How Great is Allah's Love?

[Hellbound Serpiente]

Sacrificing oneself knowing in advance to come back after three days, is not a big deal. Everybody would sacrifice oneself like that. Ergo, cannot be used as evidence of love. Like the love a mother shows to really sacrifice herself, and not just pretend to.

ciao

- viole

Can you go through the same ordeal Junko Furuta did even with advance knowledge that you'll come back alive, and after some time will also achieve full recovery?

According to Biblical view, Jesus Christ's torture was immeasurably worse than Junko Furuta's or any other ordeal. He was supposed to face the painful consequences of the sins of ALL mankind combined. It was the most terrible ordeal ever. Knowing in advance that one is about to go through the most painful punishment for the sake of others who mostly hates you and holds nothing but ill-will for you in their heart, and not taking an easy way out [like suicide or something] takes far more courage, selflessness, loyalty, bravery, love and other positive traits than any mother have.

 

[Audie]

Sacrificing oneself knowing in advance to come back after three days, is not a big deal. Everybody would sacrifice oneself like that. Ergo, cannot be used as evidence of love. Like the love a mother shows to really sacrifice herself, and not just pretend to.

ciao

- viole

The whole torture bit under the heading of love is kind of sick. Very, in fact.

 

[icehorse]

Is Allah's love greater than a mother's love for her child? Or is Allah's love less than that?

Based on the Quran, Allah is a sadist.

 

[Cooky]

Based on the Quran, Allah is a sadist.

That's what I was thinking... Not sure why all these JW's are chiming in. I guess the JW religion shares much in common with the Islamic concept of God, being a fierce God, who demands worship and shows only hints toward the possibility of love.

My God would be pure love. He would not express it at or below the level of man.

 

[Audie]

Based on the Quran, Allah is a sadist.

Hmm.

Wonder how he'd do in a contest with that yahweh.

Yahweh has bronze scorpions.

 

[viole]

Can you go through the same ordeal Junko Furuta did even with advance knowledge that you'll come back alive, and after some time will also achieve full recovery?

According to Biblical view, Jesus Christ's torture was immeasurably worse than Junko Furuta's or any other ordeal. He was supposed to face the painful consequences of the sins of ALL mankind combined. It was the most terrible ordeal ever. Knowing in advance that one is about to go through the most painful punishment for the sake of others who mostly hates you and holds nothing but ill-will for you in their heart, and not taking an easy way out [like suicide or something] takes far more courage, selflessness, loyalty, bravery, love and other positive traits than any mother have.

And how do you know? How do you know that, for instance, people who sacrificed themselves in whole history, without the certainty to come back alive and kicking to rule the universe, did not suffer more?

but you seem to indicate that the saying “Jesus died for us” should be replaced “Jesus suffered greatly for us”. Which, honestly, sounds a bit less dramatic.

ciao

- viole

 

[Hellbound Serpiente]

The whole torture bit under the heading of love is kind of sick. Very, in fact.

You know what else is sick? Animals eating each other alive. Would you call it kind of sick of someone goes through immeasurable suffering trying to save a helpless animal from a savage, brutal attack of other animal?

The world is sick, not God. And the world became sick because everyone here is serving their own egos and it's pleasure rather than what God Commanded them to do.

Oh but ... I guess some delusional people can't differentiate between the evils of world and egoistic entities of the world ... and God Himself. Sorry-ah!

 

[viole]

The whole torture bit under the heading of love is kind of sick. Very, in fact.

Well, maybe He disabled His nervous system during that. Should have been piece of cake.

ciao

- viole

 

[Audie]

And how do you know? How do you know that, for instance, people who sacrificed themselves in whole history, without the certainty to come back alive and kicking to rule the universe, did not suffer more?

but you seem to indicate that the saying “Jesus died for us” should be replaced “Jesus suffered greatly for us”. Which, honestly, sounds a bit less dramatic.

ciao

- viole

It would take some doing for a standard issue roman crucifixion to be worse than what was done in his name during the inquisition.

But maybe easier than getting magic knowledge
of what it felt like.

 

[Hellbound Serpiente]

Based on the Quran, Allah is a sadist.

Based on specifically what in Qur'an? Do you have any specific, real verse rather than quoting random result from the most truthful scholar in history like Mr. Google like others here?

