Are Christians capable of selfless love?

[Silas]

Jesus preached selfless love in the bible, but I wonder if Christians are capable of doing what he preached.

Selfless means a person do something but except nothing in return.

Christians have to love God and love people so that they can get to heaven. That sounds awfully selfish. Christians do what God tells them to do in order to please God. That's selfish.

Straw Man depiction of Christians, and thus not a very good argument. Proselytising Christians of the kind found frequently on these pages sure talk about "the only way to be Saved is to believe in Jesus", but I don't pretend to assume that their only motivation to be Christians and to love Jesus is fear of eternal torment or on their own desire for eternal life. History is full of Christians who did act selflessly, not through a desire to avoid Hell, but through a wish to follow Jesus's example. And history is also full of non-Christians who have done the same for similar reasons. "Christians do what God tells them to do in order to please God. That's selfish." Maybe it's just hero-worship, a perfectly normal human characteristic. Maybe it's through a genuine desire for self-improvement. Maybe its simply following a good example.

I'm not a Christian, and I don't believe in God. Sometimes, particularly in a place like this, it's easy fall prey to the illusion that every single Christian is a fundamentalist who wants to destroy childrens education by dictatorially imposing a Creationist ideology, or who will "argue" by inserting circular references to the Bible's importance and infallibility taken from the Bible itself. But the fact remains that there are many Christians all round the world doing important work in charitable fields, helping the poor, the sick and the needy. And they are not doing those things in order to avoid hell, any more than a charitable Jew, or a charitable Muslim or a charitable atheist would be.

M*W: There is no proof that Jesus ever existed, so there is no proof that he ever preached anything. I believe Jesus to be just a myth, so there is nothing in the bible that Jesus actually said.
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Jesus's actual existence is kind of irrelevant.

M*W: The NT was written and influenced by Paul of Tarsus who based his fictional character, Jesus, on the collective 16-25 dying demigod saviors who preceded him.
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You only have to read the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul to realise that clearly Jesus was not Paul's fictional creation. Paul actually had arguments with Christian founders who actually knew Jesus. If anyone invented Jesus, they did, but Paul could not have. Then there's the second half of your sentence which seems to display symptoms of some kind of aphasia. The "collective 16-25 dying demigod saviors"?? M*W, I hope you're not having a stroke! Again, irrelevant to any argument as to the selflessness or otherwise of actual Christians.

Joeman: Christians have to love God and love people so that they can get to heaven. That sounds awefully selfish. Christians do what God tells them to do in order to please God. That's selfish.
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M*W: Christians love who they believe to be their creator, and yes, this is selfishly convenient for them. God, however, I believe is the Sun who has been anthropomorphized through human history.
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You do keep bringing this New Age sun worship crap into everything. Really, who cares if the elements how people worship Christ originates in sun-worship? Maybe they do, but that's for a valid discussion of its own, and once only. Nobody who thinks of Christ is consciously paying homage to the Sun God Ra, nor does the Sun actually effect what they believe.

Joeman: Selfless love is more like people who knew they are going to hell but still do good things and expect nothing in return.
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M*W: Your analogy is true. Hell is taken from the city in Egypt called Heliopolis. Early humans feared and awed the Sun. It was the Sun who created and sustains life, but the Sun gives no judgment to mankind except in their own frail minds.

*Yawn* What on earth does Heliopolis, Egypt and sun worship have anything to do with Joeman's point? He's talking about the nature of real selfless love, not the cultural origins of Hell.

[M*W]: You won't find an argument from me here.

No, indeed! Instead of an argument, we get an unwanted and utterly irrelevant airing of "the Medicine*Woman version of Christian history", with some side notes on what a douchebag Paul was, for the umpteenth time.

 

[Joeman]

You only have to read the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul to realise that clearly Jesus was not Paul's fictional creation. Paul actually had arguments with Christian founders who actually knew Jesus. If anyone invented Jesus, they did, but Paul could not have. Then there's the second half of your sentence which seems to display symptoms of some kind of aphasia. The "collective 16-25 dying demigod saviors"??

Act of Apostles has been determined to be mostly fiction.

Galatian talks about Paul getting into an argument with Peter and after that they went seperate ways. That's very compelling evidence.

I think it's very likely this person really existed, however his name is neither Jesus nor Jeshua. Paul made up a bunch of stuff. He gave 3 different versions of his encouter with spirit of Jesus.

The Jesus seminars have determined that 18% of account in synopic gospels are historical. Those are mostly quotes. I don't claim to know more than those guys do, and I think they did the best job in distinguishing fact from fiction.

