife. Is it a betrayal of trust? Yes. Is it a “deal-breaker”? I doubt it.

Well what you’re describing there is more of a petty situation (actually, I would bet that the wife would prefer the husband to go along ). When you talk about mortal sins, they’re not petty situations, they’re major. Like if the husband goes to a steakhouse when their house is about to be foreclosed. Separation from God only happens when you commit a mortal sin.

I have to take issue with this definition of freedom. It is not freedom to say: “You may choose Path A or Path B. Path A is tough, but the end is very rewarding. Path B is easier, but the end is eternal agony.” True freedom would be the ability to choose Path B and, say, live on the path forever. Keep on living and never be condemned to hell. What we have - according to the Catholic Church - isn’t real freedom.

No no, your confusing freedom with happiness. You have the freedom to not choose God and it leads to eternal separation, which is what hell is.

Take me as an example. I am not really free right now. Between now and when I graduation in summer 2012 my life is pretty much set. I’ll work this summer, go to school this fall, work next spring and summer, and then go to school next fall until summer 2012. If I want to do something else it severely impacts my program (co-op engineering). But I’m happy.