No Contempt For the Only Place We Can Learn to Love

11/26/2022

In this brief post I would like to refer back to a passage Dr. Charlton shared in his summary of Christopher Bambford's distillation of Rudolf Steiner's core teachings.

The purpose of the Earth and Men - what this world is essentially for - is the creation of relationships. And this is vital because only on Earth and among Men can Beings learn to love.

I return to this passage again for two reasons:

First, it is a reminder that God created this world as fit-for-purpose. Moreover, He offered us mortal life in it to serve a positive purpose.

Second, it suggests that our experience in this world – despite its inherent temporariness, tribulations, temptations, and trials – is a great gift.

Also, during the brief time we have in this world, we have the opportunity to accept, participate in, and expand this great gift – despite everything.

More correctly, precisely because of everything!

If we accept, participate in and expand the great gift in this world, then we will learn how to love. Once we have learned how to love, our purpose in this world will be fulfilled, and we be offered the choice to leave all temporariness, tribulation, and temptation behind.

So be of good cheer and stop treating the world with nothing but resentment, scorn, and contempt!

Satan had nothing but resentment, scorn, and contempt for God and Creation. He is now the Prince of this World -- but only of the part that refuses to learn how to love.

Once we commit to learning to love, we overcome the disgust and anger the Prince's world generates in us and align ourselves with God's divine creative purposes in this world.

So, create those relationships. That's what you're here for! And when you have created relationships, focus on co-creating love.

Learn from the love that is cultivated. Strive to create more of it; then make it eternal.

6 Comments

Simple Asthat

11/26/2022 21:15:01

This idea that everything is about learning to love is why modernity is swamped in homosexuality. Life is about living. Simple as that. And there are rules ordained by God. Simple as that. The belief that earth is a school to teach us to love is homosexual feminist propagandizing. Simple as that.

Francis Berger

11/27/2022 04:47:22

@ S - Seriously? I'm not referring to the forms of pseudo-love pushed by the System and, unfortunately, nearly all mainstream Christian churches!

I'm talking about Christian love. Real Christian love. The kind Jesus instructed his followers to take up. You know, Love God, love your neighbor as yourself, love one another as I have loved you.

Most Christians cannot distinguish between real love and pseudo-love; hence, the massive success of System propagandizing. Christians need to discover what love means within a Christian context.

On a side note, I get the impression that you don't read this blog very often. If by chance you do, you misunderstand what I write here. Simple as that.

lea

11/27/2022 07:02:32

Most people assume that an excited and usually lust informed love within a one to one relationship is the epitome of what the word means. They look for ways to express it and keep that flame burning, but often find that 'doing more of the same' won't keep working. There needs to be a spiritual connection. It does not matter what the setup of the original bonding is, it will never last past artificial make-belief without a spiritual underpinning.

The earth is a school to learn to love not bound by conditions of society, appearance, and 'success' by materialistic measures.

11/27/2022 10:20:24

@ lea - Yes, I agree. And a big part of the learning involves understanding that love based on the externals you note is an extremely shallow form of love. This works in both the positive and negative sense, i.e. loving someone because they are rich or loving someone because they are poor.

bruce g charlton

11/27/2022 08:30:38

@Frank - Many of us 'inherit' relationships, and loving ones, from our childhood - i.e. at least some of one's family. So, rather than creating them from scratch, it is a matter of choosing to retain at least some of them after adolescence offers the possibility of rejection.

'Created' loving relationships are primarily marriage, for most people - although loving friendships may qualify -- however, they tend to be short-lived.

Yet life is short, and always ends - so even a briefish friendship may nonetheless be of great lifetimes significance. Examples would include the friendships men forge during later schooldays or war, when one of the two may die but never be forgotten.

JRR Tolkien's relatively short friendship with Geoffrey Bache Smith (killed in WWI) was of life-long significance through a long life; or Robert Frost's with Edward Thomas (also killed in the same war).

What I think Bamford/ Steiner was saying (you seem to agree) was more than this - that serious and loving relationships between mortal Men need to be known as the other side of the same coin as our love of God - or more specifically our love of Jesus Christ, since Jesus seems to have been very clear that love of Him (and desire to follow him to resurrection) was sufficient for salvation.

That fascinating section of the Fourth Gospel (John 13-17) of Jesus talking with his disciples, seems to be teaching very directly about this inseparableness of the love of Jesus and the love of 'friends'.

This 'love between friends' replacing the older Hebrew love of God-the-creator, which was more like the love of a servant for his master; and was less personal, less chosen, and more a duty - undertaken partly from fear in in hope of propitiation.

BTW - I personally found it helpful to distinguish between Christian and secular-modern 'love' -- by regarding the Christian as a 'metaphysical' love, which is ultimately that potentially-permanent and personal affiliation (between Beings) which holds-together and makes-possible divine creation; whereas secular-modern love is (just) an emotion, and always temporary.

The Christian love is 'metaphysical' because is part of a true description of ultimate reality, a reason why creation is possible. (Metaphysical-) Love is at the root of the fundamental distinction between chaos and creation.

11/27/2022 10:15:43

@ Bruce - "serious and loving relationships between mortal Men need to be known as the other side of the same coin as our love of God - or more specifically our love of Jesus Christ"

Yes, that is what I was getting at in this post. Fittingly enough, I had John 15-16 specifically in mind when I wrote this post.

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No Contempt For the Only Place We Can Learn to Love

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