Well, I dont think there is any christian who will say he will accept something if it is against christ or love. The problem is this: The standard of what is love become part of the beliefs and in this case constitute love is a very fluid concept. To take an illustration from the bible for once, jesus talked about putting a sword between people and splitting families, paul could be harsh, etc.
True, the standard of what people believe love is... is fluid (subjective)... unless they are looking at Christ who shows the truth of love (God). The standard of what love is... is Christ. His teachings... and if one misunderstands his teachings, then look to his deeds. While people WILL take a verse or two out of context (perhaps many verses), often to suit their own agenda in convincing themselves and others that something hateful is actually loving... these ones will always be confronted with something that Christ taught or DID, that shows them the error of their personal interpretation on this.
(Families being divided... is a statement of truth. Prophetic. It was going to and did and does happen. But not because those who belong to Christ were to shun or df their family members... it is the exact opposite; those who belong to Christ were going to BE shunned)
No, I simply mean that if I want to justify my actions, i need to do it from either what i desire or from what other people desire. If I want to do something that hurt a person, that means i have to commit to my desires being more important than his, or that he is unable to determine what is good for him.
Yes, I hear you. But there are always people who justify the harm they do to others as being good for them... or who commit to their desires being more important than anothers' desires... and this is not limited to theists (of any faith or religion), but includes atheists/anti-theists.
A person who believe his moral intuitions are (at least partly) from god can be free to do terrible things not because he like to do them, but because he feel God want him to do it. This is why we have otherwise good people shunning other people because they love the person.
Yes, and while this does of course happen... I think we will have to disagree on the entirety of the reason. Because these people may think that they are listening to God (by listening to men), but an examination of what Christ teaches (and taught, as written) will show them otherwise. So 'good' people are shunning other people because they are listening to someone/something other than Christ.
This type of danger is also present in other non-theistic systems.
Yes it is. So does that not provide some evidence that the error is in man, and not God?
I know you would never do this because it is fundamentally in contradiction to your moral instincts and so you would never hear it. but the same sort of danger exist regardless if one get ones moral from an organized religion (and check against what it tells a person what "love" means) or one gets morals from an inner voice (and check against what that voice claim "love" means).
Or gets ones morals from and checks them against some other non-theistic system, that might also be in error.
I would not be SO quick to claim that this could not happen to me. If I were listening to something/someone else who convinced me that shunning was a form of love... and I ignored Christ or did not know Christ (who teaches otherwise, and that is written as well)... then I might have done this.
(I don't THINK I would - at least not for long... because I left my study when I realized that everyone who died at armageddon was not going to get a second chance, and that was a lot of people including my own loved ones, and I could not be part of that, even if it was true... which of course it is not. Had I been listening to Christ from the start, even if that is just from reading his words and deeds, then I would have saved myself a lot of angst and known that it was not true)
Peace,
tammy