 

[viole]

You know what else is sick? Animals eating each other alive. Would you call it kind of sick of someone goes through immeasurable suffering trying to save a helpless animal from a savage, brutal attack of other animal?

The world is sick, not God. And the world became sick because everyone here is serving their own egos and it's pleasure rather than what God Commanded them to do.

Oh but ... I guess some delusional people can't differentiate between the evils of world and egoistic entities of the world ... and God Himself. Sorry-ah!

If What God commands is not pleasure, then He should have asked, and explain the rules of engagement, before creating me.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Hellbound Serpiente]

That's what I was thinking... Not sure why all these JW's are chiming in. I guess the JW religion shares much in common with the Islamic concept of God, being a fierce God, who demands worship and shows only hints toward the possibility of love.

My God would be pure love. He would not express it at or below the level of man.

...I appreciate the concept of Agape.

Uh ... nope. Allah isn't like lying, deceptive intraweb scholars here are saying. And nothing like you said.

And a God of pure love cannot be a righteous love. How can you possibly love others if you aren't bringing their oppressors to justice and ending their evil?

 

[viole]

It would take some doing for a standard issue roman crucifixion to be worse than what was done in his name during the inquisition.

But maybe easier than getting magic knowledge
of what it felt like.

Especially because He has been killed by a sword, according to the myth, before the whole agony of a true crucifixion took place. The latter lasting much longer, in general.

ciao

- viole

 

[Cooky]

And a God of pure love cannot be a righteous love. How can you possibly love others if you aren't bringing their oppressors to justice and ending their evil?

That sounds like the 'eye for an eye' mentality. I think it's archaic and outdated... In reality, people do evil things because their brains are malfunctioning, not because they're bad.

It reminds me of the case of the man in Texas who wrote a letter explaining these strange inclinations he was having that he didn't understand, just before he stabbed his mother and wife in the heart, and then climbed scaffolding and shot 20 some other people. After being shot down by police, and proceeding in doing an autopsy, they found a giant tumor in his brain, that was pushing up against his frontal cortex, in an area that would cause a person to do exactly something just like that. In fact, all sins are based on either substance, or chemical imbalances in the brain. Nobody is inherently 'evil'.

 

[icehorse]

Based on specifically what in Qur'an? Do you have any specific, real verse rather than quoting random result from the most truthful scholar in history like Mr. Google like others here?

I am SOOOOO TIRED of insinuations that I'm a liar. So, so, tired of it.

I read the stupid book. Cover to dusty, musty horrible cover.

Have you read it?

If you haven't, just read the first two Surahs. You'll get a feel for the book. You'll find that it's EXTREMELY repetitive. You'll find MANY verses like verse 2.

 

[Audie]

I am SOOOOO TIRED of insinuations that I'm a liar. So, so, tired of it.

I read the stupid book. Cover to dusty, musty horrible cover.

Have you read it?

If you haven't, just read the first two Surahs. You'll get a feel for the book. You'll find that it's EXTREMELY repetitive. You'll find MANY verses like verse 2.

Worse than the BoM even?

You have to wonder how "God" inspired such
lousy prose.

 

[Hellbound Serpiente]

I'll only reply to Cooky for now, for only he comes off as a rather genuine person I am discussing with here among others. As far the rest of the atheist-bigots here goes, I'll look forward to you after a while as I am working atm.

That sounds like the 'eye for an eye' mentality. I think it's archaic and outdated... In reality, people do evil things because their brains are malfunctioning, not because they're bad.

Justice doesn't necessarily entails eye for an eye, nor is Islamic Justice according to The Holy Qur'an is always necessarily eye for an eye. Even if you believe Islamic mythology, Prophet Muhammad and other great Islamic figure went on to forgive their enemies numerous times, even after they have committed unforgiveable crimes against their and their family. There are countless examples of Prophet Muhammad forgiving his enemies who have inflicted immeasurable suffering upon Prophet Muhammad like the killer of his family member. I'll copy/paste the links if you want to so you can read in detail Islam actually doesn't always call for eye for an eye unless it is absolutely necessary, and actually calls towards mercy and forgiveness.

Justice is basically unwilling to tolerate others evil and giving them a dose of their own medicine so they realize how agonizing their behavior is/was so they refrain from repeating the same behavior. It's working hand-in-hand with karma to make them reap the damage they have sown in other people's live in order for them to come back in-line with righteousness.

