Can we love yet dislike?

[pilgrim]

Well Johnny, I didn’t want to interrupt your preparation for a wonderful Christmas address, but now that is over with (though remaining in the hearts of the recipients by God’s grace), I would be grateful if you could address the problems I have suggested in my reply to you (and perhaps correct my mis-understandings).

In addition, I have looked through the thread again and am still searching for ONE scripture to support the idea that agape love can be complete without a positive emotional component towards the recipient.

On the converse, there have been several scriptures cited which support the obvious and child-like opinion that true ‘Love’ for a person is accompanied by the natural positive emotion of ‘Like’.

Let me quote Paidon:

There is biblical instruction, not only to love, but also to like. (Titus 2:4)

or here is one of my favourites:

Love each other with genuine affection (Romans 12 10)

I think that the Romans 12 text is remarkable in that Paul inserted the word “genuine” and I would ask that we ALL meditate on why Paul might have felt it important to include that word.

[Username1]

Hi John

Just a quick post to say sorry for not having responded properly sooner. The family laptop went kaput a couple of weeks ago, hence am reduced to posting on my iPhone at the moment. This topic is far too complex for me to do it justice via one finger phone typing, hence I hope you will bear with me until I can get at a proper keyboard and give you the considered response your questions demand.

Until then, love and blessings

Johnny

[Sobornost]

I look forward to Alistair Simms and Stan Laurel having further debate here. And I have fool’s licence to say non-serious things without being whipped to kennel because it’s still Christmas and it’s approaching the Feast of Fools.

[Username1]

[Matt_Wiley]

Ah, you Brits crack me up

[pilgrim]

Hi John

Just a quick post to say sorry for not having responded properly sooner. The family laptop went kaput a couple of weeks ago, hence am reduced to posting on my iPhone at the moment. This topic is far too complex for me to do it justice via one finger phone typing, hence I hope you will bear with me until I can get at a proper keyboard and give you the considered response your questions demand.

Until then, love and blessings

Johnny

No problem Johnny, I’m just delighted that your Christmas message was received so warmly back on your stomping ground. But it is I who should apologise. I too, have been very slow at responding. I have a project which took me away from home for a couple of days and there are so many things going on but I do look forward to your reply and there is no urgency so take your time.
God bless you.

[pilgrim]

And a Happy New year to you too Dick!

(I’ve mostly taught adults). Of course I’ve never harboured negative feelings towards students. Apart from any consideration of my turbulent private emotions, I’m a professional like you and one of our professional virtues is equity – or equal treatment. I’m trained din the virtue of trying to see the best in students and to get the best out of them – this is part of my duty of care. This doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes get enormously frustrated with students, or even on occasions feel angry towards some. However, I’ve learned to exercise detachment from the ebb and flow of my emotions and hope my actions are and always will be grounded in a desire to see student fulfil their potential.

I think it is important to make a distinction between having reactive feelings of a somewhat negative nature and actually harbouring these and acting them out. For example when I’ve done certain types of classes with students who have had huge difficulties in mainstream education – so much so that mainstream teachers have refused to teach them – I’ve often got a very hard time from some in the first few sessions until trust is established, and I can’t pretend that I can always rise above being inwardly upset.

Treating students with equity/parity or whatever you want to call it means that we need to strive not to give preferential treatment to students we find easy to like – because they are funny, sweet natured, or have stimulating and creative ideas, or because they basically don’t make huge demands. However, I often reflect that those I have felt frustrated with, and angry with are actually those who, at the end of the day, I’ve cared about most and have actually made the most significant progress with me.
Dick

Your experiences mirror my own very much. It goes without saying that I have had some negative feelings towards some of my charges, and on some occasions but I never thought that it was God’s perfect will for me to have these feelings. Neither do I think that having these feelings ha been of any value to my charges.
I too would recognise that some of those students who are the most troubled, the most difficult, may have made the greatest progress but I would say that is despite the dissonance of my emotions. With these ‘special cases’, it is inevitable that we spend more time and energy and that there is greater potential for improvement but I ask myself: If one knew that I disliked him and another that I liked him, which would be more likely to realise his potential (which as you know is teacher speak for ‘exhibiting their true self - their divine seed’)?

I am wary about writing the following on an internet site…
A couple of years ago I was giving a parent consultation and the student was at his mother’s side. She said to me: “He doesn’t know whether you like him.” Now, in my 30 odd years of teaching, I had never been presented with such a statement (and she clearly wanted an answer to what seemed to be very important to her son).
I side-stepped the question. I’m not sure why now (motives can be incredibly complicated can’t they?).
Anyway, about six months later the boy died suddenly and unexpectedly in an awful accident. His brother was with him at the time and did his best to save him but to no avail.
That interview still haunts me. I wish I could have that time again.

I think it is important to know that God takes pleasure in us even if we fail Him so often. I also believe that it is good for my charges to believe that I like them and obviously they need to believe the truth.
I believe that if I were to behave positively towards another human being and yet have negative feelings towards them, then I am enacting a charade. My actions seem good but my spirit is at odds with what I am doing.
Behaving as a christian is not the same as being a christian. To take all emotion out of agape love (which, it seems, is what people are trying to do in order to defend the title) is such a strange, extraordinary thing that, at the very least, it must be defended with recourse to scripture and I have seen none.

