How do you know God loves you?

[water]

How do you know God loves you?

[Guest guest]

god does not need me, he's complete in itself... so if there's a relationship, this relationship can be only love

[water]

 

god does not need me, he's complete in itself... so if there's a relationship, this relationship can be only love

 

 

How do you know?

A stone may not need you either -- so if there's a relationship between you and that stone, it can be only love?

[Guest guest]

How do you know?

--i do not know directly. This is simple logic.. if God is really God, if he's Supreme, he has no competition with anyone.

 

A stone may not need you either -- so if there's a relationship between you and that stone, it can be only love?

---a)wich relationship can have a stone?

b)in this world if there's a relationship it is impure, egoist.

 

choose the answer you like more

[Guest guest]

Who's to say that there is a God or that he is actually good?

or that he loves people?

 

What proof is there?

 

We are here on Earth, while God is supposedly in heaven. Why are we separate from each other? Why is it necessarily our fault that we are distant from him? Perhaps we displeased God in some way and now he hates us? Or the other way around? Supremacy and lack of competition doesn't make it necessary that the relationship is only one of love.

 

 

[gHari]

 

God creates us. Even if He created us to hate, He would still love hating us, because He creates us for His pleasure. Love is what He does. Or what He does is what we call love. He just Is. Therefore He is the definition of love, of beauty, of truth, of strength, and so on, all that is 'good', all that is 'best', the Absolute perfection.

 

Logically, with words and syllogism can we 'prove' He loves us? I don't think we can prove much except our own arrogance with the mind. We have to forget a lot to think we can deduce what this existence is about. Just look into the night sky - it's a big big world.

 

Our Father must reveal the real truth about what is happening here. We need to give Him that opportunity. Such receptivity comes from a intense genuine desire to know - really to know, not to show all that we know.

 

[Guest guest]

Who's to say that there is a God or that he is actually good?

••if you believe in existence, you cannot deny the existence of god.. God is automatically good, because being the higher truth he sets the standard, the highest behaviour

 

or that he loves people?

••again... no one can compete with God, so God has no reason to be fearful of anyone

 

We are here on Earth, while God is supposedly in heaven.

••no... God, if he's God.. he's everywhere

 

Why are we separate from each other?

••the only intelligent explanation is that me and you, heaven's citizens, have asked to god to forget him as an abuse of free will

 

Perhaps we displeased God in some way and now he hates us?

••no.. he loves us.. and he demonstrates such love making us free to abandone him...... and being ready in any moment to save us if we express simply a strong desire to be saved..

 

Supremacy and lack of competition doesn't make it necessary that the relationship is only one of love.

••if i am supreme in everything, what kind of relationship can i have with you if not love? how can someone big as god have envy or fear for us?

[Guest guest]

Hate is. Maybe God doesn't hate us. Maybe he does, I don't know.

 

Perhaps he likes to rule over us, and punish us for ever questioning his will. Maybe he likes to use us for his own pleasure.

 

How is it that you equate this as "good"? Just because God is superior to us doesn't mean he should love us. Perhaps he regards us as merely objects for his play and nothing more. That is not real love.

 

 

By your own logic, a tyrannical king must feel love for his subjects, since he is superior to all of them. After all, what does he have to fear? He has the army, the weaponry, the birthright, he is the king, and he is considered like God by many of his subjects. Yet, many kings abuse their subjects and inspire fear in them, yet he does not fear them nor envy them. So how is it that God cannot be similar to this?

[Guest guest]

God loves us, because he is not only "out there," he is also "in here."

 

He feels every bit of pain we go through as very human creatures. He doesn't HAVE to feel pain. He WANTS to feel our pain.

 

If God were to just be enjoying in His heaven, while we are left to suffer and he is just looking down at us laughing, that is not love.

 

Rather, God knows our pain is due to our being trapped in this world and not feeling the bliss of experiencing Him.

 

Lazarus was dead. Jesus knew that death held no power before the true power of god's compassion. Yet, though Jesus had this knowldege, he wept to see Lazarus' corpse in the bed.

 

Then Jesus laid his hands on Lazarus and brought him back to life.

 

This is what Krishna is for us. Krishna sees our painful condition and, knowing it to be "illusory," He is still plunged into overwhelming pain.

 

This is why He takes avatars.

 

One of the most important avatars, especially for the souls in pain is Caitanya Mahaprabhu.

 

Because the only way to escape the pain of living, is to discover the bliss of Krishna's love.

 

Then, we can say, like Meerabai, no matter what the circumstances are, I am OK.

 

It is difficult for us, but Meera has found that bliss.

 

God does not "punish" us for going against his will! That is a misconception.

 

Going against His will carries it's own punishment. Going against God's will is tantamount to saying "I don't need you GOD, I can do it on my own."

 

And Krishna says, "OK, just try."

 

Then when it blows up in our face, we blame him. For what? Allowing us free will, which is our birthright?

 

But Krishna does not hold a grudge!

 

If we throw ourselves on His mercy, He will protect us from the negative reactions of our sins.

 

And if the negative reactions come, he will give us emotional shelter by making His presence felt in the heart.

 

There is no sin too heinous that Krishna will not love you.

 

But please do not run away from Him, that's it!

 

 

[Guest guest]

Hate is. Maybe God doesn't hate us. Maybe he does, I don't know.

••the only reason to hate someone is to have fear that he can cause us some disadvantage. What problem i can cause to god, to mahe him hate me?

 

Perhaps he likes to rule over us

••god likes everything he does..

 

and punish us for ever questioning his will

••if he was disturbed by our freedom, he could easily and immediately take it out. So the fact that we have freedom, and that you have the freedom to speculatre freely about him, it means that god is completely detached by your agreeing or disagreeing with him

 

By your own logic, a tyrannical king must feel love for his subjects..

•• aside what it is already said, in the case of a tyrannical king you have moral or religious rules, superior to the king, to judge his behaviour... But there's nothing superior to god, so his behaviour and will is perfect, his behaviour and will set the standard.

If youy feel that there's some abstract sense of love who is above all, it seems that for you such love is god. We can discuss, because if there's the supreme love, there's also a supreme lover, but now, everything that you consider supreme, this is god.

If you think of a god who is against some moral conduct, for you the moral conduct is god...

 

 

[premasagar]

I don't exactly think of God as loving me. If I simply thought that he loved me, then I would automatically project onto God a lot of limited human ideas about how one person loves or fails to love another. And that would get into a lot of confusing duality about love and hate*, which is just an endless string of doubts.

 

In my understanding, God is simply love itself. Any time I love someone or some thing, it is really God who flows through me as love, lover, and beloved. And because I have some direct experience of what that love is like, I can recognize that same God-substance in some degree whenever someone else sends love in my direction.

 

Therefore, I have two ways to find out whether God loves me. Going the difficult way, I can speculate about my relationship to God and wrestle with evidence and doubts about whether his apparent actions indicate love. The easier and more direct way would be to love others and devote myself wholeheartedly to whatever I do and feel God's love flowing naturally through me.

 

And I think that's the real difference between people who know God loves them and those who don't. The latter usually think of love as something that God gives or withholds, while the former give and devote themselves without thinking so much about getting love or blessings in return.

 

 

*Actually, the God-substance which is love also forms the substance of hate, doubt, and every other phenomenon - so everything is an expression of love at a fundamental level. But that kind of non-dualistic realization is mainly experienced by the sages.