 

[Hellbound Serpiente]

Now, I’ll just reply to Viole with all that’ll suffice and not add more because I am all swarmed up atm handling other things. I could reply to their deceit evil in the same tune but they would whine to mods here, so I won't replying to their ad hominem attacks in the same tune.

And how do you know? How do you know that, for instance, people who sacrificed themselves in whole history, without the certainty to come back alive and kicking to rule the universe, did not suffer more?

1. Do I have to? Where did I said that I hold a personal belief about who suffered the most? I already explicitly wrote --- “According to Biblical view.” i.e. If, hypothetically, what Bible is saying is true and if we go by what Bible said, THEN we can come to this conclusion.

2. And how do you know? How do you know that, for instance, Jesus and/or God is actually proactively ruling the universe rather than just creating an automatic, self-governing system and let it run automatically according to it’s own way by it’s own self-governing laws He Created for it? Who is to say that He isn’t allowing the world to rule itself and follow it’s own course for the greater good of freewill?

3. ACCORDING TO BIBLICAL VIEW [Again, don’t omit this key information next time], Jesus Himself positively refused to be the ruler of this world. Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place."

but you seem to indicate that the saying “Jesus died for us” should be replaced “Jesus suffered greatly for us”. Which, honestly, sounds a bit less dramatic.

1. What specifically in my post makes it “seem to indicate that the saying “Jesus died for us” should be replaced “Jesus suffered greatly for us”? I am not trying to start an argument here and/or trying to be some sort of a smart-***, I am writing in haste as I am working atm and may have made some mistakes which made you jump to that conclusion.

2. IF WE ARE TOO ASSUME JESUS/GOD/SPIRITUAL REALM/SUCH THINGS ARE EXISTS AND ARE REAL [again, this is a key information, don’t conveniently omit it], then there is no such thing as “death.” What we consider “Death” is a process of transmutation from physical entity into a spiritual one. I’ll elaborate more on this later on as this is getting lengthy and I tend to keep things concise.

3. What exactly do you mean by “less dramatic”? Are you saying prolonged torture is “less dramatic” than a relatively less agonizing, quick, clean death? If that’s what you mean, I disagree with you. I personally know people who “suffered greatly” but didn’t die, yet everyday they wish they had died a relatively quick, less agonizing death before going through their personal suffering.

 

[Hellbound Serpiente]

but you seem to indicate that the saying “Jesus died for us” should be replaced “Jesus suffered greatly for us”. Which, honestly, sounds a bit less dramatic.

I’ll just elaborate more on this before going back to my business. There is no such thing as “death” for spiritual-natured entities. Even many human beings, who are believers and genuinely believes in afterlife with utmost conviction, don’t consider “death” to be anything other than human self-constructed concept. I’ll just copy/paste a reply a Christian member here gave in another topic to show they also hold similar beliefs as the belief I am speaking about here:

“One of the few things we know about God -- even the most basic definition of God -- is that because of Him, death isn't real.

So, what happened then when God killed most all people in the Flood story (except for Noah's family)?

Well, here's what the texts say happened for those people --

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built."
1 Peter 3 NIV

The people that 'died' in the Flood were all alive.

But more than only that -- they get Christ Himself coming to them to offer salvation, no less!

And we can see the generalization: it must be the same for anyone that died without hearing the gospel -- "For God does not show favoritism." (Romans 2)

So, you see, God is the one who cancels death.

Instead of 'killing', God...transports.”

 

[Vouthon]

Is Allah's love greater than a mother's love for her child? Or is Allah's love less than that?

I have no idea whether you are using 'Allah' here as a generic Arabic term for God or asking for an explicitly Islamic conception of theism and divine love?

Because I don't know what your looking for specifically, I will attempt to answer within both an Islamic framework and my own Christian theistic concept.

In terms of Islamic theology, there is a Hadith which extols divine mercy as a force exceeding that of a created mother's care for her offspring:

Narated By 'Umar bin Al-Khattab : Some Sabi (i.e. war prisoners, children and woman only) were brought before the Prophet and behold, a woman amongst them was milking her breasts to feed and whenever she found a child amongst the captives, she took it over her chest and nursed it (she had lost her child but later she found him) the Prophet said to us, "Do you think that this lady can throw her son in the fire?"