God bless you Dick

And Matt - Happy New year, feel free to join in.

[Sobornost]

Pilgrim - I’m really sorry to hear this tragic story, and realise how much it will have affected you. I still can’t agree completely with your account of virtue and emotion - but then I don’t completely disagree with you either. Also I don’t think I can add anything more at the moment - I know I want to refine some of your defintions - and make other distinctions also to make sense experience as I see it; but I will leave this for another time. And I wish you every blessing

Dick

[Username1]

Hi John

Hope you’re well. Apologies for being so slow in getting round to answering your last posts. My home PC remains kaput, so I am still struggling to compose lengthy posts. I hope you will bear with me.

We were talking about Myra Hindley. I realise hers is a very extreme case. But as I said before, it is these extreme examples which bring the principles of the debate into the sharpest relief, I believe. To recap, I said:

“Is it ‘wrong’ or ‘unchristian’ of me to feel a bone-deep distaste, a disgust, for her horrible crimes? And if I do, does that stop me behaving towards her in a Christian way, from loving her as is my Christian duty?”

To which you replied, in part:

It is neither wrong nor unchristian for me to feel a deep disgust of her horrible crimes - but that is not the same as me feeling disgust of HER.

I see what you’re saying here, John, and I agree the two things are not the same. But my honest belief is that it is impossible for us to separate what a person does from what that person actually is. You talked previously about how we ought to say someone ‘is behaving like a bully’, say, rather than the person ‘is a bully’ – and I think there’s a lot of merit in this approach, particularly for ‘low level’ bad behaviour – being spiteful, uncharitable, rude etc. But I think the approach becomes harder and harder to sustain the ‘worse’ the behaviour in question. If somebody commits a rape or a murder, it is insufficient, indeed incoherent, to say they are ‘behaving like a rapist/murderer’. The fact is that they are a rapist/murderer. The act of rape or murder, even if genuinely repented of later, remains a defining fact about the person forever.

Now, putting aside the mitigating factors that might apply (and I’m sure there were many), there is no doubt whatsoever that the murders committed by Myra Hindley were horrible in the extreme. And for me it is axiomatic that I would have found it pretty much impossible to like Myra Hindley as a result. It may well be the case that later, in prison, after genuine repentance, the imago dei within her became far more ‘apparent’ to outsiders, and perhaps in those circumstances I would indeed have found it possible to genuinely like her, even though she had once done such terrible things. I’ve seen murderers being interviewed on TV, and often they come across as likeable. I corresponded for some years with a convicted murderer on death row, and he was immensely likeable – at least in his letters (I have never met him).

But I’m not talking about repentant murderers, or murderers who are by and large decent people who, for whatever extreme reasons, were driven to kill. No, I’m talking about a person who deliberately, calculatedly indulged in the sadistic torture and killing of children. And I don’t see how I could have liked that person, while they were what they were as a murderer. No amount of effort on my part, even with God’s help, could have brought me to overcome my revulsion at her crimes, and as long as I looked at her and saw those crimes in her face I would have continued to dislike her. But I maintain that I could nevertheless – with a huge effort, and only with God’s help – at least have behaved, or tried to behave, towards her in a loving fashion. And that, I believe, is the best that can be expected of me, or indeed is all that is required or commanded of me by the Lord.

That, essentially, is the heart of my argument that it is possible to love while disliking, in a way that it is fully compatible with Christ’s teachings.

And just to clarify, all I meant by ‘behaving towards Myra Hindley in a Christian way’ was treating her with the same loving compassion as I would – or perhaps I should say ought to – treat any other human being, no matter what they may be like, or might have done. (For I am not remotely close to actually being like that. Goodness me, I have a hard enough time being loving and compassionate towards people who are rude to me in the office, or cut me up in a queue of traffic, or jostle in front of me on the train – let alone psychopathic killers!)

You mention the concept of salvation by works, and suggest that in some sense loving while disliking – “doing good works which mimic genuine Christianity” – is a form of salvation by works. Again I disagree. I disagree a) because for me it’s not doing good works which mimic genuine Christianity, it’s doing good works which are Christianity; and b) because I don’t see how the concept of salvation by works is relevant to the issue at hand.

I must also just say that I have great respect, admiration even, for your position on this whole subject, as far as I understand it. It does you enormous credit, and I fear my own position does me little credit. But it is how I feel, what I believe to be true, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. But who knows, perhaps you will end up changing my mind!

I need to address the other points you make, and I will do so as soon as I can. But for now, all the best, and many blessings to you.

Johnny

PS Sorry to hear the sad tale of the boy who was killed. Your statement “I think it is important to know that God takes pleasure in us even if we fail Him so often” is very profound.

[pilgrim]

Having left this thread alone for quite a while, and having Johnny’s points go unanswered for too long, I think it important to thank Johnny for his patience.
In addition I would like to thank Sherman for bringing to my intention this quote from Richard Beck which is pertinent to this thread:
Richard says:

You often hear preachers say, “Love is a choice.” This is wrong. Love is fundamentally about caring. To be clear, I’m not saying that love is a fleeting feeling. I’m saying that love is a deeply rooted affection.

