Love

Love is a feeling that cannot be easily explained; it is the feeling we all strive for, and sometimes, love is the one thing for which we would be willing to die...

Is everyone loved?

"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." - John 3:16

To understand why things unfold the way they do, we must first understand the meaning of love. In order to grasp the unconditional love of God, we need to go back to the very beginning.

God is love. When God created, He did so out of love. God is a perfectly loving being, whose love is not based on a person’s performance. Satan is a being, indeed, on the traditional view, an angelic being of unparalleled beauty and perfection among creatures. How could God not love him? The fact that this being is now fallen and unspeakably evil does not imply that God ceased to love him any more than He ceased to love us when we fell and became enemies of God (Romans 5:10).

So, God loves us unconditionally. We may make mistakes and have the choice to turn away from Him, but He will never stop loving us. To understand the depth of this love, we can look at the evil in the world. Everyone is granted the freedom to live according to their will, even Satan. You can choose your own path, and nothing will stop you. You may achieve great wealth and influence, to the point where you might feel like a god...

However, in order to truly give life meaning, you must be saved from death, for it is the only thing standing in the way of becoming like a god. We begin to realize that we need salvation, and that the greed for materialism distracts us from our deepest desires for salvation and truth. We come to the conclusion that the only way to be saved from this life is to seek union with God and experience His unconditional love.

A God who loves you unconditionally may be difficult to imagine at first, especially if you have never truly experienced love. But as you begin to strengthen your relationship with God, you will discover His unconditional love. This is of great importance, because when you understand the love of God, you will grow in spiritual maturity and begin to understand why things are unfolding as they are.

"If you seek Him, He will be found by you." - 1 Chronicles 28:9

STS & STO

Before getting into an extensive discussion of the subject, let me first make some rather simple remarks that may answer the question in an immediate way.

In terms of Service To Others: You could say that a soldier in an army would declare that,

"I serve others because I Serve my Country, my People, my General, my Cause - and for this reason, I kill other human beings."

In such a case, anyone viewing this with a historical perspective could see that it was clearly NOT Service To Others in a pure sense.

It is "mixed" with many other factors such as fear, desire, pride and so forth. This "Service To Others" is in another sense, "Service to Self Against Others." So, by using the term "Service to Others" and "Service to Self," we have easily been able to identify the essential nature of the activity without even having to think about the values in specific, i.e. whether the cause is "just" or "unjust," and who might be "right" or "wrong." What you see is simply this: a judgment. One person in action against another, and that is the essence of Service to Self.

Yet, when we divide the world into "good and/or evil," that is exactly what we are doing - we are judging. What is "good" is subjective, and what is "evil" is also subjective. We might try to use the terms "positive" or "negative" but we immediately fall into a value judgment of "good or evil," so that won’t do. The terms "Service to Others" and Service to Self" give us a better handle on what we are dealing with in our world.

These terms, "Service to Others" and "Service to Self" are inextricably mixed up with the idea of "love." On an individual basis, we may say that we Love this or that person, and want to Serve them, but then the question arises: WHICH PART OF THEM are we serving? The higher part that seeks spiritual growth and Union with God, or the Lower part that seeks survival in the Flesh? When we help someone, who keeps making the same mistakes over and over again, we are clearly interfering in their lessons. What, then, are we serving?

Most likely ourselves because we are then able to "feel good" that we are so "long suffering" and "patient" and "self-sacrificing," because we can certainly see, from the evidence of our eyes, that the other person isn’t making any progress by virtue of our efforts. And, it may be a far more difficult thing to deny assistance, particularly when it is someone we love, because it "hurts us to see them hurt." Yet, that may be the very thing needed in order for them to grow - to be left to their own suffering until they have had enough so that they will begin to see their own way out of the difficulty, thereby building soul strength and accessing their own powers and inner potentials.

But, we run into the same problem of judgment here: aren’t we judging whether the person is really asking from the soul level or the level of the flesh? And, can’t we be wrong?

How do we know when our giving is violating another’s free will? Well, we DO have a little bit of a clue in many ancient teachings about "asking." The stories say: "ask and you shall receive." But, if you study this idea, you find that what they really say is "ask and keep on asking, and it shall be given you; seek and keep on seeking, and you shall find; knock and keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you."

There are a number of Jesus’ parables that illustrate this point, particularly the "Friend at Midnight," found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11, vs.5-13.