We replied, "No, if she has the power not to throw it (in the fire)."

The Prophet then said, "Allah is more merciful to His slaves than this lady to her son."- Sahih Bukhari.
​

Not expressly a reference to divine love but appears to answer your question, I would think, as "love" is a divine attribute of Allah in Islam just like mercy.

The Christian conception is basically the same, the Jewish Tanakh poses the following rhetorical question from the perspective of God:

"Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!" (Isaiah 49:15)

​

However, I would caution that what it means for a supreme and purely spiritual Divine Being to "love" is, arguably, qualitatively different than the human experience of love; inasmuch as human love is a consequence of powerful hormones acting as neurotransmitters in the brain, such as the "warm-fuzzy" bonding chemical oxytocin, which is released through acts of physical affection between mothers and babies, sexual lovers (after an initial "dopamine" or pleasure chemical infatuation) or even platonic friends.

God in His essence does not have a body or any materiality, He is pure spirit. So no hormones or chemicals.

Likewise, human love involves not just hormomal-driven physical intimacy but emotional intimacy as well. God on the other hand is "impassible": He has no emotions. This is known as the doctrine of divine aseity.

This doesn't mean that God does not "love" us all - indeed He wills, positively, the good of everyone and all things that He has created.

As the Book of Wisdom, in the Catholic Old Testament, informs us:

For you love all things that are
and loathe nothing that you have made; for you would not fashion what you hate.
25How could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you?
26But you spare all things, because they are yours,
O Ruler and Lover of souls,
12:1for your imperishable spirit is in all things!

(Wisdom 11:24-26, 12:1)​

Christianity, however, nuances this yet again quite considerably by introducing two radical concepts:

(a) that God, whilst one in essence, relates to Himself as three "persons" engaged in eternal relations of origin, whereby God the Father loves Himself in His own Image which is the Son and this bond of love between them spirates as the Holy Spirit

(b) God the Son has incarnated and become a living, breathing, emotional, hormonal and physically intimate (during his lifetime) human being in the person of Jesus Christ​

This redefines the playing field for Christians, since the revelation of Jesus as God incarnate comes with the message that God doesn't just "have" love as an attribute among others such as His mercy and glory (as in Islam and Judaism, arguably) but that He actually is love Itself in his very essence and being through the intimate, eternal relations of the Three Divine Persons of the Trinity, the Triune God, one Person of which assumed flesh as a human and "loves" just as a human does in his human nature.

God "is" love as the First Epistle of John tells us, and He calls us through His incarnate, en-fleshed Son (the 'image' of the Father) to share in this love for the Father through the Son in the the unity of the Holy Spirit, which is the inner life of the one God, His very essence and being.

This divine love has 'flowed' out into creation through the incarnation of that Son, the image of God, who became incarnate flesh as the Bridegroom to 'invite' the human race to share in the "intimacy" of Father and Son in eternity, because the entire human race is the Bride that the Father has prepared for Jesus the Bridegroom.

"Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him." (1 John 4:7-9)

Christianity places the 'scandal' of this fully incarnate God - conceived and born of a mother's womb, a God who in his lifetime was seen and touched, kissed and hugged - at the heart of its understanding of the meaning of existence. As the prologue to the Gospel of John ends: "No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known."

This point is rammed home so very beautifully in the Johannine epistle, typically known as 1 John, that accompanies the Gospel and was cut from the same theological cloth (a product of this ancient 'school' or sect of first century Jewish Christianity, founded by the anonymous Beloved Disciple of Jesus ("the disciple whom Jesus loved" and had reclining at his breast at the Last Supper)):


Bible Gateway passage: 1 John 1 - New Revised Standard Version

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life— 2 this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— 3 we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us​

Consider the emphatic 'emphasis' placed here in this passage on the sensuality - full sensuality - of the eyewitnesses (the disciples) first-hand encounter with God made flesh, the Divine Word in male humanly embodied form. Their every sense - hearing, seeing, touching - did he arouse in them. They are groping for temporal, earthly linguistic categories that can adequately convey the power of this engagement with the Divine-in-flesh.

So, to say the least, "divine love" and its relationship to a human love like that of a mother for her child, is a complicated thing and heavily shaped by your conception of theism.