What is remarkable is that everyone knows this already. So it’s a testimony to how strange things have become that I have to spend words convincing people to stop and note how very strange and inhuman is the “love is a choice” formulation. Just think of someone you love (I’ve got my sons in my mind) and ask yourself: What best describes your experience of love toward these people? Choice? Or a deeply rooted affection?

(my bold).
It seems there is no doubt where Richard stands on this issue.

[pilgrim]

Hi John
But I think the approach becomes harder and harder to sustain the ‘worse’ the behaviour in question. If somebody commits a rape or a murder, it is insufficient, indeed incoherent, to say they are ‘behaving like a rapist/murderer’. The fact is that they are a rapist/murderer. The act of rape or murder, even if genuinely repented of later, remains a defining fact about the person forever.

I still persist that, however hard it is (and even if it is impossible for we frail mortals), it is still the Godly thing to do to consider +the behaviour as only one exhibit of a multi-dimensional soul. To define someone as a ‘murderer’, is to negate all other aspects of that one who was created in the image of God (however marred they may be).

Now, putting aside the mitigating factors that might apply (and I’m sure there were many), there is no doubt whatsoever that the murders committed by Myra Hindley were horrible in the extreme. And for me it is axiomatic that I would have found it pretty much impossible to like Myra Hindley as a result.

Whether you or I COULD like her is not the issue so much as whether God calls us to see the divine image within even her that is likeable.

It may well be the case that later, in prison, after genuine repentance, the imago dei within her became far more ‘apparent’ to outsiders, and perhaps in those circumstances I would indeed have found it possible to genuinely like her, even though she had once done such terrible things. I’ve seen murderers being interviewed on TV, and often they come across as likeable. I corresponded for some years with a convicted murderer on death row, and he was immensely likeable – at least in his letters (I have never met him).

I agree.

But I’m not talking about repentant murderers, or murderers who are by and large decent people who, for whatever extreme reasons, were driven to kill. No, I’m talking about a person who deliberately, calculatedly indulged in the sadistic torture and killing of children.

I agree.

And I don’t see how I could have liked that person, while they were what they were as a murderer.

But isn’t that what is so ‘amazing’ about grace? Isn’t that what is so scandalous about grace? Isn’t it true that whilst we were yet sinners Christ loved us (in the way that Richard Beck describes above) and aren’t we called to aspire to such amazing, scandalous standards?

No amount of effort on my part, even with God’s help, could have brought me to overcome my revulsion at her crimes,

I agree.

and as long as I looked at her and saw those crimes in her face

-but that is exactly the problem isn’t it? How easy it is for us to see those crimes in her face and how easy it might have been for God to see our sins in OUR faces.

I would have continued to dislike her. But I maintain that I could nevertheless – with a huge effort, and only with God’s help – at least have behaved, or tried to behave, towards her in a loving fashion. And that, I believe, is the best that can be expected of me,

That is quite likely, naturally speaking

or indeed is all that is required or commanded of me by the Lord.

I disagree with the sentiment here. I mean, I’m not so sure that God expects us to be perfect (enough) to find affection in our hearts towards those who have done such awful wrongs, and I don’t know about God ‘requiring’ but I strongly believe that God desires us to ‘walk that path’.

That, essentially, is the heart of my argument that it is possible to love while disliking, in a way that it is fully compatible with Christ’s teachings.

I understand.

You mention the concept of salvation by works, and suggest that in some sense loving while disliking – “doing good works which mimic genuine Christianity” – is a form of salvation by works. Again I disagree. I disagree a) because for me it’s not doing good works which mimic genuine Christianity, it’s doing good works which are Christianity;

I commend you in getting to the kernel(s) of the differences in our positions. I think you have hit on something fundamental and important here.
If I’m not mistaken, I think you are espousing the philosophy that ‘we are what we do’ and that such a philosophy is compatible with Chistianity.
I happen to hold a different view. I happen to believe that the message of Jesus is that we are much more than what we do in our fallen state (whether we count ourselves as redeemed or not). I would be interested in pursuing this and giving it more consideration so my thanks to you for bringing it to light.

and b) because I don’t see how the concept of salvation by works is relevant to the issue at hand.

I thought it relevant because the way of salvation (and state of salvation) is that of being a disciple of Christ and unless I am mistaken (please forgive me if I am) you seem to be saying that behaving as IF we have affection towards the sinner is as christian as HAVING affection towards the sinner. Now, whilst I agree that faith without works is dead, I also think that works alone are insufficient.

[Paidion]

… you seem to be saying that behaving as IF we have affection towards the sinner is as christian as HAVING affection towards the sinner.

The former may not be “as Christian” as the latter, but the behaviour itself tends to lead to the latter.

[Username1]

Hi John

No worries my friend. Sorry I’ve been slow in acknowledging you revivifying this thread. Things move so quickly here. A Luddite like me struggles to keep up sometimes. I must put my thinking cap on. This is a three pipe problem .

Ta-ta for now

Johnny