 

[craterchains (Norval]

Are Christians capable of selfless love?

The real question is, Joeman, are you?

 

[yank]

you are missing the point.

no i think you are...
the basic aim of all organisms is survival...
be it in the social way or any other!

 

[Silas]

Act of Apostles has been determined to be mostly fiction.

Also it was likely written by a follower of Paul, so I'm not really arguing that it forms a rock solid case compared to the Letters.

Galatian talks about Paul getting into an argument with Peter and after that they went seperate ways. That's very compelling evidence.

That was more or less what I meant.

I think it's very likely this person really existed, however his name is neither Jesus nor Jeshua.

Why not? Is there more evidence that his name was not Jehoshua/Joshua/Yeshva compared to the evidence that it was? Since he does not actually appear in contemporary accounts outside the Bible, it would appear not. Might as well call him Jesus and be done with it.

Paul made up a bunch of stuff. He gave 3 different versions of his encouter with spirit of Jesus.

Well, duh! No rational explanation of Paul's Damascene conversion would claim that his vision of Jesus proved Jesus's existence!

The Jesus seminars have determined that 18% of account in synopic gospels are historical. Those are mostly quotes. I don't claim to know more than those guys do, and I think they did the best job in distinguishing fact from fiction.

Oh, I took a look at their site. Two hundred scholars have a seminar and determine the historicity of what Jesus is supposed to have said and done by voting. It all sounds very good, but it's actually totally fallacious. Funnily enough I was just reading Richard Feynman on this very subject only last night:

This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China's nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China's nose is, and you average it. And that would be very "accurate" because you averaged so many people. But it's no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don't improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.

Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman​

At the Jesus Seminar, they considered 1500 items regarding the sayings of Jesus, and 387 reports of 176 individual actions of Jesus, and for each one they had to give a 0-3 rating on the reliability of each one. But if you decide by vote, there's no way of knowing the confidence with which each seminarian considered each of those two thousand-odd items. Each of them undoubtedly has a specialist area in which they are well read and highly informed, and many other areas about which they only know the basics. But their vote on all the areas, known or unknown, are equally valid.

 

[jayleew]

Jesus preached selfless love in the bible, but I wonder if Christians are capable of doing what he preached.

Selfless means a person do something but except nothing in return.

Nope.

Romans Chapter 7:
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Even Paul is selfish.

Christians have to love God and love people so that they can get to heaven. That sounds awefully selfish. Christians do what God tells them to do in order to please God. That's selfish.

You do not understand because you do not read enough or pray enough. We were created FOR God, he did not part the way for our entrance as so many "Christians" think. We are created to serve and please God, and God wants us to share in everything he has when we serve. Isn't it enough to be welcomed into existence?

That is why Satan hates God. God is a jealous God. Is he a selfish God? Probably, he says that he is a jealous God. Selfishness is part of jealousy. It doesn't matter, if he is the creator and we were created FOR him (and not so we can live), then we ought to do as he says. He is God, creator of all things, he can be what he wants to be! Who are we but specks of dust. God sees us as a bunch of molecules and electrons, but he loves us just the same.

Anyway, he has shown his love to us by sending his son to die for us. Tell me that is selfish. Isn't it enough to be loved by him, regardless if he is jealous/selfish?

Adam ate of the apple because it wasn't enough for him to be a part of God's plan. He knew God was being selfish with the knowledge and felt short-changed. It is always the same sin, it isn't enough for us to be invited to share, we have to be the center of Christianity and the center of the world. We are mistaken, we are not so big in the eyes of God. Still, he loves us and wants us to be a part of it all.

Folks, this is why Satan thinks Christians are a bunch of butt-kissers. I don't know, should we not kiss the person who stinkin pulled us from the dirt wherever he wants and said, "I love you so much that I'm going to die so that you can be with me?" Pucker up, baby. Let's see anyone on Earth love as much as that.
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Selfless love is more like people who knew they are going to hell but still do good things and expect nothing in return.

Beautiful. That is selfless love. However, if you are going to do good things, do it for God and expect nothing in return. This will send you to heaven. If you do good things for goodness sake, it will get you nowhere.

Your statement is close to a true Christian's attitude:
Selfless love is knowing you are sinful and are destined to go to hell, but you have faith in God that his promises are true about his plan of salvation, and that he will see you through Christ's blood on the day of judgement, and count your good works as righteousness. Then, when you boast, you boast that God has saved you and not of your own salvation.

When we do good works, we know we deserve death. But we know that obedience and faith covers our past mistakes. We deserve death, but we have confidence in God.